Patrick Beverley was worryingly close to a triple-double in this game, leaving himself just two rebounds and one assist short. It would have been the first triple-double of his career and it probably would have been one of the first videos I made for that night’s slate of games. Instead, he gets relegated to the very end of the day’s highlight-making excursion. What a difference just three total stats makes.
If there was only a stat that measured defense (outside of things like steals and blocks, which are just the end result of a defensive effort that didn’t necessarily have to even be good defense), then Beverley could get triple-doubles all the time. Okay, not all the time, because he rarely gets double-digit rebounds or assists. But he would be a walking double-double for sure.
This is about the time I would propose the creation of a new basketball league (with me as commish, but my official title would be “The Basketball Lord”) that would record a theoretical “defensive stat”, but I’m not going to propose that because I don’t care about defense, I never will care about defense, and I would never propose a new stat that would bring more legitimacy to defense-oriented players.