Russell Westbrook is legit and so are triple-doubles

Yesterday, according to our friends over at SBNation, Russell Westbrook — or as I like to call him, Muscle Vestbrook — Russell Westbrook recorded the fastest triple-double in the last twenty years. It was his third in a row and it came in the fourth game of a playoff series in which the superior team had a 2-1 lead. The worse team — Russell’s Thunder — lost, and his 10-of-28 was part of it, but it wouldn’t even have been close without his 35-14-14.

Another ridiculous Westbrook performance means he burnished his legend, just as he burnished a less than stellar reputation for shooting his shot in circumstances that may not call for it. It also means that we were once again treated to the chorus we all know, “the triple-double is an arbitrary stat.”

I want to make two things clear:

First, everyone who doesn’t think Russell Westbrook should be MVP is  a huge nerd who deserves a wedgie.

And second, the triple-double is not an arbitrary stat.

I mean it IS, in a sense, and I confess I would be just as happy with a metric I like to call the Herman Cain: that is, the 9-9-9. But the greater point is there is no sense in calling a triple-double an arbitrary stat because it makes it sound like it doesn’t measure anything. But it DOES measure something, which is to say, that someone has a lot of three different things: points, assists, and rebounds. You can absolutely know that from the triple-double. It’s right in the name.

Did you know, for example, that only three players in the NBA averaged double-digit assists this season? James Harden, the only other MVP-worthy candidate — worthy of giving you only a LIGHT wedgie of course — was one of those. But did you know that only twelve guys in the NBA averaged double-digit rebounds? And that not only are all the other ones power forwards or centers, with the math slanting very significantly towards centers, but so is everyone in the top 15? James Harden also got a lot of rebounds for a short guy, 8.1, and we honor him for that. But he didn’t even Herman Cain!

You know what’s arbitrary? A seven-game playoff series. If you can take three games off somebody, you can take four. Or, say you’re better than 28 other teams in the league, but you end up in a series with the one you match up poorly against — think the Spurs-Grizz first round series a few years back. Foul trouble is a little arbitrary, whistles are a little arbitrary, the stock market is a little arbitrary. Does that matter? Sure, to the extent it does, but nobody’s re-writing history about it.

Besides which, if you want to make the “trip-dubs is arbitrary” argument, and for a reason other than liking the delightful Herman Cain stat I made up  — admit it, it’s adorable — go bother somebody like Jason Kidd in 2007, who averaged 13-9-8 (oooh, so close to a Cain). Russ did it not only while averaging 31.6 points a game, but by scoring 2558 points total. That’s more than anybody besides Kevin Durant’s 2593 in 2014, since Kobe Bryant in 2006. It’s the third-most since Jordan’s 2580 in 1991. That’s so many points. And that’s alongside so many rebounds. And so many assists.

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I get it. We’ve all come to distrust standard stats and counting stats especially. I get it. And I myself love advanced stats, even though my own mathematical ability is such that I may not be able to count up all of Russ’s points, assists, and rebounds. But sometimes something is so sick, anyone can see it, and that something is what Russ Westbrook has done this season. Sure, he takes some awful garbage time shots, and I’m not going to stand here and defend them to you — not to you. But who cares? You’re not going to regret not getting to show how savvy you are by voting for James Harden’s probably slightly better statistical season that I’ve already forgotten. You’re going to regret not recognizing the amazing thing Westbrook did.