NBAFalsehoods

joined 1 year ago
 

While the sample size is somewhat small, it appears Booker has started right where he left off in last year's playoffs. He is averaging 29.6 points, 8.6 assists, and 5.5 rebounds per game on 51/45/92 shooting splits. That's good for 65% TS. The Suns are also 7-1 when he plays.

With all the (justified) MVP hype KD has been getting as well as games missed early in the season, it's easy to overlook the fact that Booker is putting up legitimate superstar numbers. Reminder - he only just turned 27.

[–] NBAFalsehoods@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

I genuinely thought this was only a college thing. Didn't even realize you could get a tech for this in the NBA.

 

Think of it this way - the In-Season Tournament presents the first ever genuine incentive to run up the score as much as possible. This is due to the limited number of games in the group stage combined with the heavy importance on point differential to decide seeding/wildcards in the (common) event of ties in W/L record.

It may not happen this year, but it's entirely possible that some great scorer in the league will be scorching hot, and even if the result of that particular game is assured by a massive score disparity, the structure of the tournament will incentivize his coach to keep him in and run up the score as much as possible. Even a 50+ point win isn't absurd for point differential's purposes.

I'm reminded of Booker scoring 51 in 3 quarters last year, but he didn't play the fourthe because the game was a blowout. Somebody else gets hotter and I could see a score of 101+ as a possibility.

The single game player scoring record came to mind first for me, but this unique tournament structure could lead to other unique scoring circumstances too, I imagine.