When you think of your personal list of players who are least likely to get a triple-double, Ersan Ilyasova should feature prominently on that list. And if you don’t have such a list ready to go in your mind, you should get to work developing one so you can pull it out for chicks and impress them (or, if you’re a chick, you can pull it out for guys to impress them [but YouTube analytics tell me that very few chicks watch these videos]).
Ilyasova just has no chance to ever get ten assists, ten blocks, or ten steals in a single game. He can be the king of double-doubles with rebounds (as we’re seeing right now with Giannis out), but those other stats? No way. This five-assist performance leaves him just one assist short of his career high of six, which he’s done four times. His career highs in steals and blocks? Four and three.
Just for fun, I went and looked at the Bucks’ game against the Charlotte Bobcats on November 27, 2010. That’s almost a decade ago now! The Bucks won 104-101 on the back of Ilyasova’s 17/9/6/3/0 statline. In that game, Ilyasova assisted, Brandon Jennings, Larry Sanders, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, John Salmons, John Salmons again, and Larry Sanders again. That last assist came right at the beginning of the second half, so maybe I was too quick to dismiss Ilyasova as being incapable of a triple-double. If he had kept up that level of passing through the second half, he would have done it.
I think this is all Corey Maggette’s fault. Corey Maggette and Drew Gooden.