I was gonna rag on Ben Simmons for being one assist shy of a trippy-dubby, since that is an indication to me that he doesn’t even care about arbitrary statistical achievements/the base-10 number system, but it turns out that he wasn’t even close to the required ten assists until Dario Saric went nuts in the final two minutes of the game. So now I can rag on him for only having six assists in the entire game up until the very end of the fourth quarter. Either way, Ben loses.
While we’re discussing pointless statistical measures, Simmons was credited with four blocks in this game, but only one of them was a legit block where he truly deflected an unambiguous shot attempt. The other three were the kind of blocks where, if I were to include them in a highlight video, the viewer would wonder why the play had been included. It would take you a few seconds to realize, “Hey, I bet the scorekeepers thought he blocked a shot when really he just stripped the ball away from somebody who was dribbling near him,” and by that point the next clip would have started and you’d fall behind and get even more confused.
Question: if the scorekeepers just give out blocks like they’re nothing, couldn’t they have cooked up another assist for Simmons so he could have had his trippy-dubby? He might not care about arbitrary statistical achievements but I definitely do.