NBA Play-In Points Matter!: If The NBA Won't Record Play-In Stats Then I Guess It's All Up To Me
The NBA Playoffs are off and running meaning the Play-In games are officially in the books. Except. Well… they are officially NOT in the books. In fact, there is no book. Nothing is logged by the NBA stats illuminati. Not points. Not assists, steals, blocks. NOTHING.
Not even one of Trae Young's six unfathomably stupid turnovers vs the Bulls.
Well, I'm here to fight this injustice. I'm here to fight the sports statistics establishment. Particularly for Colby White, who scored his career high 42 REDACTED points. Hopefully others in the stats community will join the fight. Where's Howie Schwab when you need him? Hopefully they haven't gotten to him yet.
Screw it. Let's show the public what the stats really are! Here are the top players in terms of career Play-In points scored.
I get the need to separate regular season points from playoffs. So it follows to not include Play-In stats as playoff stats as well. But why not add a third bucket?
Same for team stats. Because this is actually has the funniest implications. Call it the NBA Hell category. Stats for teams that aren't good enough to win but also not bad enough to draft a player that would help them win. How funny would it be to track which teams (probably my Bulls) dominate these stats because they are a team (Bulls) in pertutualy pergatory (Bulls)?
Well if the NBA won't do it, I will. Here's a list of team points scored in NBA Play-In games. This should make some sense as the worst possible position for an NBA team to be in is to appear in multiple Play-In games and do well in them thus putting yourself in a position to never have a real chance at improvement through the draft. For NBA purposes, purgatory = hell.
There's basically a two-team race for the team most in NBA hell with Miami leading the Bulls by a single point. I guess it's true that at the very depths of hell there's horned creatures and a lot of heat. Of course, the Heat were able to get to the Finals last year, but had no chance vs the Nuggets. But I think we can all agree that was an anomoly. Now they face the Celtics without Butler which pretty much makes them dead guys walking. You could even tell in the final Play-In vs the Bulls when the fans didn't bother showing up until mid-way through the second quarter vs their usual early in the second quarter.
Then there's the Bulls who are basically the Oakland Athletics of the NBA in the ownership department.
This is pretty much the best thing we have going for us in terms of bragging rights at the current moment:
Anyway - I'm all in on tracking Play-In Stats moving forward. Call it the dark web of NBA data. Already can't wait for next year to see if the Bulls can finally go from repeating a three-peat to three-peating a three-peat (two three consecutive championships plus one three consecutive 9-10 play-in… titles??….)