Russ, Joker, And The Dub Trip-Dubs

And more from the win over Brooklyn.

Triple doubles were legendary when I was a kid. It was this unbelievable metric that it felt like so few players could reach. Those days are gone. They’re not nightly, but in 2012 there were 17 triple-doubles.

This year there have been 67. There were 136 last season.

NBA Triple-Doubles by season since 2010 via Basketball-Reference

You can literally see the jump in 2017 when Russell Westbrook started plugging them in night after night and then the pursuant offensive explosion.

However, at some point, as they became more common, they also became underrated.

On Friday night, Russell Westbrook (25-11-10) and Nikola Jokic (35-12-15) became the first pair of teammates in NBA history to record multiple games with each having a triple-double. (Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler have two games, with each having a triple-double, but not in the same season.)

Westbrook, in particular, has faced allegations of stat padding since the 2017 season when his average helped him win the MVP.

Something I noted that season in my research for the award was that the Thunder had a great record when he had a triple-double.

In his career, Russell Westbrook has won 74% of his games when he has a triple double.

Nikola Jokic has won 79% of his games when he has a triple-double.¹

Some of that is implicit; if you’re scoring and assisting, your team is scoring more points. If you’re rebounding, they’re missing more shots. There’s a correlation with the accomplishment.

But the production matters, and if stats are truly “empty,” then there should be low to no correlation with winning.

Jokic has won 60% of all of his career games. At 79% when he trip-dubs, that’s a way higher mark.

(Let’s move on from the fact that Joker is almost averaging a triple-double this season and the team’s winning percentage is much lower than that. We’ll just skip on away from that.)

I’m not arguing a triple-double is a key to winning, but I will absolutely argue you can’t say that doing so is against impacting the game towards winning for either player.

Ultimately, I genuinely don’t think either player cares about them at this point. Russ I believe used to. I think Joker makes sure from time to time to check off the boxes but if he doesn’t, oh well.

To see them both on the same team is a trip, though. Jokic with his relentlessness, catching his own misses and slipping them back into the basket as the Nets’ smallball big helplessly reached up, Westbrook slicing in transition and finding his cutters, both of them igniting break after break.

Triple-doubles may never be a novelty again, they may never feel really special again.² But just like I can’t really believe I’ve watched one of the best players in NBA history from start to finish in Denver, I can’t really believe I get to watch these two greats do this and do it together this season.

6-PIECE:

(This is an abbreviated version of the Locked On Nuggets 10-piece we do after Nuggets games Monday through Friday. You can get that over here.)

1. Russ was amused at the stat, but you can tell he also was kind of rolling his eyes at it after being asked so much. He did snap his fingers and say “Damn!” when Darren McKee said Joker was at 79%. I can’t stress enough how good Russ has been with media this season. If he doesn’t have a good game, he’s gone by the time we hit locker room, but when he does podium he’s been gregarious, generous with his quotes, and insightful. It’s such a contrast from what it was like going to pressers for him with OKC early in his career. Everyone mellows in their mid-30’s.

2. Joker looked like hell postgame. He’s still really sick, his face and nose very red. He said he was “about to die” in the first half because of feeling tired. Again, this man had 35-12-15 on 14-of-21 shooting. I asked him what the process was for getting him ready and he talked about all the fluids and antibiotics. I’ve been told before that teams will flush them with an IV or liquid packet, then put them in the sauna to sweat them out, put them back to bed, then repeat the process every four hours. If only we could all get that when we’re sick. (Get your flu and COVID shots, by the way, if not for you, then for me who has been extremely close to hospitalization both times I’ve gotten COVID.)

3. Really great game from Peyton Watson who continues to shine with a few more minutes and a little more trust. He’s going to have really built his game into a good place just in time for AG to come back and him to lose his minutes. There is an ongoing debate among Denver media about whether they need to carve out more time for Christian or Watson over the next two years.

4. Have heard rumblings that Denver continues to be at least an exploratory partner in the Jimmy Butler/Bradley Beal talks as Phoenix keeps looking for someone to take Beal’s contract. That might not end up with Beal in Denver, but it also means Denver’s not moving away from trade talks even with the tea playing better.

5. Speaking of AG, he was upgraded to doubtful for this one, I wouldn’t be surprised if he returned in the two-game set vs. the Mavericks.

6. The Nets are predictably awful and many of the players that played yesterday even I had never heard of, but Jordi Fernandez (former Nuggets assistant) continues to do great work. With players like Tyrese Martin (19 points, 4 rebounds) and Tosan Evbuomwan (10 points, +8, his dad’s a gynecologist I found out on wikipedia) getting minutes, it’s a reminder of the theory I continue to hold that it’s better to keep two spots on your roster liquid and just cycle through G-League guys until you find a diamond. Denver could use that at center.

1. Regular season

2. Never is a long time; we’ll probably return to a rock fight time in the association at some point, there’s already data that there is a limit to threes where they stop being efficient.