Charts & Figgers

High-level statistical analysis from a man who hasn't taken a math class since high school.

This weekend was, of course, NBA All-Star Weekend, which is in many ways the highlight of the NBA regular season (or, as Simmons calls it, the Black SuperBowl). With this in mind, I've crafted a pretty monumental Charts & Figgers, focusing on Octuplets. I've even managed, for possibly the first time in the history of Charts & Figgers, to produce a few actual Charts.* First, though, a few thoughts on All-Star Saturday:

*Moving out of New York has been a little depressing for me, but in a way I'm happy that I was nowhere near Bardey when the Texas Shooting Stars team defeated Thunder Dan's 37-second record, especially considering that Kenny Smith was shooting jump shots from mid-court.

*I am not much of a Paul Pierce fan, but it made me happy (and made me respect him a bit more) to see how legitimately happy a guy who's been an All-Star many times and won a championship was to have won the 3-point shooting contest. It was a nice departure from last year when a near-catatonic Derrick Rose won the Skills contest.

*The dunk contest, after a few solid years, went back to being incredibly lame. I was especially disappointed in Gerald Wallace, who looked like he had put about 30 seconds of thought into his dunks. That said, I still love him, especially after noticing for the first time how much he looks like Sho Nuff.

*Comment of the night? When Kenny Smith tried to quote the Waltons by saying "G'night, John-Paul" and Kenny Albert called him out on it.

OK, onto the Octos:

First of all, we need an update on the top Octuplet producers of the year so far. Early in the season, it was looking like Kevin Durant would run away with the title, but he has since been surpassed. Here are your top eleven Octupletters through the All-Star break:

1) LeBron James, Unfrozen Caveman Bogut (17)
2) Kevin Durant, Black Prezodents (15)
3) Andre Iguodala, Call em Bullets (10)
4) Danny Granger, WWTMD (8)
  Gerald Wallace, Noah's Ark (8)
6) Dirk Nowitzki, Cowboys (7)
  Monta Ellis, Corn Rows n Tats (7)
  Manu Ginobili, Noah's Ark (7)
9) Dwyane Wade, Call em Bullets (6)
  Paul Pierce, Corn Rows n Tats(6)
  Baron Davis, Teen Wolf (6)

Looking at that list, you might notice that both Call em Bullets and Noah's Ark have two guys each in the top eleven. That might lead you to believe that those two teams probably lead the league in total Octuplets. But you'd be wrong. Here are the standings for Team Octuplets:

1) Black Prezodents (31)
2) Unfrozen Caveman Bogut (30)
3) Call em Bullets (29)
 WWTMD (29)
 Noah's Ark (29)
6) Corn Rows n Tats (23)
7) Cowboys (20)
 Teen Wolf (20)
9) Power Bottom & Jelly (19)
10) Bronxville BitchSmackers (14)

Come on, Bronxville. That's pathetic.
Looking at that list, and seeing that the Black Prez are in the lead despite having only one guy in the top eleven, you're probably thinking to yourself "Well, the BPs must have a lot of different guys posting Octuplets, probably the most in the league." Well, again, you'd be wrong, you fucking idiot. Why do you keep making such stupid assumptions? Why don't you just wait for me to post the statistics, like this list of the number of different players for each team with Octos:

1) WWTMD (14 different players Octo'd)
2) Power Bottom & Jelly (10)
3) Noah's Ark (9)
4) Corn Rows n Tats (8)
 Cowboys (8)
 Teen Wolf (8)
7) Black Prezodents (7)
8) Unfrozen Caveman Bogut (6)
 Call em Bullets (6)
10) Bronxville BitchSmackers (5)

Oh my god, Bronxville. Last place again. You're horrible.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the guys who've made the most moves (Will and Billy) are the ones who've had the most different guys post an Octuplet. Having 14 different dudes cover the statline is impressive, but with a total of 29 that means that each one has averaged 2 for the season. As a contrast, the seven Black Prezos that have Octupled are averaging four each. Maybe you should just find a few good players and stick to them, Shoaf.

Speaking of good players, I was curious as to which players had gone nuts by posting back-to-back Octuplets. Though there were many who had Octupled two games in a row, I decided that a true back-to-back ought to be earned, with no nights off in between. Here are those Double-Octuplers (Decasextuplers?):

Jamal Crawford, Noah's Ark - November 20th & 21st
Kevin Durant, Black Prezodents - December 13th & 14th
Danny Granger, WWTMD - January 22nd & 23rd

and even though I discounted Octuplets from back-to-back games on non-consecutive nights, I did think it worth noting that two players had Octuplets in back-to-back-to-back games. Here are your Duodecaquadruplers:

Andre Iguodala, Call em Bullets - November 29th, 30th, and December 2nd
Gerald Wallace, Noah's Ark - January 16th, 18th, and 20th

Damn, that's impressive. But not that impressive. After all, there have been 244 Octuplets this season, and that's only counting ones from rostered players who were started that night (a bench Octo is like a tree falling in the woods). I needed something... more. Something bigger. And so I went in search of a new benchmark: The Super-Duper Octuplet. I couldn't add any more categories, so I just had to up the baseline. To achieve a Super-Duper Octuplet, a player would have to have higher percentages: .400 Field Goal Percentage and .800 Free Throw Percentage. Their contributions would have to be significant: not just something in each category, but more than one of each. And finally, they would have to be noteworthy: no 8-point performances here, a Super-Duper Octuplet must include a double-double (presumably points and boards or points and assists). In going back through the records, I discovered only five Octos that met this criteria for the season. That seemed to me appropriately rare. Here then are your Super-Duper Octuplers:

12/22 - Gerald Wallace, Noah's Ark
.556 - .833 - 4 - 29 - 12 - 3 - 2 - 4

12/30 - Channing Frye, Noah's Ark
.600 - 1.000 - 6 - 26 - 10 - 2 - 2 - 2

12/30 - LeBron James, Unfrozen Caveman Bogut
.652 - .875 - 4 - 48 - 10 - 6 - 2 - 2

1/20 - Gerald Wallace, Noah's Ark
.455 - 1.000 - 2 - 20 - 10 - 2 - 2 - 5

1/30 - Gerald Wallace, Noah's Ark
.667 - .800 - 2 - 38 - 11 - 2 - 2 - 2

That's right. Of the five Super-Duper Octuplets so far this season, three of them belong to Gerald Wallace. And one of those was the third of a back-to-back-to-back string of Octuplets. That's fucking incredible! Crash will henceforth be known as King of the Super-Duper Octuplets (KoSDO, if you like).

Which brings us back to the race for King of the Octuplets. As I showed earlier, LeBron currently holds the lead, but considering that the Cavs have played three more games than the Thunder, the pace of their Octos is virtually identical, and it's anyone's ballgame at this point. In looking through the stats, I noticed that King James and Durantula had Octupled on the same night an amazing seven times. That led me to look at the distribution of their Octos, and the pace of the race so far. Here, in graph form (Charts!), is that info:

As you can see, the race has been pretty close all along, with Bron-Bron stepping it up lately after a slower start. More interesting, to me, has been the distribution of those Octos:

What you'll notice there is that, despite the fact that each has had several weeks with two Octuplets and several weeks with no Octuplets, not once has there been a week where one guy had two Octos and the other had none. Combined with the knowledge that they have co-Octo'd seven times, this tells me that, at the very least on a subconscious level, these two are aware of their ongoing Octo duel. How else to explain their obvious responses to each other's Octuplets, never letting the other get too far ahead? It is truly quite a race, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out. I can only expect the pace will pick up now that we're past the All-Star game and the playoff race is heating up.

I have a bunch more Octo facts, but I've already thrown a lot of Charts and Figgers at you guys, and I also just can't stand to type the word Octuplet or Octo any more times (even though writing that sentence necessitated doing it twice). I will let the rest bleed out over the course of future write-ups.



*This excludes the Coke Zero flavor chart, which, having finally tasted Coke Zero for the first time, I am not even sure I believe in anymore.