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 | 1/21 | 27 | 44(110.%) | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 17.4 |
| Karl-Anthony Towns | 1/22 | 32 | 25(72.7%) | 18 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 19.1 |
| James Harden | 1/23 | 40 | 61(62.2%) | 15 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 16.8 |
| Nikola Jokic | 1/26 | 34 | 32(63.8%) | 18 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 16.1 |
| Paul George | 1/27 | 38 | 36(76.1%) | 13 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 10.8 |
1. Klay gets the top spot for an amazing shooting clinic. In the third quarter, he went 7-8 from beyond the arc to result in the best three-point shooting performance of the week. He doesn't quite get the best game of the week, but that's because he sat down in the middle of the third quarter because he didn't need to play anymore.
2. Karl-Anthony Towns puts up the best game of the week (according to Points over Par) and also did it quickly in only 32 minutes. He completely filled up the box score, which is not a shock from this guy.
3. James Harden is amazing at scoring and easily makes the list with a 60 point performance. He also got fifteen boards and five steals?? Harden is making a strong MVP push, and we love it.
4. Jokic makes the list for a fantastic triple-double. That's becoming pretty ho-hum at this point.
5. We've loved that Paul George is a legit MVP-calibre player this year. He gets this spot for the strength of competition as his amazing outing helped down the best team out East (the Milwaukee Bucks).
Honorable Mention: Luka Doncic put up the youngest thirty point triple-double on the 27th. It was a great game (+7 PoP), but not quite where I like my top box scores.
The Bottom Three Boxscores of the Week
| Player | Date | Minutes | PTS(TS%) | TRB | AST | TOV | STL | BLK | PF | PoP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kevin Knox | 1/25 | 25 | 7(27.4%) | 4 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 5 | -13.4 |
| Harrison Barnes | 1/21 | 31 | 8(25.2%) | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | -13.1 |
| JaMychal Green | 1/21 | 15 | 5(22.7%) | 5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 | -11 |
1. Congrats Kevin Knox for the worst game of the week! Four turnovers, five fouls, and 2-11 from the field. Understandably the Knicks have to play this guy 25 minutes a game as they don't have any talented bigs they could use instead.
2. Remember when this guy was considered better for chemistry than Kevin Durant? Four for 15 from the field and a pretty mediocre box score gets Barnes the second spot on the list.
3. JaMychal Green would have had the worst game of the night if they hadn't pulled him for fouling out. Two for eleven from the field and a turnover. At least he got some rebounds though.
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 | 17 | 4 |
| Nikola Jokic | 16 | 5 |
| James Harden | 13 | 6 |
| Anthony Davis | 12 | 3 |
| Stephen Curry | 10 | 3 |
Our list has crystallized and now we just have players jostling for position. Jokic is now sniffing the top spot, and James Harden moves up to third. We'll see how this shakes out!
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.