Sportscenters' fakakta stats

Some intern at Sportscenter has been given the green light on giving absurd NBA stats. Anthony Davis is only the third player to average thirty points, 11 rebounds and two assists in the month of February! James Harden is just the second player to get 35 points in under 25 minutes in a game! The first was Kevin McHale!

Get the fuck out of here with this stupid shit. The stats have no reference point, and they aren't even interesting. It is usually accompanied by some grainy shots of Bob McAdoo or MJ from back in the day.

I get it. You have a big supercomputer that can find these statistics. But they are mindless.

 

It's not ESPN, but I love this from Fox Sports last night:

 

haha - the same fucking thing!!!

 

I respected these obscure numbers back when someone like Tim Kurkjian or Jayson Stark had to go through thousands of player profiles in books to find them. (Stark writes a really fun story about these searches in this year's introduction to the Baseball Reference book, btw. He'd go through every baseball player's numbers for MONTHS to find out if it was something never done before.) Now it's a five-second search. It has lost all its charm.

For some reason, that matters to me. That it was a labor of love instead of something to fill up a Chyron.

 

I saw one the other night that said LeBron was in such elite company that he was the only member of the club. Can’t remember what plateau he hit, but he was already the only guy to hit those thresholds well before they became nice round numbers.

 

Thaddeus Young: Hall of Famer?

 

facacta and cockamamie are great words.

 

I do love these for futility, though.

When a guy is in a funk, I want to know if that funk is historically bad or if he's the worst at what he's doing that's ever done it.

Or ones that calculated how long it would've taken Rafael Belliard to break Hank Aaron's record. Those are quality obscure stats.

 

Stark's stats were interesting - right?

One of two players to score 35 points in 25 minutes - is that interesting to you?

 

I don't know. I was really young then, so I don't know if they were actually interesting or I just had no life.

I think the rule should be it can't just be an outlier stat, like the Thaddeus Young one. It better signify that what that guy is doing is historic and part of a larger narrative about the player.

LeBron reaching these milestones is informative. It's evidence for his case of being the greatest basketball player (He's not, but it's real evidence, right?) The Thaddeus Young stat is just a statistical quirk. Someone in that truck needs to know if this actually means something or it's a stupid computer trick.

 

The thing about that Fox chyron is that they had to create marks the four really great players surpassed with ease to allow them to get Young into the picture. 13.5 points a game? Really?