Fun Fact Friday: Damian Jones is on the brink of history

Welcome to Fun Fact Friday, your new weekly take-free reading oasis. I’ve panned the mighty rivers of NBA stats to bring you the straight golden nuggets of trivia:

1. Ramon Sessions is still chasing Wilt Chamberlain.

Last year, I discovered that Ramon Sessions is the active NBA player who was closest to breaking one of Wilt Chamberlain’s all-time records. Since it is Ramon Sessions we’re talking about: no, he was not chasing down the Big Dipper’s record for most career 50-point games. (Chamberlain has a comfortable 122-39 lead over second-place Michael Jordan in that category.)

Instead, Sessions was the NBA’s current leader for most career games played (regular season and postseason) without fouling out. After Sessions logged 28 appearances between the Knicks and Wizards last year, his 713 career games of five fouls or less is — well, it’s still about half a career behind Chamberlain’s mark of 1,205. Sessions is still a free agent, but it feels like he’ll be back at some point this year, right?

For the moment, Sessions has a comfortable lead over the rest of the league: second-place competitor Danny Green got knocked out of the running with a foul-out in just 24 minutes against Utah in March. The new trailer behind Sessions is Patty Mills, who is behind by a full regular-season-plus-deep-postseason, at 607 career games. The devastating run of injuries in San Antonio could push Mills into a new career high in minutes per game, dangerously increasing his odds of eventually fouling out.

2. Who will replace DeMarcus as the prince of the regular season?

With 535 career games played, DeMarcus Cousins is the active leader in regular season games without having ever appeared in the playoffs. Assuming things do not go completely awry for DeMarcus in the trainer’s room or locker room this year, he should finally get that monkey off his back with the Warriors, who use the first two postseason series to get warmed up.

Still, even this temporary record comes with an asterisk: Cousins helped the Pelicans play playoff-caliber basketball last year before he tore his Achilles, and was deprived of that sweet, sweet first playoff appearance. The no-asterisk leader is Kyle O’Quinn, at 398 career games. Between three seasons each with the Magic and Knicks, the best record O’Quinn has finished with is 32-50.

But O’Quinn should finally taste the playoffs this year, too, after being signed by the Pacers. Third-place Brandon Knight, at 382 career games, was also mercifully traded from the Suns to the Rockets, making him a strong candidate to break his individual curse also. By the end of the year, the smart money to top this leaderboard would be on Ben McLemore (349 career games), who is back from a one-year stint with the Grizzlies for a second go-round with the Kings.

3. Wait so who is in the same coaching tier as Gregg Popovich?

Out of the 328 head coaches in league history, only eight of those coaches have maintained a winning percentage of 60 percent or better across at least a decade of coaching. Five of those coaches are currently not on the sideline, and they are each legends. By increasing win percentage, they are: Jerry Sloan, Pat Riley, Red Auerbach, K.C. Jones, and Phil Jackson.

That means that three of today’s 30 head coaches belong in part of this tier. One is, to no one’s surprise, Gregg Popovich — who is, amazingly, just a handful of seasons behind Sloan in terms of his career longevity. Another is Erik Spoelstra, whose longevity is impressive but, alas, has not had a season of better than 60 percent during his non-LeBron seasons, and he currently sits perched at a 60.1 percent lifetime mark.

The last coach is the truly surprising one, especially seeing as he’s been on the hot seat for seemingly the majority of his coaching career: Scott Brooks. Now, at a career mark of 60.6 percent, Brooks is, like Spoelstra, in danger of falling back into the regular ol’ masses of coaches. The mark is even more impressive considering that Brooks got things started with a 22-47 record as a mid-season replacement for the still-rebuilding Thunder in 2008-09.

4. Undrafted T.J. McConnell leads his entire draft class by hundreds of assists.

After going undrafted in 2015, T.J. McConnell signed with Sam Hinkie and the Philadelphia 76ers for a contract we’ll call the Hinkie Deluxe: four potential years of team control with perilously few guarantees on T.J.’s end. Now we’re starting that fourth year, and McConnell has clowned his entire draft class in a few different ways. One: only 45 of the 60 draft picks have even appeared in the NBA, while McConnell was an every-night player for the 52-win Sixers last year. Two: only 20 of those 45 players have avoided being traded, cut, or otherwise moved since draft night — and none of Philadelphia’s six actual draft picks are with the team anymore.

That’s a pretty convincing case for McConnell’s first-round credentials. But what’s even more impressive is McConnell’s massive edge when it comes to career assists. Despite primarily playing as a backup, at 22.9 minutes a night, McConnell has a massive lead over his entire class in total assists: at 1,210, he’s about a full season’s worth ahead of second-place D’Angelo Russell, at 823. McConnell would have the second-most assists if he were part of the 2014 draft class, whose 60 players have a full year’s head-start on him.

While that raw number demonstrates, among other things, McConnell’s sustained health, what’s more important is his play-by-play effectiveness. He still holds a convincing edge here, too: McConnell’s career rate of 10.7 assists per 100 possessions is notably ahead of not just Russell (7.6), but players like Jerian Grant (8.0), Emmanuel Mudiay (8.4), and Tyus Jones (8.9).

5. Can Damian Jones (or Patrick McCaw) capture the elusive start-of-career three-peat?

Two years after being taken late in the first round by the Warriors, Damian Jones finally got his first start for the team on opening night against the Thunder, setting career highs in just about everything. It was a great moment for Jones, especially considering that his roster spot has looked far from locked-in during the quiet first two years of his career. Locking down a rotational spot with the team will go a long way in increasing Jones’ odds to join perhaps the most exclusive club of NBA players by starting his career with a three-peat.

Even Bill Russell isn’t a member of this club. Russell did not win the championship in only two of his 13 seasons, and one of those was his sophomore year in 1957-58. Despite Boston’s run of eight straight championships, from 1959-1966, only four Celtics started off their careers with a three-peat: John Havlicek, K.C. Jones (there he is again), Larry Siegfried, and Tom Sanders.

In all the years since then, only two players have been added to the club. First is Scott Williams, back-up center during Jordan’s first three-peat, and second is Devean George, who was drafted from a Division III school onto the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. Plus, the club could have two new members this year, with the other being Patrick McCaw. Given the kind of rare history McCaw could be involved with here, his persistent contract holdout seems even more bizarre. (Look, if it were me, I’d have picked up that one-year qualifying offer for another ride into the postseason, and trusted I would have gotten my real money from some rebuilding team who spent their month of May watching me on national TV.)

Nothing is guaranteed for Jones — or the rest of the Warriors, either. Take the cautionary tale of Jason Caffey, whose rookie year coincided with Jordan’s second three-peat in Chicago. Caffey even started a handful of games on the way to his second championship in the 1997 playoffs. However, at the 1998 trade deadline, the Bulls sent Caffey to the 19-win Warriors (this was that Latrell Sprewell year) in exchange for second-round picks.

Of course, one’s sympathy for Caffey, and potentially Jones and McCaw, can only go so far: they do have those rings, plural, on those fingers.