Triple-Double Watch Week 8: The stars come out to shine

Welcome to Triple-Double Watch, a weekly check-in on everyone’s favorite arbitrary milestone of round, base-ten numbers.

The #TripleDoubleWatch had a huge week. Some big-time players slapped up some big-time lines. This week gifted us with a six pack of triple-doubles, tying Week 2 with the most we’ve had this season. Week 8 did however, set a record of tallying three in one day.

Repeat customers Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, and Ben Simmons stopped by, while Kevin Durant, Rajon Rondo, and Nikola Vucevic all made their first TDW splash of the year.

The wake of Steph Curry’s injury brought (justified) worry for his ankle, (unfounded) concern about the Warriors level of play, and (founded) excitement surrounding the heights Durant could ascend to. The heights turned out to be pretty high. In the first contest sans Curry, Durant went for 35 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists, stepping up and leading the Warriors in all three categories.

Since returning for the Pelicans, there are times Rondo looks old, then there are times he looks like Old Rondo. Monday night was the latter. His line of 13/12/12 was as classic Rondo as you can get, showing he can still stuff the stat sheet.

The omnipotent LeBron James (which should be his legal name) continues to carry Cleveland through the early season. Before falling to the Pacers on Dec. 8, the Cavaliers hadn’t lost for a month. James bottled that loss and used it as serum to drum up a 30/13/13 the very next night.

Simmons, a Magic-Johnson-reincarnated-wunderkind, is quickly approaching fixture status in this space. The do-it-all phenom is still growing through the trials and tribulations of being a rookie on a young up-and-coming team, but he’s recorded three triple-doubles in his first 25 games as a pro.

Seeing Westbrook on here is par for the course. He is, by any measure, the TD-King. At this point, it’s weird when he doesn’t get at least one every week. Writing about it has become passé. But what’s always fun is seeing an unlikely name like Vucevic make the list. Vucevic’s a double-double machine for the Magic, but this marks his initial time in 6+ seasons he cleared the bar in three stats. In fact, it’s actually the first game he’s ever reached 10 assists (and possibly 10 times he’s passed) in his career. Vooch gets to be the honorary TD-King for the week.

Next: Nylon Calculus: In pursuit of the divine stat line

This week’s half-dozen entrants saw an even split in their outcomes – the highest ratio of any batch so far this year. Of course, the correlation of achieving a triple-double doesn’t imply causation of attaining a team victory, but numbers are numbers. On the season, when a player gets a triple-double, their team wins about 71 percent of the time. Not saying it means anything, just sayin’.