Welcome to Triple-Double Watch, a weekly check-in on everyone’s favorite milestone of arbitrary round numbers.
Last year we bore witness to Russell Westbrook lighting the league on fire. Laying waste to those who foolishly dared to stand in opposition, he averaged the first triple-double season since Oscar Robertson in 1961-62. This year we have Triple-Double Watch, a weekly feature capturing the stat line that captivates us the most. Welcome. In this space, I will round-up all triple-doubles from the past seven days, along with the near misses, coulda-beens, flukes, anomalies, and the overall leaderboard for the season.
The inaugural week of NBA action gave us an amuse bouche to what should be a tasty season. After the crazy summer, we got real glimpses of all the rearranged rosters and the first coach firing of the year came after only three (albeit abominable) games.
The initial slate gifted us with a solitary triple-double. Fittingly, Westbrook accomplished the feat, stuffing the stat sheet on Oklahoma City’s opening night. In ultra-efficient fashion, he took a blow torch to the Knicks to the tune of 21 points, 10 rebounds, and 16 assists, while shooting 7-of-12 from the field.
It marked the 80th time in his career Westbrook reached the touchstone benchmark. He only trails Robertson, Magic Johnson, and Jason Kidd on the all-time list. Picking up where he left off, Westbrook is right on the cusp of averaging a triple-double in the young season, with 19.3/9.3/11.7 through three games for Oklahoma City. #SmallSampleSize.
Ben Simmons became the second member of the 2017-18 triple-double club on Monday night! Simmons has looked great for the 76ers in his redshirt rookie season. He’s basically the antipode to Markelle Fultz’s shooting form. In Detroit, Simmons put up 21/12/10 in leading Philadelphia to their first win of the year.
While there wasn’t a flood of triple-doubles, we did have a seven-pack of close calls.
In the tip-off game of the year, LeBron James, in his omnipresent statistical opulence, was one assist shy to go along with 29 points and 16 boards.
Later on opening night, Draymond Green barely fell short by only scoring nine points. Golden State’s Swiss Army knife contributed 11 rebounds and 13 assists in a losing effort against Houston.
The Greek Freak and current NBA scoring leader (38.3 ppg through 10/22), Giannis Antetokounmpo, had 8-and-8 to go with his 34 points in a duel against Cleveland. As an aside, it seems to me like his already-preposterous wingspan somehow managed to get even longer this year. I’ll have to investigate.
After getting put into Patrick Beverley’s torture chamber in his NBA debut, Lonzo Ball fared much better in his follow-up performance once he escaped. The flagship son of Big Baller Brand slapped together 29 points and 11 rebounds, just needing one more dime to make Twitter explode into a frenzy.
Opposite Ball and the Lakers in that same matchup, Devin Booker also came close with a similar line. The rising Sun (sorry) scored 25 while adding 11 boards and eight assists.
Another fledgling star, Ben Simmons was a pair of assists shy from joining the club. He had 18 points and 10 rebounds against the Raptors on Saturday.
In the final game of the weekend, DeMarcus Cousins came two assists short of double-digits. Boogie had 22 points and 11 rebounds in the Pelicans first win of the year.
With that, here’s the season-long leaderboard after one week.
Next: The 2017-18 NBA season is a game of chess
Let’s wrap up Triple-Double Watch with something I’d like to call the Ron Baker Corner. I love watching Baker play basketball because I’d imagine that’s what it’d be like if an average pickup player was dropped into the NBA. I know just by virtue of making it to the league, he’s one of the best players in the world. I get that. Still, he looks and plays like half the guys from your college rec league. So, did Baker get a triple-double this week? No. No, he did not.