“Most people outside of the club probably laughed at us – ‘Yeah, nice one, good luck with that’ – but we lived and breathed it. Obama said he was “a great friend of mine, but more importantly he was also a great friend to the city of Pittsburgh”. Westbrook not only plays at a high intensity but figures into a very high percentage of the Thunder’s possessions, something analytics experts calls usage rate. When the franchise briefly stumbled during the turn of the millennium, missing the playoffs each year from 1998-2000, the Steelers signed Cowher to an extension.