Elfrid Payton has taken the early lead in the 2018-19 triple-double race, notching one (1) triple-double in his Pelicans debut while the rest of the league’s players have a collective zero (0) triple-doubles.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, his triple-double is statistically the worst possible triple-double it is possible to achieve. There’s not really such a thing as a “bad” triple-double except for blatant cases of statpadding, but there are “worse” triple-doubles and this is definitely one of them.
Strangely, despite my prior animosity towards Payton and his statsheet-filling ways, I actually feel pretty good about this performance. I think it’s because he finally cut off that rage-inducing hair chunk that obscured his vision and made him look like a sideshow circus freak. Now he just looks like any normal NBA player, so much so that I can’t even figure out if he’s on the court or not. As awful as it was, at least his hair doodles made it easy to see where he was on the hardwood.