LOS ANGELES — You’ve been a bit obsessed with the thought, too, haven’t you?

Russell Westbrook and Patrick Beverley in the Lakers’ backcourt?!

The NBA, where amazing drama happens.

With each passing day, the tea leaves – including Beverley’s own tweets – are telling us this pairing of adversaries could actually happen.

Conventional thinking had it that the Lakers were going to try to trade Westbrook after his unhappy homecoming last season. It was rough for Russ; he got booed by his home crowd and slammed on social media, and he walked away from it saying that though his teammates said they wanted “Russ to be Russ,” in his mind, “that wasn’t true.”

In July, LeBron James and Westbrook ignored each other at a Summer League game in Las Vegas while rumors swirled about the team’s interest in swapping him for Brooklyn’s Kyrie Irving.

A week later, Westbrook parted ways with his agent, Thad Foucher, who told ESPN he thought his former client’s best play would be to stay and “embrace the starting role and support that new coach Darvin Ham publicly offered.” Apparently, Westbrook disagreed so adamantly that it caused an irreconcilable rift.

But for the Lakers, unloading a player earning $47 million next season is proving difficult. It reportedly would require, for example, that they include a pair of unprotected first-round draft picks in a much-discussed possible swap for Indiana’s Myles Turner and Buddy Hield. And L.A. doesn’t love that proposition.

So yes, as Foucher noted, out loud Lakers officials have had Westbrook’s back.

The first time Ham met the media as the team’s coach, he let it be known: “Don’t get it messed up. Russell is one of the best players our league has ever seen.” And this week, team owner Jeanie Buss went on record with The Athletic to express her appreciation: “Russ showed up every game and played hard every night.”

Was all that public affirmation a ploy to signal to potential trade partners that, nooo, the Lakers actually aren’t all that desperate to trade Westbrook?

That seemed plausible, especially after last week’s trade for Beverley, who is an accelerant in so many ways, including this one: There’s just no way the Lakers would not only retain Westbrook – but also make him play with a guy who’s famously his nemesis?

Or … formerly his nemesis?

It’s feeling like we should get past all of their previous run-ins, the smack talk and side eyes and snark. Unless he’s tricking us all, Beverley is on board to make the best of a pairing with Westbrook.

So I’m guessing this how it works in LA. Something all the time huh We Excited and We hungry. Watch us Work https://t.co/DtzG0HaKqG

— Patrick Beverley (@patbev21) August 31, 2022

On Tuesday, Beverley responded to reaction to Marc Stein’s report that he and his new co-worker had, well, spoken, by marveling at the attention that conversation garnered, tweeting: “We Excited and We hungry. Watch us Work.”

That, following his response to James’ tweet last week in support of Westbrook: “Can’t wait for him to go off this season!!” Beverley seconded the notion with a quote-tweet: “Same it’s on.”

Of course, anyone who has spent any time around Pat Bev can tell you: It’s never not on.

Defensively, Beverley is a world-class irritant, a hound and a pest and a badger, capable of burrowing into the heads of the most cold-blooded opponents. He’s also the kind of bucket the Lakers were looking for. He doesn’t need the ball in his hands except to shoot it: In his final three seasons with the Clippers, he hit 41% of his catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts.

Useful attributes, but what’s given the 34-year-old an NBA runway to make his mark is how maniacally competitive he is. I once saw him spend a half-hour engaged in a rabid game of Jenga with a boy in bed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, showing absolutely no mercy – but plenty of grace when eventually he toppled the tower: “My dude, good game. And I don’t like to lose, bro.”

Perhaps you heard Beverley crow obscenely about the fact that in seasons when he’s been healthy, his teams have never missed the playoffs, no matter how long the odds.

He’s been a bona fide culture-setter that way, good for young players in L.A. like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Terance Mann and Ivica Zubac, or Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell last season in Minnesota.

Zubac noted last year how strange it was not constantly hearing Beverley’s voice at the Clippers’ practices. So you wonder, will his incessant urgency get big man Anthony Davis revved up? Drive Westbrook up the wall? Prove or disprove the old adage about athletes you love to hate unless they’re on your team?

And if things don’t go swimmingly in Lakerland, will Beverley be able to mute the piercing spotlight that follows players in purple and gold?

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If you tuned into ESPN for any of Beverley’s critiques of Chris Paul this May – or you’re a Clippers fan – you know he’s as insightful, honest and funny as NBA players come. But he once went weeks giving one-word answers to the Clippers’ beat reporters because he didn’t like one article that depicted the team’s chemistry as less than copacetic.

I’ve been thinking about all of that since the news broke of Beverley’s return to L.A., but what I’ve been most fixated on was something else I observed that afternoon when he lost his Jenga matchup at the hospital when he walked right into another room and found a patient’s sister wearing a Westbrook T-shirt.

Perhaps it was a coincidence, or perhaps she’d been sly and worn it on purpose, knowing he might stop by. Either way, Beverley spent close to a half-hour there too, chatting and joking with the Westbrook fan and her family.

Somewhere, there’s a photo of him with those folks, smiling.

And I’m starting to picture it: Westbrook beside a guy in a matching Beverley jersey, smiling – or snarling. But trying to make it work.