The Whiteboard: Which NBA players generate the most chaos on the court?

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Basketball can be a beautiful game, precise and flowing, intentionality guiding actions and the movement of space, possessions unfolding like a flower revealing themselves to the players fractions of a second before they are revealed to us, the fans. Basketball can be a rock fight too, utter chaos, devoid of flow, nothing but intentionality endlessly impeded by sloppiness and random obstruction.

Certain players embody that chaos better than others and with the caffeinated illusion of inspiration this morning I thought I’d try to identify some of them. To be clear, I’m talking about a very specific kind of chaos — the uninterrupted, continuous kind. Endless fouls are chaos of a sort but they are also endpoints that stop play and allow that chaos to be briefly reordered and brushed away.

Instead, I focused on three specific recordable acts — the steal, the block and the turnover (for the sake of brevity I’m not differentiating between live- and dead-ball turnovers here). Below are the five players who averaged the most STOCKTOS (STeals, blOCKs and TurnOverS) per 100 possessions this season.

Andre Drummond: 10.5 STOCKTOS per 100 possessions

Drummond is a chalice for chaos, incredible size and agility allows him to disrupt the intentions of opponents, shaky ball-handling and touch make him just as disruptive to his own team. If we were to split things further though, Drummond may slide down the list a little bit as more than half his turnovers were of the dead-ball variety — traveling, offensive fouls, knocking the ball out of bounds, etc.

Nerlens Noel: 9.2 STOCKTOS per 100 possessions

On a per-possession basis, Noel has long been one of the league’s most chaotic players, a steal- and block-generating machine. He doesn’t have the same cannonball strengths as Drummond but he’s just as unrefined on the offensive end.

James Harden: 9.0 STOCKTOS per 100 possessions

Harden is the model for the other kind of chaos too, the kind the involves a whistle and standing around while he shoots free throws. But he was also second in the league in live-ball turnovers this season, behind only Trae Young, and contributes a fair number of steals as well.

Anthony Davis: 8.9 STOCKTOS per 100 possessions

Davis is kind of like Noel but with far fewer offensive turnovers per touch. It’s a shame if we don’t get to see him finally carry that chaos deep into the playoffs and see much it would have helped or hurt the Lakers in tight games.

Ben Simmons: 8.5 STOCKTOS per 100 possessions

Steals made up a greater portion of Simmons’ STOCKTOS than anyone else here at the top of the list and he’s another player who might slide if we separated out dead-ball turnovers, which made up almost half his total.

Stay tuned for more research on this EXTREMELY important topic.

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