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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeBron James | 11/14 | 36 | 44(85.9%) | 10 | 9 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 18.6 |
| Kemba Walker | 11/17 | 45 | 60(76.4%) | 7 | 4 | 9 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 13.5 |
| LeBron James | 11/18 | 39 | 51(72%) | 8 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 12.7 |
| Joel Embiid | 11/12 | 36 | 35(73.5%) | 18 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 14.1 |
| Jaren Jackson Jr. | 11/16 | 32 | 27(72.4%) | 6 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 7.0 |
1. LeBron James had the best game of the week narrowly missing a triple-double to go with 44 points on great shooting. Oh yeah, he also passed Wilt Chamberlain on the all-time scoring list!
2. Kemba Walker sets a franchise record with 60 points. Heartbreakingly it was in a loss. And to add insult to injury, he missed first place on the list thanks to that LeBron guy. Good effort Kemba.
3. LeBron James makes the list twice? He forced me to debate if I wanted a one entry per week rule. You can see I sided with LeBron James. Fifty points against his former former team? Impressive!
4. Joel Embiid puts up a really good game. I'm happy he's having a good season and is finally the star everyone thought he was.
5. Jarren Jackson Jr. wins the "rookie" spot on the list. Twenty-seven points and four steals. Jackson is having a typical rookie season so far (read, not good), so we'll see if he's turning it around.
The Bottom Three Boxscores of the Week
| Player | Date | Minutes | PTS(TS%) | TRB(ORB)| | AST | TOV | STL | BLK | PF | PoP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Julius Randle | 11/14 | 14 | 3(26%) | 3 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 | -10.3 |
| Antonio Blakeney | 11/17 | 33 | 13(32.7%) | 3 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | -14.4 |
| Donovan Mitchell | 11/16 | 34 | 31(40.7%) | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 3 | -9.6 |
1. Julius Randle didn't quite have the worst game of the week, that honor is next on the list. That said, his per-minute production was so bad, I had to give him top billing. In a mere 14 minutes of play, he gave the opponent a 10 point edge! He went 1-4 from both the line and the field. Tack on five turnovers and four fouls, and it was good he stopped at fourteen minutes.
2. Antonio Blakeney puts up the worst game of the week. In a 39 point blowout to the Raptors, Blakeney missed thirteen shots and turned the ball over four times while not doing much else. I think the Bulls are bad again.
3. Donovan Mitchell makes the list for a "Kobe-like" performance. He missed twenty-two shots and ten threes while giving out zero assists! His four steals kept this game from being the worst of the week, but it was still quite bad.
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!
Leaderboard Update
Reminder, I'm keeping an entirely arbitrary running tally of these using standard MVP voting rules (5 points to first, 4 points to second, etc. Same rules for bad games but -3, -2, -1) Here's how things sit after five weeks.
And thanks to getting two entries on this list, LeBron James both joins and passes Steph Curry on the leaderboard! At this point our good leaderboard is:
- LeBron James: 9 points (3 entries, two in one week!)
- Steph Curry: 8 points (2 entries)
- Andre Drummond: 4 points (2 entries)
- Anthony Davis: 2 points (2 entries)
And Donovan Mitchell with his second bad game joins the bad list! That sits at:
- Carmelo Anthony: -5 points (2 entries)
- Donovan Mitchell: -2 points (2 entries)
We'll see if any more players join either list 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.