A Brief Survey of NBA Triple-Doubles
Welcome to a club that includes Shawn Bradley, Clyde Drexler, Draymond Green, and a wide spectrum of basketball players.
On April 1, Nikola Jokić set the NBA record for points scored as part of a triple-double when he finished with 61 points, ten assists, and ten rebounds in a double overtime loss against the Timberwolves.
That was the 161st triple-double in Jokić’s career (he’s already snagged 162 and 163 since then), but I am not here to talk about basketball’s greatest horse enthusiast. I’d like to consider the triple-double as an unusual statistic across sports.
Plenty of sports have terms for threading a specific numerical scenario. Soccer and hockey have the hat trick for players who score three goals in a game. Baseball has the cycle, achieved when a player manages a single, double, triple and home run in one contest. Receivers in the NFL can win the triple crown if they finish the year leading the league in touchdowns, catches, and receiving yards.
The common element across all these statistical terms, and every other one like them I can think of, is specificity. You have only one path to a hat trick.
But there are many ways to achieve a triple-double. The most common route seems to be points/rebounds/assists; per Basketball Reference, there have been 92 triple-doubles that didn’t get to the tens column in assists, and five that failed to do so in the rebound category. (You will need one or the other, as no NBA player has ever managed a points/steals/blocks triple-double.)
Points/rebounds/blocks is hard, though not impossible. 90 triple-doubles went down this path, and many of the adventurers were big men. Hakeem Olajuwon has ten of this triple-double variety, David Robinson has eight, and both also belong to the very rare quadruple-double club. Heck, Shawn Bradley finished with six triple-doubles thanks to the power of the rebounds and blocks combo!
Points/assists/steals ends up being even more rare. Ten triple-doubles in NBA history fit that pattern, and two belong to Clyde Drexler. Compare that to the 143 points/assists/rebounds triple-doubles that the NBA has seen in just this season.
Then there’s the rarest version of the triple-double: one where the player fails to score at least ten points. That feels like the truly impossible path to this accomplishment. Points are already the easiest statistic in this bunch because shots you make from the floor get you points in multiples, not singles. If you want your box score to read “11 rebounds,” you need to rebound the ball 11 times. If you want it to read “12 points,” you might only need five or six shots to get there.
And yet, one NBA player has walked this treacherous road. On February 10, 2017, Draymond Green finished a Golden State win with the following statistical profile:
11 rebounds
10 assists
10 steals
5 blocks
4 points (on six shots from the field)
Draymond didn’t score any points in the second half of this game at all, and he locked up this triple-double with just under three minutes left in the game when he recorded his tenth steal.
How weird is it that we use the same term for this Draymond outing as we do for Jokić dropping 61? The expansiveness of the triple-double allows for their coexistence, along with so many other games.
You can get a triple-double with a terrible true shooting percentage; Jason Kidd, Michael Finley, and Rajon Rondo have all done it while failing to crack .300. Russell Westbrook has five triple-doubles that bear this distinction. You can get a triple-double while turning the ball over a ton; LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Charles Barkley all have triple-doubles with at least ten turnovers. Westbrook shows up here, too – he’s got six triple-doubles of this sort.
You can even foul out and hit a triple-double. That’s happened 68 times, and the most impressive might be a 2019 game where Giannis only played 28 minutes but managed 30 points, 13 rebounds, and 11 assists.
It’s a big club, one that includes Zach Randolph and Mark Price, and it’s growing all the time as triple-doubles become more and more common.
In theory, even the most grizzled traditionalist should be happy about this trend, as the triple-double either requires defensive effort (in the form of steals and blocks), hustle (rebounds), or working with teammates (assists). That said, if they choose to believe this is just the result of a league that has abandoned defense in favor of chucking up as many shots as each team can, well, feelings are a personal thing.
I don’t know that I need to come down pro or con. I see myself as a mere observer here, checking in on the triple-double population and noting its outliers.
This may be why I’ve never been invited on First Take.
As an aside, a quick apology for being a little quieter around here than usual! I’ve been working on a new project with Steven Godfrey, my colleague on Who Killed College Football. If you’d like to sign up to be one of the first to hear about it, we’ve got an email signup right over here.