Triple-Double Watch Week 25: Russell Westbrook’s incredible journey
Welcome to Triple-Double Watch, a weekly check-in on everyone’s favorite arbitrary milestone of round, base-ten numbers.
The regular season went out with a bang, with the final nine days treating us to eight triple-doubles. However, they all pale in comparison to Russell Westbrook averaging a triple-double over the course of a season, AGAIN! It’s only happened twice before, and the second time was him last year – the original being Oscar Robertson’s hallowed 1960-61 campaign.
Westbrook came into the ultimate game of the season needing 16 rebounds to reach the touchstone. Everyone should have known he’d hit that mark as soon as he showed up to the game wearing this.
Plenty of jokes were made over the last 72 hours about his gunning for stats. While that’s justified to a degree, what Westbrook accomplished was astounding. Our resident professor, Andy Tobolowsky, summed it up perfectly on The Step Back email chain: “In AWE at Westbrook grabbing 17 boards and dishing 14 assists in 25 minutes. Stat-padders WISH they could pad stats like that.”
Westbrook, even while blatantly grabbing numbers, is stupefyingly amazing. He finished the game with six points, 20 rebounds (his season high, for good measure), and 19 assists in 37 minutes. He posted his 25th triple-double of the year in the Thunder’s prior game against the Bulls.
LeBron James and Ben Simmons had dueling triple-doubles in one of the best games of the year. In a valiant losing effort, James put up a 44-11-11, the third-highest triple-double score of the season. Simmons led the 76ers to a win that essentially gave the 76ers the 3-seed. They both fell in line behind Westbrook, with 18 and 12 triple-doubles, respectively.
Nikola Jokic, another familiar face in this column, added a pair this week in back-to-back games and got his total to double digits. His 20 rebounds against Portland was the second-most in a triple-double this year, only trailing DeMarcus Cousins’ 24 from Jan. 22.
Lastly, we welcome a trio of first-timers; Eric Bledsoe, Greg Monroe, and (!!!!!) Markelle Fultz. Fultz’s generates the most excitement since A) it looked like the Monstars stole his ability to play basketball and B) he became the youngest player to ever record one. His teammates were genuinely thrilled when it happened. Both him and Monroe came off the bench to secure their triple-doubles. The only other one this season was T.J. McConnell’s from Feb. 12.
For the fourth-straight year, Westbrook led the league in triple-doubles. The last player to set the pace was Lance Stephenson in 2013-14, with a whopping total of five. As shown in the graph below, the overall amount of triple-doubles aptly mimics Westbrook’s totals since he is the straw that stirs the drink.
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The Hawks finished the year with nine triple-doubles allowed, narrowly edging the Bulls’ seven. Eight teams gave up five or more across 2017-18 and four of them were in the bottom fifth of the league in defensive rating. Interestingly enough, two of the NBA’s best defensive teams, the Spurs and Jazz, also find themselves in this company.
That wraps up the season for the Triple-Double Watch. Hope you enjoyed the weekly check-ins on everybody’s favorite stat and gushing words on our patron saint, Russell Westbrook.