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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| De'Aaron Fox | 11/1 | 34 | 31(86.9%) | 10 | 15 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 20.7 |
| Stephen Curry | 10/29 | 25 | 23(95.2%) | 8 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 13.9 |
| Klay Thompson | 10/29 | 27 | 52(87%) | 5 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 12.5 |
| Deandre Ayton | 11/2 | 35 | 17(67.2%) | 18 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 11.2 |
| Kenneth Faried | 11/4 | 3 | 2(100%) | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.8 |
1. De'Aaron Fox puts up the best game of the week and one of the best triple-doubles out of a 20-year-old in NBA history. A fantastic game and candidly I'm glad he put this game up because it displaced the #1 game on our list, which was ...
2. Klay Thomson set an NBA record with fourteen threes this game. And it was a great game, but the funny thing is from a production standpoint it was great, not amazing (the top games we've seen have been over 20 PoP. Even had Klay played the full 48 minutes, he'd have ended at 22.6. Great yes? Best of the year? No) Bonus points for threes and historical nature, but leads perfectly into our #3 pick ...
3. Your teammate sets an NBA record and puts up a great game. And it turns out he wasn't the best player in the game. Enter MVP frontrunner, Steph Curry. Amazingly efficient, a great assist to turnover ratio and an astounding eight rebounds and three steals. As I mentioned, Klay's record-setting gets him the nod, Curry's performance gets him on the list.
4. DeAndre Ayton gets the "rookie spot" on the list. Easily the frontrunner for Rookie of the Year, Ayton has put up some great games. I'm a sucker for 20-20 games, and Ayton looks well on his way to making those regularly. A shame he's wasted on the Suns, but oh well.
5. Faried makes the list! Alright, this took some clever gymnastics, and I may be a Faried homer ... Faried had the most productive per-minute game (minimum of three minutes played) this week. Over a rebound a minute and perfect from the field? Imagine if the Nets gave him more minutes? They won't. But imagine it.
The Bottom Three Boxscores of the Week
| Player | Date | Minutes | PTS(TS%) | TRB(ORB)| | AST | TOV | STL | BLK | PF | PoP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taurean Prince | 10/30 | 26 | 9(34.9%) | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 6 | -15.6 |
| Jabari Parker | 11/3 | 40 | 15(58.2%) | 3 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 2 | -10.4 |
| Ben Simmons | 10/30 | 34 | 11(47.3%) | 8 | 10 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 4 | -7.8 |
1. Taurean Prince is a terrible NBA player. He's so so bad. He earns top honors on the list for the worst game of the week. He couldn't shoot, had a 1-2 assist to turnover ratio, and would have had a worse game I'm sure but he fouled out!
2. Jabari Parker gets a passive-aggressive add to the list. In an eight-point loss to the Rockets, Parker gets the "game ball" for ... the Rockets! He's been horrible for the Bulls, and I can only thank the Bulls for keeping my Bucks from paying him.
3. Oof, this pains me to add one of my favorite players from the other list here. That said, Simmons put up 11 turnovers, which is the league record for the season so far. Tack on inefficient shooting and high fouls, and Simmons shows even young stars put up bad games.
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! Since no player has made either list both weeks I've done this though, there's currently not much point. See you next week!
Also, we kind of have a leaderboard now! Since one player has now made a list two weeks now, we can say, in the lead for "Best Boxscorer of the Year" is Steph Curry, with 8 points! He earned top honor in week 2 and placed third this week. Reminder, I'm using "MVP Voting Style" so 5 points for first, 4 for second, etc. For "Worst Boxscorer of the Year" I'll use -3, -2, -1, but no player has made the list multiple times. We'll see if that changes next week.
-Dre
* 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.