In the NBA these days, it seems like there is a stat for everything. We’ve got PER, offensive efficiency ratings, defensive efficiency rating, and so on and so on.
It seems like every team in the league now employs their own stat guru. And while I’m not one to question the use of all these new statistics to evaluate NBA players (I actually kinda like them), I’m old school.
To me, all the new stats in the world can’t tell the story of an NBA game as well as the good, old fashioned box score.
Therefore, I’m starting a new feature today called “Fun With Box Scores”.
Every Monday, I’ll be posting some of the more interesting things that jumped out at me from the previous week’s box scores.
This week, they are, in no particular order:
The Cavs were +38 when LeBron was on the floor this week. They were -27 when he wasn’t.
Meanwhile, the Cavs were -3 when Shaq was on the floor and +19 when he wasn’t.
Rasheed Wallace took 8 shots on Wednesday…all three pointers. For the week, ‘Sheed attempted 36 shots. 25 of them were three pointers.
Danilo Gallinari was 8-16 from deep on Saturday. He was 1-6 on two-point shots. For the week he was 18-36 on three-point shots and 4-11 on two-point attempts.
Carmelo Anthony had 113 points in 116 minutes this week.
Greg Oden had 26 points in 99 minutes. He also had 19 fouls.
Speaking of fouls, Hasheem Thabeet had 8 in 24 minutes of play this week. In his defense, he did have four blocks, giving him a nice one block for every two fouls ratio.
Chris Kaman, with 38, made more field goals than any other player in the league this week.
Gerald Wallace has played 127 minutes this season and is yet to record an assist.
Milwaukee, Minnesota, and Houston were the only three teams in the league to not have a player score at least 25 points in a game this week.
