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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 3/17 | 36 | 52(73.8%) | 16 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 19.3 |
| Bradley Beal | 3/16 | 39 | 40(95.4%) | 5 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 17.3 |
| Chris Paul | 3/17 | 29 | 25(93.8%) | 7 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 16.2 |
| Kemba Walker | 3/11 | 41 | 40(86.7%) | 10 | 7 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 15.6 |
| Jalen Brunson | 3/12 | 37 | 34(89.1%) | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 14.6 |
1. Giannis tops the list with his career high in points. He filled up the boxscore and just missed a triple-double. It wasn't enough to take down a much more evenly distributed 76ers. With Brogdon out for the season and the Bucks and 76ers likely to meet each other in the playoffs, expect to see a few more of these in the playoffs.
2. Bradley Beal makes the list with the best scoring game (efficiency and volume) of the week. Nine for twelve from the arc is just absurd! The rest of his game was rock solid too with a 7-1 assist to turnover ratio and two steals.
3. Is Chris Paul back just in time for the playoffs? The Rockets are surging and Chris Paul is part of that. Amazing scoring, amazing passing, and sure, seven rebounds too. To be fair, this is old hat for CP3.
4. Another note just how good the Rockets are doing, Kemba Walker puts up one of the best games of the week but it wasn't close enough to beating the Rockets. Still, a forty point double-double is a nice consolation prize.
5. Jalen Brunson wins the rookie spot on the list with an amazingly efficient thirty point game. In a weird theme, he's one of three boxscores on the good list that didn't result in a win.
The Bottom Three Boxscores of the Week
| Player | Date | Minutes | PTS(TS%) | TRB | AST | TOV | STL | BLK | PF | PoP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lauri Markkanen | 3/12 | 35 | 11(30%) | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | -15.5 |
| Reggie Jackson | 3/13 | 24 | 8(25.2%) | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | -15.3 |
| Luka Doncic | 3/12 | 34 | 12(27.3%) | 6 | 7 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 1 | -15 |
1. Markkanen gains top honors for missing eight threes in a game. Four fouls and a mediocre rebounding night for a big gives him the worst game of the week.
2. Reggie Jackson gets the second worst game of the week with only six missed threes. A mediocre assist to turnover ratio and four fouls helped the Pistons get thumped by thirty four points!
3. Unlike the other names on the list, Doncic made a three. Like the other names on the list, he did miss at least six threes (going 1-7) More impressively he racked up nine turnovers in a pretty bad outing.
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 | List Appearances | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 8 | 31 |
| James Harden | 8 | 23 |
| Paul George | 6 | 19 |
| Nikola Jokic | 6 | 18 |
| Klay Thompson | 3 | 14 |
Only one major change up to the leaderboard this week, Giannis just starts padding his lead. It's certainly possible for a few names to catch him in a month, another week or two in the top three, and he'll lock himself as the best boxscore player of the year.
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.