In search of the most extreme triple-double known to man

Yesterday, the Thunder’s Russell Westbrook set a new record for triple-doubles in a single season (42), surpassing Oscar Robertson’s long-standing mark. At the end of the year, he’ll also join the “Big O” as the second player in NBA history to average a triple-double for an entire season.

Westbrook entered the history books with his usual ruthless panache, capping off his 50 point- 16 rebound-, 10 assist-performance with an absurd last-second 3-pointer that beat the Nuggets and dashed their playoff hopes.

Dazzling feats of stat-stuffing like these have put Westbrook into serious contention for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. But, not everybody has been impressed.

Daryl Morey, Rockets General Manager and James Harden super fan, considers the requisite thresholds for a triple-double — 10 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists (or blocks or steals) — to be nothing more than a “random combo of numbers”. He’s totally right, too! It is arbitrary. I mean, ten is only considered a “round number”, because everybody in the world uses the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. But what’s so special about Base-10, anyways, right Daryl?

Take 15th Century Mesoamerica, for example; the Aztecs were using a Base-20 numeral system back then. That is, rather than having ten single-digit numerals (0 thru 9 — one for each finger), they had twenty (one for each finger and sandled-toe). So when Tenochtitlan’s point guard Ilhicamina (“he shoots arrows at the sky”) was able to rack up a triple-double on the ōllamalitzli court, it was literally twice the modern accomplishment — 20 points, 20 rebounds, and 20 assists — and that’s before you even consider the fact that the ōllamalitzli hoop was hanging like 20 feet in the air and the players were shooting the ball with their hips not with their hands.

Read More: Revisiting offensive style charts for the 2016-17 NBA season

So if 10-10-10 is just a random combo of numbers, let’s make up a new stat for NBA players to hunt, one called the “Tenochtitlan triple-double”: 20 points, 20 rebounds, and 20 assists. In league history, a 20-20-20 line has only been accomplished one time, by Wilt Chamberlain on Feb. 2, 1968 (he had 22 points, 25 rebounds, 21 assists). Other people have come close, though. Here’s the list of players, since the 1983-84 season (the first with data available from Basketball-Reference), who have split-the-difference between a conventional triple-double and a Tenochtitlan triple-double , notching at least 15 points, rebounds, and assists in a single game:

Note: The base-20 numeral system of the Aztecs is represented by the dots — single digits — and the axes — double digits, equivalent to 20 dots each — in the table above.

The list is headlined by a pair of triple-double icons: Magic Johnson (No. 2 all-time with 138 triple doubles) and Jason Kidd (No. 3 with 107). Astoundingly, Kidd spread his three near-Tenochtitlan triple-doubles over a span of more than 14 years. In contrast, Johnson stacked up his two triple-triple nickels within a space of three weeks in April 1989. Magic’s long-time friend and foe Larry Bird is on the list, too; but, another Celtic champion, Rajon Rondo, is the modern player who has come the closest to repeating Chamberlain’s accomplishment, finishing just one bucket and three rebounds short.

In the past few seasons, three performances have approached the Tenochtitlan triple-double: one from Westbrook in 2015, one from Harden in 2016, and, most recently, another from Westbrook in February.

This year, Westbrook and Harden have been responsible for some truly obscene stat lines: 50-point triple-doubles, a perfect-shooting triple-double, and now a buzzer-beating 50-point triple-double. The running one-upmanship between these two leading candidates has kept the MVP Award up-for-grabs all season, with the winner of the race still to be determined heading into the final week. What better way for one of these two to sway undecided voters than by posting a historic Tenochtitlan triple-double in the final game of the season?

Aside from these two, though, there are probably a few other NBA players who might be able to pull off a 20-20-20 line:

Note: Data collected from Basketball-Reference’s game logs of the past three seasons, regular- and postseasons included. For each player, spot size is proportional to the number of triple-doubles achieved in the past three seasons. Not shown: Hassan Whiteside (blocks).

In the past three seasons, there have been 232 triple-doubles recorded by 38 individual players. Some of these players — Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, John Wall — are point guards who have the potential to dish out 20 assists without the interior presence necessary to gather 20 boards (in blue, above). On the other hand, there are big men — DeMarcus Cousins, Pau Gasol, Zach Randolph — who can gobble up 20 rebounds, without much hope of collecting 20 dimes (in green). A few recent triple-doublers — Raymond Felton, George Hill, Marcus Smart — have provided no evidence that they could get 20 in either stat category (yellow).

But in red, there is a group of four players who have single-game highs of at least 15 rebounds and 15 assists in the last three seasons: the two who achieved 15-15 in a single game — Westbrook and Harden — as well as two others — LeBron James and Draymond Green — who posted 15 rebounds and 15 assists, but not in the same game.

At the moment, these are the four players who are most likely to attain a Tenochtitlan triple-double, the four most-likely to become Aztec gods. Not coincidentally, these are also the four players who have tallied the most conventional triple-doubles in the past three seasons (as indicated by the large size of their red spots, above). Indeed, Westbrook (50-16-10), Harden (35-11-15), and James (32-16-10) each tripled their doubles, just last night.

Beyond, the Westbrook-Harden-James-Green quartet, there are some young players in the league who have the potential to produce a 20-20-20 night, perhaps sometime in the more-distant future. Second-year-Nugget Nikola Jokic, for one, already dropped 17 points, 21 rebounds, and 12 assists in a February win over the Warriors. He’s a silky-smooth passer out of the post and I could imagine him distributing 20 assists in a game one day. Attaining the accompanying 20 points and 20 rebounds should be a relative cinch for the 6-foot-10 Jokic as his offensive presence continues to expand.

Meanwhile, third-year-Magic point guard Elfrid Payton conjured 22 points, 14 rebounds, and 14 assists against the Bulls in March. His pass-first mentality lends itself to Rondo-esque assist outbursts and his size (6-foot-4) makes a 20-rebound night a legit possibility. For a 13-point per game scorer, though, finding the corresponding 20 points might actually be the rate-limiting step for Payton. Giannis Antetokounmpo has already established himself as a Greek god; he may soon become an Aztec god, too. His extreme versatility allows him to play a point-forward role for the Bucks, which is the perfect position for him to accumulate the assists and rebounds necessary for a Tenochtitlan.

Whether it’s Westbrook this week or Antetokounmpo in 2020 somebody is bound to attain the Tenochtitlan triple-double again, eventually. Prepare yourself for the stat-pocalypse.