Ja Morant and Jonas Valanciunas (a combo affectionately known to me Jorant Jalanciunas) each recorded a triple-double in this game. That is an exceedingly rare circumstance; I can’t find an authoritative source, but I did find a non-authoritative source (a Reddit thread) which alleged that there were ten such occurrences in NBA history, the most recent being Paul George and Russell Westbrook on the Thunder. LeBron and Lonzo also did it recently on the Lakers. Surprisingly, Harden and Westbrook haven’t done it yet. I guess they would need two balls to do that. They should ask me about having two balls. I know all about it.
This instance if teammate trippy-dubbies is unique in that the teammates in question aren’t THAT good. They’re both really good players, don’t get me wrong, but we’re not talking about a pair of superstars here. Neither of them has even made an All-Star team as of this writing (I have to put “as of this writing” because Morant will probably get an All-Star selection soon enough). And they’re not surrounded by a high-powered offensive team that would result in tons of free assists. It’s just two dudes on a fringe playoff team playing with a bunch of fringe playoff guys, and they somehow both got triple-doubles.
Now if they could only convince Dillon Brooks to be more of a “stat-stuffer” and less of a “shot-chucker”, they could theoretically have three players get triple-doubles in the same game. Sadly, the only triple-double Brooks will ever get is from the statistics of points, number of obvious passes ignored, and number of highlight makers pissed off (I am in discussions with Dawkins and he is just as pissed off at Brooks as I am – I hope I didn’t breach his trust by disclosing that).