Serge Ibaka made NBA history in this game by apparently becoming the first player to make 500 three-pointers in their career while also blocking 1,500 shots. That combo of skills has been so rare over the history of the NBA that no other player had done it even though those aren’t world-beating numbers when taken separately.
Of course, Matt Devlin had to ruin the “momentous” occasion by messing up the stat, saying that Ibaka had made 500 three-pointers and gotten 1,500 rebounds (as opposed to 1,500 blocks). Maybe a viewer who’s not thinking critically about things would think “yeah, fifteen hundred is a really big number, I bet a lot of players don’t get that many rebounds”, but a true NBA fan would have to realize that the stat, as quoted, is incredibly flawed. There have been a whopping 267 players who have gotten 500 threes and 1,500 rebounds. Kelly Olynyk is on the list. So is Al-Farouq Aminu. And Kent Bazemore. And Andres Nocioni. This list is full of players who nobody would consider to have made any substantial contributions to the record books at all.
The cooler list is players who got 500 three-pointers (meaning they played a lot of games) but DIDN’T get 1,500 rebounds in their career. That list is full of guards like Willie Green and Troy Daniels (who has fewer rebounds than threes in his career LMAO).
Anyway, the real stat is cooler, and it’s neat that Ibaka has proven himself to be such a classification-bending player. I’m trying to think of other players like him and it’s still a relatively short list, containing players like Brook Lopez and Kristaps Porzingis. If he wants to keep that record for himself, they should reword it to be “Players who have made 500 three-pointers, blocked 1,500 shots, and had at least two instances where they were photographed while wearing sweatpants and you could see…things. Big things.”