Some fun with small sample-sizes after 10 games
About 10 games into the NBA season for most teams, we're far along enough now that most of the cream has begun to rise to the top. The Pacers, Heat and Bulls have separated themselves from the rest of the East in the standings, Kevin Durant and LeBron James are fighting it out at the top of race for the scoring title, and Chris Paul and Ricky Rubio are 1-2 in both assists and steals per game in some order. Yes, most things in the league are as they should be.
However, a handful of notable anomalies malinger. Ten games is a solid sample size, but it's not quite big enough to weed out all of the WTF?s, particularly in some of the average-based categories where rates and percentages can take a while to properly course-correct. So before they disappear for all time without us giving them proper recognition for their brief moment in the sun, here are the league's remaining small sample-size stat leaders, the ten answers to have you racking your brain during Sporcle quizzes and thinking "Naw, it really can't bethat dude/team, can it?" And watch out for that first stat, it's a doozy...
1. Andre Iguodala is leading the league in true shooting %. Yes, THAT Andre Iguodala. (We think.) Iguodala, who is a career 55% True Shooter, who has not posted a TS% above 53.7 in a half-decade, who is mostly thought to be an average-for-a-wing shooter at best, not only has the best true shooting percentage on his team of gunning savants, he's leading the entire friggin' league with his 71.5 TS%. What's even more impressive is that he's doing it while bricking nearly half his free throws, shooting just 55.2% from the line.
How the hell is this possible? Well, it helps that 'Dre's currently shooting over 51% from three (18 points over his career average) and over 69% from two (19 points over his career average) and that he shoots more from both two (3.9/game) and three (4.9/game) than he does from one (2.9/game). It still seems like his 71.5 is destined to fall by ten points with any one poor upcoming shooting night, but man, lesson learned--if you're a half-decent-shooting wing that can do some other stuff, get your ass to Golden State toute suite and feast off the ball movement and open looks. Not even Mike D'Antoni could ever have dreamed of this level of statistic inflation.
2. Jodie Meeks is leading the Lakers in points per game. Speaking of D'Antoni, he's been known to salvage the careers of many a spurned shooter--hell, without him, Shawne Williams wouldn't even have had his first go-round as a legitimate NBA player, let alone the second one he's having now. Still, it's impressive that he's resurrected the career of mediocre ex-Sixer shooting guard Jodie Meeks to such an extent that not only has he proven a valuable rotation player, he's actually leading the NBA's most historic franchise in scoring with his 13.7 points per game--.7 higher than second-place finishers Nick Young and Pau Gasol.
Now, obviously, there's a whole host of qualifiers to this one--the Lakers are playing a loose rotation that flattens out everyone's scoring totals, there are shooting numbers for Jodie (52% FG, 49% 3-PT) that are bound to regress a little, and there's another shooting guard coming back from injury soon who should reclaim the team's scoring title in about 14 minutes of game action. But man, if this somehow held, Sedale Threatt would be PISSED at having to cede his title as the all-time assiest Laker to ever lead the team in scoring for a season.
3. Steve Blake is fourth in the league in total assists. If you told someone in October that a couple weeks into November, a Lakers point guard named Steve would be top five in the league in assists, they'd probably figure there was some kind of trick involved because why else would you be foretelling something so randomly specific. But if they were a particularly unsuspicious sort, they might assume you were talking about Hall-of-Fame point guard Steve Nash, five-time assist title winner, and find the statement not particularly odd.
Nope. Nash has been gimpy and slow and generally compromised as hell this season, while his embattled and similarly named backup--Steve Blake, who spent large stretches of last season and this pre-season looking so lost on the court you wondered if not even a team as shallow as the Lakers could continue to find minutes for him--has unexpectedly thrived, his 87 assists to start the season falling short of just Chris Paul, Ricky Rubio and Jeff Teague for most in the league.
The necessary caveats: The Lakers have played 12 games already, more than any other team in the league (with Blake logging a team-high 32 minutes per game), and going by assists per game, Blake's 7.2 per ranks only tenth. Still, it's pretty incredible that Blake hasn't notched more than 175 assists in a total season since '09-'10, and in just 12 games this year, he's already about halfway to tying that mark. Blake and Meeks--the best Laker backcourt since Magic and Byron??
4. Wesley Matthews has the league's highest offensive rating. This stat is always kind of screwy--the same player has won it each of the last three years, and I bet that even if I told you what team he's playing for, it wouldn't be your first guess. (Hint: It's the Knicks.) Likewise, if I said that the league leader thusfar this season was on Portland, you might give me Damian Lillard, LaMarcus Aldridge, even Nic Batum as your first guesses.
But no, it is indeed sharpshooter Wesley Matthews, whose ORtg of 133--20 points over his career average--beats out Klay Thompson, J.J. Redick and (again) Andre Iguodala for tops in the league. Wesley's number is largely based on his sky-high shooting percentage (56% from two, 51% from three), his ability to take care of the basketball (just 11 TOs in ten games) and the altogether humming state of his team's offense, which currently has the third-highest team rating in the league, behind only the scoring juggernauts of Miami and the Clips.
By the way, the only player in the league to be top ten in both offensive and defensive rating? I'll give you the team again as the Spurs, see how many guesses it takes you.
5. Travis Outlaw has yet to miss a free throw. Not exactly known as a Jose Calderon / Ray Allen type, oft-disgraced Kings small forward Travis Outlaw is at the very top of the FT% rankings, yet to miss a single one of his first 16 attempts. Of course, that isn't that many attempts in the first place, not even two a game--and incredibly enough, Outlaw once went 16 for 16 from the line in a single game, a 36-point night off the bench for the Blazers against the Warriors in the final game of the '06-'07 season--but it's worth shouting out Outlaw's weirdly hot start to the season, which also includes a 55% make rate from three and a PER of 21.8 (!!!). Can the Nets have him back now? They're still footing some of his bill, I believe.
Andrew Bynum and Mike Harris are both still in the top ten of FT% shooting, as well. Yes, "What???" and "Who???" would be the appropriate reactions to that statement, respectively.
6. Shane Battier has yet to commit a single turnover. Not an incredible unlikeliness here, as Battier has ranked in the top ten of lowest turnover rates each of the last two seasons, and generally earns his minutes on the basis of contributing on defense and not causing any problems on offense. Still, 0% is a pretty low TOV%, especially considering that Battier is still getting minutes--22.5 a game, and never fewer than 14--and has played ten games already. It'll be a fun streak to monitor until he breaks it, like last season's weird stretch where LeBron went the entire season of winter without committing a personal foul.
The last player to go ten games of playing 14 min or more without committing a turnover, by the way? Fellow "Stand behind the arc and don't touch anything, OK?" shooter Steve Novak, who had two such stretches last season with New York.
7. The Warriors, Timberwolves and Suns are currently #s 4, 5 and 6 in the league in defensive rating. The top three in this category are imminently predictable--the Spurs, Pacers and Bulls, who a good number of NBA fans probably would have guessed in some order if given the challenge. The next three, though, look like they'd be way more comfortable towards the top of the ratings on the other side of the ball. I mean, the Timberwolves? How can a team with a Love/Pekovic frontcourt possibly be a top five defense? And the Suns? Aren't they playing Channing Frye, like, a lot? How does that work? (There's some minor insight on that one here if you're interested, though if you'd prefer just throwing your hands to heaven and screaming "HOWWWW???" that's understandable.)
Further compounding the craziness, your defending champion Heat rate a subpar 18th in the category--nine lower than the friggin' Bobcats--while the Detroit Pistons, whose offensive spacing many worried about with all their shot-blocking big men but whose defense was considered to be potentially dominant, are in dead last with their 110.17 rating. Up is down, dogs are cats, whatever.
8. P.J. Tucker is third in the league in three-point shooting. The aforementioned sixth-best Suns defense is likely at least partly due to the contributions of one P.J. Tucker, professional basketball nomad who found a home on the wings in Phoenix last season as a defensive stopper and hustle guy. There was much to like about Tucker in his first season in Phoenix, though his shortcomings as a floor-spacing wing--just 22 of 70 from three last year--meant that he probably wouldn't start on most good teams.
However, this year, Tucker's range issues have magically disappeared. Rob Mahoney of Sports Illustrated had a fine article recently about the players trying the hardest this season to expand their game to the three-point line, with varying degrees of success, and he points out how Tucker's increased pursuit of the corner three, particularly in transition, has led to his 12-22 shooting from deep this season. No way of telling if he'll be able to keep up the 54.5% clip, but he's already over halfway to his three-point total from last year, so that's a start.
9. Jordan Hill, DeJuan Blair and Markieff Morris are all in the top ten in player efficiency. 'Tis the season to be an awkwardly-sized, positionally-vauge frontcourt player, would seem. Hill, Blair and 'Kieff have all flashed talent but struggled to find consistent roles in the NBA in their early years, due to being a little square-peggish for the liking of most teams' rotations, but this season, they're all posting PERs of 24 or better, demanding regular playing time through sheer efficiency.
Hill in particular has been a revelation--Mike D'Antoni actually referred to him as possibly the Lakers' best player, and shockingly, this season he just might be right. (No offense to the Meeks/Blake backcourt--there's plenty of room in the Western Conference All-Star Team starting lineup for all three.) And if Markieff's regression to the mean continues, he might go down as the all-time funniest Player of the Week award winner in NBA history--and one week in, we all thought that would end up being Michael Carter-Williams. Whatta season.
10. The Philadelphia 76ers are still your Atlantic Divison leaders. Had to get them in here somewhere. The Sixers finally had their long-overdue hookup with gravity over the weekend, crash-landing back to earth in the form of big losses to the Hawks and Pelicans, dropping them to 5-6 for the season. In most divisions, that'd be bad enough to reintroduce them to the tank-rank discussion, but in the Atlantic, they're still a whole game up, with the Raptors and Celtics just behind at 4-7, and the miserable Knicks and Nets waving hello from the basement at 3-6. Clearly, nobody's skating to the bottom this season--if the Sixers want to escape landing the #4 seed in the playoffs, they're going to have to earn their way back down.
Oh, and I checked--if the 76ers somehow took their division with a sub-.500 record, they wouldn't be the first team in NBA history to do so. The Milwaukee Bucks won a particularly crappy Midwest division in '75-'76 with a 38-44 record, and four seasons earlier, the Baltimore Bullets took the Central with the same record. Of course, there were only four divisions then and only four teams per division, so it should ostensibly be harder to do today, but if I've learned nothing else this NBA seasons, it's not to put anything past this Sixers team.