Post by eric on Feb 27, 2018 18:47:04 GMT
Prompted by David Griffin mentioning on the Lowe Post that when Shawn Marion retired there was nobody in NBA history who matched his career per game averages. This turns out to be true! His averages of 15 points, 8 rebounds, 1 block, and 2 three point attempts per game had never been done.
But there are two current NBA players who are not only doing it but are higher than him in each of those categories.
So I wondered - how many NBA players have unique career stat lines? And let's use just the five traditional box score categories since three point attempts per game is pretty cheesy. And since the great basketball-reference uses 400 games as the per game minimum, we will as well, and that gives us 1234 players from Robert Parish to SimLegend Great Good Player Steven Hunter.
This gives us 44 players, but a lot of them are players who for instance lead all players in a particular category (e.g. Michael Jordan in points per game, Magic Johnson in assists per game) or who won MVP (18 of the 32 MVP winners have unique career averages) which isn't that much fun, so if we take out all the MVPs and anyone who is top five in a given category, we're left with the following nineteen players:
Let's zoom in and enhance the five to never make any All-NBA Team.
Andrei Kirilenko
WHY YOU WANT RAIL FOR KALASHNIKOV? IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH AS PROCURED FROM IZHEVSK MECHANICAL WORKS? YOU THINK NEEDS IMPROVEMENT? THEN MAYBE YOU FIND JOB WITH ARMY OF RUSSIA! YOU HAVE DRINKS WITH MIKHAIL KALASHNIKOV, TRADE STORY OF MANY WEAPONS DESIGNED AND DETAILS OF SCHOOL FOR ENGINEERING! OR MAYBE YOU NOT DO THIS. PROBABLY IS BECAUSE YOU NEVER DESIGN WEAPON IN WHOLE LIFE.
Team Russia won the EuroBasket 2007, defeating the host nation Spain. In the first quarter, the Russians were 10 points down, losing offensive and defensive rebounds and failing to counter Pau Gasol. Also their three-point throws were poor. However, in the last quarter the Russians came back. In the last one and a half minutes Spain led by five points, but then Blatt took a timeout and Russia decreased the gap. In the last three seconds J. R. Holden threw a difficult shot and Russia led by one point. After head coach of Spain took a timeout one second later, Gasol threw a two-point shot but failed to make a point; Russia won 60-59. Andrey Kirilenko was named MVP of the tournament.
Kirilenko is here on the strength of his bleals: only David Son of Robin and Hakeem Olajuwon can match 1.8 blocks and 1.4 steals per game, and AK-47 has very slightly more assists than them, so he's in. It's bizarre in retrospect that a 6'9" super freak athlete would only average 5.5 rebounds per game. It's fashionable to look back at lots of guys and say they would be perfect in the modern NBA but I'm not sure he would. His shooting and defense looks like Draymond's, but he was never that level of passer. Who knows. Also led Russia to their first post-Soviet Olympic medal in 2012.
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Bob Lanier
Was dragged up and down the court by Kareem for 48 minutes. Has the second most All-Stars without ever making All-NBA with eight, trailing only Lenny Wilkens' nine. Incidentally both also won an All-Star MVP and are in the Hall of Fame, and both have a top three MVP finish (Lanier 3rd in 1974, Wilkens 2nd in 1968). 20-10-3-1-1 doesn't seem that remarkable but Boogie is the only other player to post those for a career, and Lanier has him beat in blocks so here he is.
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Johnny Moore
b-r gives M00re a .001 shot at making the Hall, so don't feel bad if you've never heard of him. He was a pretty decent pass first point guard for the Gervin-Gilmore Spurs, even putting up a 26 point 20 assist playoff games in 1983, before contracting a case of coccidioidomycosis so severe he needed a tube put in his skull so antibiotics could be applied directly to his brain. This is a real thing. And he came back, although he was obviously not the same player and so brought his per game averages down significantly, and even still his are unmatched. 7.4 assists and 2.0 steals seems quite modest but it's only Stockton, Paul, Rubio, and him who have them, and he beats all those guys in blocks per game with .22 over Stock's .21.
And all of that might not even be the most remarkable thing about his career: he played 519 games with the Spurs and 1 (one) with the Nets. We all know the guys who played every game with a single franchise, I have no idea but I'd guess playing all but exactly one is much less common than even that rarefied company.
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Josh Smith
Yes! Josh Smith! It's not surprising that he'd have a kooky box score, I am a little surprised he never made an All-NBA team and even more surprised he (like Moore) never even made an All-Star team, and even more surprised that a player named Smith only made All-NBA twice in NBA history, and they did it in the same year (Phil and Randy in 1976). Otherwise he's basically a black Andrei Kirilenko: 1.2 + 1.9 bleals matched by Robinson/Hakeem as well as Ben Wallace and Anthony Davis, slightly more assists per game than all those guys.
He's also the only player in this group who's still technically active: not only is he being paid by the Pistons until 2020, he played three games with the Pelicans after playing for Sichuan Blue Whales, Atletico Žalgiris, and Maccabi Haifa in the 2017 season, and only one of those teams is made-up.
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Sam Lacey
Almost as nondescript as Johnny Moore, "Slamming" Sam Lacey at least won a 1975 All-Star alongside Tiny Archibald on the post-Oscar Royals. You know the drill by now, 1.3 + 1.5 bleals gets the great Doctor "Julius" Erving and Andre Drummond into the mix but in addition to having a very respectable 3.7 assists per game as a center he rebounded enough to be ahead of the wings.
.
And that's it! There's a lot more guys if you start counting three point attempts especially since almost everyone has taken at least a three every ten games these days, so for example Tim Duncan's 0.1 3PA per game would put him in even though he trails Kareem in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks per game. There are also a couple cases where guys who played very briefly into the steals/blocks era get separation, ranging from greats like Jerry West to huhs like Jerry Sloan, but again a season or two having a lot of steals didn't strike me as interesting. Here's the full list for the curious:
.
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And one last point. We talk a lot about raw numbers, but those can be padded as a player keeps getting them checks. I thought it would be interesting to instead look at the players who are in the top 250 in every per-game stat:
Larry Bird would have been a good guess for the worst highest position of the bunch, but he would have been wrong. Chris Webber! How about that.
There are two things working against players staying on this list. First, the longer you play the worse you get, so per-game averages tend to go down. Second, the longer the NBA is around, the more chances there are for better players to come along after and unseat you. When the aforementioned Bird retired there was no Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, LeBron James, or Kevin Durant to be ahead of him. I don't know for sure if anyone ahead of him at the time slipped below him after, but nobody stands out. This isn't that big a deal when you're looking at 24 points per game, but we can imagine a loooot of future guys coming into the league that manage 0.9 blocks per game, or 3.8 assists per game, so a lot of guys on this list are probably on borrowed time.
But there are two current NBA players who are not only doing it but are higher than him in each of those categories.
Karl-Anthony Towns
Joel Embiid
Joel Embiid
So I wondered - how many NBA players have unique career stat lines? And let's use just the five traditional box score categories since three point attempts per game is pretty cheesy. And since the great basketball-reference uses 400 games as the per game minimum, we will as well, and that gives us 1234 players from Robert Parish to Sim
This gives us 44 players, but a lot of them are players who for instance lead all players in a particular category (e.g. Michael Jordan in points per game, Magic Johnson in assists per game) or who won MVP (18 of the 32 MVP winners have unique career averages) which isn't that much fun, so if we take out all the MVPs and anyone who is top five in a given category, we're left with the following nineteen players:
reb ast stl blk pts name
13.2 1.1 1.3 1.5 13.5 Andre Drummond
5.5 2.7 1.4 1.8 11.8 Andrei Kirilenko
10.1 4 1.2 0.5 20.8 Billy Cunningham
10.1 3.1 1.1 1.5 20.1 Bob Lanier
9.8 4.2 1.4 1.4 20.7 Chris Webber
6.1 5.6 2 0.7 20.4 Clyde Drexler
11 3.2 1.4 1.2 21.5 DeMarcus Cousins
6.9 4.5 1.3 1.1 9.3 Draymond Green
12.7 1.5 1 2 17.4 Dwight Howard
4.8 5.5 1.6 0.9 22.6 Dwyane Wade
12.5 1.8 1 2 21 Elvin Hayes
6 6.2 2.2 0.3 13.9 Fat Lever
4.4 9.2 1.7 0.7 18.9 John Wall
3 7.4 2 0.2 9.4 Johnny Moore
7.4 3.1 1.2 1.9 14.5 Josh Smith
6.5 5.1 2 0.5 23.2 Rick Barry
9.7 3.7 1.3 1.5 10.3 Sam Lacey
6.4 5.2 2 0.8 16.1 Scottie Pippen
5.6 4.4 1.2 0.9 19.6 Tracy McGradyLet's zoom in and enhance the five to never make any All-NBA Team.
Andrei Kirilenko
WHY YOU WANT RAIL FOR KALASHNIKOV? IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH AS PROCURED FROM IZHEVSK MECHANICAL WORKS? YOU THINK NEEDS IMPROVEMENT? THEN MAYBE YOU FIND JOB WITH ARMY OF RUSSIA! YOU HAVE DRINKS WITH MIKHAIL KALASHNIKOV, TRADE STORY OF MANY WEAPONS DESIGNED AND DETAILS OF SCHOOL FOR ENGINEERING! OR MAYBE YOU NOT DO THIS. PROBABLY IS BECAUSE YOU NEVER DESIGN WEAPON IN WHOLE LIFE.
Team Russia won the EuroBasket 2007, defeating the host nation Spain. In the first quarter, the Russians were 10 points down, losing offensive and defensive rebounds and failing to counter Pau Gasol. Also their three-point throws were poor. However, in the last quarter the Russians came back. In the last one and a half minutes Spain led by five points, but then Blatt took a timeout and Russia decreased the gap. In the last three seconds J. R. Holden threw a difficult shot and Russia led by one point. After head coach of Spain took a timeout one second later, Gasol threw a two-point shot but failed to make a point; Russia won 60-59. Andrey Kirilenko was named MVP of the tournament.
Kirilenko is here on the strength of his bleals: only David Son of Robin and Hakeem Olajuwon can match 1.8 blocks and 1.4 steals per game, and AK-47 has very slightly more assists than them, so he's in. It's bizarre in retrospect that a 6'9" super freak athlete would only average 5.5 rebounds per game. It's fashionable to look back at lots of guys and say they would be perfect in the modern NBA but I'm not sure he would. His shooting and defense looks like Draymond's, but he was never that level of passer. Who knows. Also led Russia to their first post-Soviet Olympic medal in 2012.
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Bob Lanier
Was dragged up and down the court by Kareem for 48 minutes. Has the second most All-Stars without ever making All-NBA with eight, trailing only Lenny Wilkens' nine. Incidentally both also won an All-Star MVP and are in the Hall of Fame, and both have a top three MVP finish (Lanier 3rd in 1974, Wilkens 2nd in 1968). 20-10-3-1-1 doesn't seem that remarkable but Boogie is the only other player to post those for a career, and Lanier has him beat in blocks so here he is.
.
Johnny Moore
b-r gives M00re a .001 shot at making the Hall, so don't feel bad if you've never heard of him. He was a pretty decent pass first point guard for the Gervin-Gilmore Spurs, even putting up a 26 point 20 assist playoff games in 1983, before contracting a case of coccidioidomycosis so severe he needed a tube put in his skull so antibiotics could be applied directly to his brain. This is a real thing. And he came back, although he was obviously not the same player and so brought his per game averages down significantly, and even still his are unmatched. 7.4 assists and 2.0 steals seems quite modest but it's only Stockton, Paul, Rubio, and him who have them, and he beats all those guys in blocks per game with .22 over Stock's .21.
And all of that might not even be the most remarkable thing about his career: he played 519 games with the Spurs and 1 (one) with the Nets. We all know the guys who played every game with a single franchise, I have no idea but I'd guess playing all but exactly one is much less common than even that rarefied company.
.
Josh Smith
Yes! Josh Smith! It's not surprising that he'd have a kooky box score, I am a little surprised he never made an All-NBA team and even more surprised he (like Moore) never even made an All-Star team, and even more surprised that a player named Smith only made All-NBA twice in NBA history, and they did it in the same year (Phil and Randy in 1976). Otherwise he's basically a black Andrei Kirilenko: 1.2 + 1.9 bleals matched by Robinson/Hakeem as well as Ben Wallace and Anthony Davis, slightly more assists per game than all those guys.
He's also the only player in this group who's still technically active: not only is he being paid by the Pistons until 2020, he played three games with the Pelicans after playing for Sichuan Blue Whales, Atletico Žalgiris, and Maccabi Haifa in the 2017 season, and only one of those teams is made-up.
.
Sam Lacey
Almost as nondescript as Johnny Moore, "Slamming" Sam Lacey at least won a 1975 All-Star alongside Tiny Archibald on the post-Oscar Royals. You know the drill by now, 1.3 + 1.5 bleals gets the great Doctor "Julius" Erving and Andre Drummond into the mix but in addition to having a very respectable 3.7 assists per game as a center he rebounded enough to be ahead of the wings.
.
And that's it! There's a lot more guys if you start counting three point attempts especially since almost everyone has taken at least a three every ten games these days, so for example Tim Duncan's 0.1 3PA per game would put him in even though he trails Kareem in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks per game. There are also a couple cases where guys who played very briefly into the steals/blocks era get separation, ranging from greats like Jerry West to huhs like Jerry Sloan, but again a season or two having a lot of steals didn't strike me as interesting. Here's the full list for the curious:
TRB AST STL BLK PTS Name
5.2 5 2.7 0.4 14 Alvin Robertson
13.2 1.1 1.3 1.5 13.5 Andre Drummond
5.5 2.7 1.4 1.8 11.8 Andrei Kirilenko
10.1 4 1.2 0.5 20.8 Billy Cunningham
10.1 3.1 1.1 1.5 20.1 Bob Lanier
9.4 2.3 1 1.5 22.1 Bob McAdoo
11.7 3.9 1.5 0.8 22.1 Charles Barkley
4.5 9.8 2.3 0.1 18.7 Chris Paul
9.8 4.2 1.4 1.4 20.7 Chris Webber
6.1 5.6 2 0.7 20.4 Clyde Drexler
13.6 3.8 1.1 0.9 17.6 Dave Cowens
11 3.2 1.4 1.2 21.5 DeMarcus Cousins
6.9 4.5 1.3 1.1 9.3 Draymond Green
12.7 1.5 1 2 17.4 Dwight Howard
4.8 5.5 1.6 0.9 22.6 Dwyane Wade
12.5 1.8 1 2 21 Elvin Hayes
6 6.2 2.2 0.3 13.9 Fat Lever
11.1 2.5 1.7 3.1 21.8 Hakeem Olajuwon
15.6 3.3 0.4 0.3 17 Jerry Lucas
2.7 10.5 2.2 0.2 13.1 John Stockton
4.4 9.2 1.7 0.7 18.9 John Wall
3 7.4 2 0.2 9.4 Johnny Moore
7.4 3.1 1.2 1.9 14.5 Josh Smith
6.7 3.9 1.8 1.5 22 Julius Erving
11.2 3.6 0.9 2.6 24.6 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
10.1 3.6 1.4 0.8 25 Karl Malone
7.1 3.9 1.2 1.1 27.1 Kevin Durant
10 3.7 1.3 1.4 17.8 Kevin Garnett
10 6.3 1.7 0.8 24.3 Larry Bird
7.3 7.1 1.6 0.8 27.1 LeBron James
7.2 11.2 1.9 0.4 19.5 Magic Johnson
7.9 1 0.4 3.5 6 Mark Eaton
6.2 5.3 2.3 0.8 30.1 Michael Jordan
5.5 7 2.6 0.4 14.8 Micheal Ray Richardson
15 2.7 0.5 2.1 15 Nate Thurmond
7.5 9.5 1.1 0.1 25.7 Oscar Robertson
6.5 5.1 2 0.5 23.2 Rick Barry
6.5 8.1 1.7 0.3 22.9 Russell Westbrook
9.7 3.7 1.3 1.5 10.3 Sam Lacey
6.4 5.2 2 0.8 16.1 Scottie Pippen
4.4 6.8 1.8 0.2 23.1 Stephen Curry
5.6 4.4 1.2 0.9 19.6 Tracy McGrady
14 3.9 1.1 0.6 10.8 Wes Unseld
22.9 4.4 0 0 30.1 Wilt Chamberlain.
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And one last point. We talk a lot about raw numbers, but those can be padded as a player keeps getting them checks. I thought it would be interesting to instead look at the players who are in the top 250 in every per-game stat:
TRB AST STL BLK PTS TRB AST STL BLK PTS min Name
9.8 4.2 1.4 1.4 20.7 56 177 97 69 48 177 Chris Webber
10 6.3 1.7 0.8 24.3 46 43 42 196 16 196 Larry Bird
11.7 3.9 1.5 0.8 22.1 20 205 73 203 29 205 Charles Barkley
7.1 3.9 1.2 1.1 27.1 203 206 212 124 4 212 Kevin Durant
7.3 7.1 1.6 0.8 27.1 187 26 54 216 5 216 LeBron James
6.7 3.9 1.8 1.5 22.0 240 215 31 53 33 240 Julius Erving
10 3.7 1.3 1.4 17.8 45 241 153 80 124 241 Kevin GarnettLarry Bird would have been a good guess for the worst highest position of the bunch, but he would have been wrong. Chris Webber! How about that.
There are two things working against players staying on this list. First, the longer you play the worse you get, so per-game averages tend to go down. Second, the longer the NBA is around, the more chances there are for better players to come along after and unseat you. When the aforementioned Bird retired there was no Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, LeBron James, or Kevin Durant to be ahead of him. I don't know for sure if anyone ahead of him at the time slipped below him after, but nobody stands out. This isn't that big a deal when you're looking at 24 points per game, but we can imagine a loooot of future guys coming into the league that manage 0.9 blocks per game, or 3.8 assists per game, so a lot of guys on this list are probably on borrowed time.
