Welcome to the Boxscores of the week! Every week I run down my picks of the five top boxscores of the week. For good measure, I also look at the bottom three. While production -- we use the Points Over Par metric -- does play a role in who I select, I also allow some subjectivity into my selection. With that in mind, here are our lists!
The Top Five Boxscores of the Week
| Player | Date | Minutes | PTS(TS%) | TRB | AST | TOV | STL | BLK | PF | PoP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klay Thompson | 2/6 | 29 | 26(100%) | 1 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 15.1 |
| Andre Drummond | 2/8 | 33 | 29(82.2%) | 20 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 15.7 |
| Paul George | 2/9 | 41 | 45(75.2%) | 11 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 13.7 |
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 2/6 | 32 | 43(83.2%) | 6 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 10.6 |
| Marvin Bagley III | 2/4 | 31 | 24(64%) | 12 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 9.7 |
1. Klay Thompson gets top spot with the second best game of the week. That said, as he did it against the Spurs, I boosted him for the strength of competition. He had perfect True Shooting and in uncharacteristic Klay fashion he put up six assists and three steals while also getting a stat in every box score category. Good job Klay!
2. Andre Drummond's 20-20 was the best game of the week (against the Knicks, who might lose 70 games this season). He also tacked on three blocks. One of the best bigs in the NBA does it again.
3. Paul George has been putting up an MVP quality season and makes the list with a 45 point double-double. I'm shocked the Thunder aren't missing Kevin Durant now.
4. Giannis makes the list with the best scoring performance (factoring in efficiency) of the week. Weird conspiracy theory time, Giannis, James Harden, and Paul George all have multiple 43 point games this season. I think they go 1-2-3 in MVP voting this season.
5. Marvin Bagley takes the rookie spot on the list. With Doncic already locking up the Rookie of the Year, and Ayton playing great, I figured Bagley deserved some love. A solid double-double out of a player with no shot at the rookie of the year.
The Bottom Three Boxscores of the Week
| Player | Date | Minutes | PTS(TS%) | TRB | AST | TOV | STL | BLK | PF | PoP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lonnie Walker | 2/6 | 26 | 4(17%) | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | -12.8 |
| LaMarcus Aldridge | 2/7 | 35 | 17(40.1%) | 10 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 | -12.4 |
| Shabazz Napier | 2/8 | 12 | 0(0%) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | -9.6 |
1. Lonnie Walker has the worst player game of the week, which in fractal fashion was in one of the worst team games of the week (the Spurs got blown out by the Warriors). He went 0-10 from the field and have a 1-3 assist to turnover ratio. At least he was perfect from the line or this game would have been even worse.
2. The Spurs had a bad week. LaMarcus Aldridge put up the second worst game of the week the very night after Lonnie Walker. 7-19 from the field and 3-5 from the line. He at least rebounded fine, but that didn't make up for the bad shooting and turnovers. The Spurs are still in the playoffs for now at least.
3. Shabazz Napier takes the last spot by doing the most-least with the least amount of minutes. In a mere 12 minutes of play, he missed eight shots, turned the ball over three twice and racked up two fouls. Indeed, such impressive play deserves recognition.
Leaderboard Update
Reminder, I'm using an MVP voting scheme for, well, no reason in particular. So the best boxscore of the week gets 5 points, 2nd best 4, etc. For the bad boxscores, I'm doing -3,-2,-1. Here's an update of how things look.
| Player | Points | List Appearances |
|---|---|---|
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 19 | 5 |
| James Harden | 18 | 7 |
| Nikola Jokic | 18 | 6 |
| Paul George | 15 | 5 |
| Klay Thompson | 14 | 3 |
Giannis hops back to the top spot! Harden and Jokic stay in the race. Paul George climbed some more. The biggest surprise is that thanks to his stellar play and Anthony Davis' situation in New Orleans, Klay Thompson is now in the top five! We'll see if he stays there.
Alright, those are our lists. As always, let us know in the comments or on Twitter if you have any suggestions. You can also let us know if our selections were wrong, but it's too late to change things now! See you next week!
* Reminder, the Points over Par metric is just the Wins Produced formula translated into point margin. The way to think of it is -- how many points would a team win (or lose) by with our player's performance if they played next to an average team against an average opponent.