Fun Fact Friday: Nerlens Noel just takes the ball from you

For the first time in a few weeks, there were no obviously transcendent single-game performances. But that doesn’t mean the fun facts stop bountifully flowing:

1. Hassan Whiteside almost gets The 20/20/10 triple-double

Playing against the Spurs on Wednesday, Hassan Whiteside dropped an absolute monster of a line: 29 points, 20 rebounds, nine blocked shots. Obviously, Whiteside’s coach, Erik Spoelstra, missed out on a huge opportunity to get his center the tremendously rare 20/20/10-block triple-double.

That stat line has come together only seven times in league history, with the most recent coming from now-unemployed Joakim Noah in February 2013. The next guy in line is the 7-foot-6 1990s icon Shawn Bradley, who did it coming off the bench in April 1998 — with the then-terrible Mavericks still losing the game.

Each of the 20/20/10-block games required at least 36 minutes to finish, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar needing overtime and 49 total minutes to get it done for the very first time in 1975. Whiteside did all his damage in just 32 minutes, which confirms that Spoelstra did indeed rob us.

2. The era of 140-point games continues

A few weeks ago I noted that teams were off to a very hot start when it came to scoring 140 points (without the aid of overtime). It happened eight different times last year and then happened three times in the first week of this season. Well, now that count has gone up to six games, with the Kings and Bucks joining the club. The Kings are only 13th in Offensive Rating!

The next frontier is clearly the 150-point, no-overtime game. That last happened in March 2010, when a Steve Nash-led Suns team — being GM-ed by Steve Kerr — ripped through a rebuilding version of the Timberwolves, 152-114. It’s only happened four times this century, with the crown jewel being Carmelo Anthony and the Nuggets knocking over Kevin Durant’s SuperSonics (!), 168-116.

3. The era of 70-point games ends?

Clearly the league is going through some dramatic changes when it comes to offensive ability, efficiency, and pace. While we’re still very early in the season, it looks like the very most low-scoring games that we might have seen a handful of years ago are simply extinct. This year, the lowest-scoring team game is the Timberwolves managing just 81 points against the Trail Blazers. Last year there were 38 games where a team scored 80 points or less — meaning it happened about once or twice a week — led by a pair of very nice 69-point games. In 2016-17 there were 48 team games of 80 or less, including an 80-64 contest, and another that ended 86-75 after overtime.

We’ll have to see more of the season play out to see just how extinct the 80-points or less game may or may not be. But this does bring up the question: have we seen the last game of 60 points or less in NBA history? The last time it happened was January 2013, when Tom Thibodeau and the Bulls put the clamps down on a Hawks team that would actually go to the playoffs, 97-58. That was a long time ago. But it’s hard to call things off just yet: the league went through a 36-year stretch, from 1955 to 1991, with none of these games happening. The league invented the shot clock for the 1954-55 season, exactly one under-60 game happened in its debut year, and then it didn’t happen again until the nineties.

4. The lightning double-double

I think I know why the Lakers were so interested in picking up Tyson Chandler: even though Chandler was playing for the low-powered Suns offense, a few weeks ago he put together a double-double in just 14 minutes. This was both impressive, and not: that’s tied for the sixth-fastest double-double on record (back to 1983-84), but also Chandler somehow went minus-18 in that game against the Lakers.

The fastest double-double on record belongs to David Robinson, who also fit in four fouls in just 12 minutes in a 2002 game against the Kings. However, Robinson’s record is definitely under threat, since we are definitely living in the golden age of the lightning-fast double-double. The leader (since records began in 1983-84) for career double-doubles in 20 minutes or less is Enes Kanter, with nine. He’s trailed closely by Jonas Valanciunas (eight) and Ed Davis (six), and do not count out Boban Marjanovic, who only has three but would probably wrap this one up in about a month if a coach out there finally gave some real minutes.

5. Is Nerlens Noel having an all-time great defensive season?

How hard could it be, when you’re on the floor, to steal the ball on three percent of your opponents’ possessions, and also block three percent of your opponents’ shots? It’s just three percent!

Turns out it’s almost impossible. Using the very, very low baseline of at least 250 minutes played in a season, it’s happened just 11 times in league history. Jonathan Isaac got the job done as a rookie last year but looks unable to repeat with just a 1.6 percent steal rate this year. My main man Nerlens Noel joined this club in each of the last two seasons. Not only is he the only player currently on track to do it again this year, but he could actually have the first-ever four-percent/four-percent season, sitting at 4.0 percent on steals and a career-best 7.1 percent on blocks. Let the record show I’ve been on-board with Nerlens through all the ups and downs:

Nerlens is one of two players with at least 500 minutes played in their career who is in the lifelong 3%/3% club. The only other member, Carey Scurry, also had a difficult time finding his footing himself, appearing in just 180 games, with a career average of 13.2 minutes per game. That means, somehow, we’ve yet to see a member of this most elite class of defensive ballhawks actually receive any sort of job security.