Did Russell Westbrook ruin the value of the triple double?

[Mean_Streets]

As long as I remember, the triple double was always seen as this huge accomplishment. People always admired Big O's triple double season and heard people say we will never see a person average a triple double again. Commentators/fans would get excited when a player was nearing a triple double, you even had a player brick a shot off his own net to try to secure a triple doubles years ago (think it was Ricky Davis).

But I feel ever since Westbrook had those 3/4 seasons where he averaged a triple double people don't value it as much anymore. I mean, he had an incredible season in 2017, but people later caught on and realized he wasn't as good as his numbers say. Jokic right now is basically averaging a triple double, but nobody is talking about it. Just feel it's not as cherished as it once was.

[Michael Jordan]

I would say he normalized it for star players as opposed to saying "ruined" it

[Optms]

Not sure Westbrook "ruined" the value of the triple double, he just normalized it to the point that if you aren't outdoing the bar he set, no one cares.

That, and this era is more inflated than the one Westbrook was playing in just 5 years ago. Its not just triple doubles. No one cares when dudes are dropping 40/50 points either. Everything is inflated.

[Kingdibs19]

Yes.

[Lockdown504090]

getting a trip dub is great for your team, just like scoring 40. but like scoring 40, theres a good way and a bad way to do it.

if anything, russ brought nuance to the triple double, since people dont think about it as some obviously incredible thing anymore

[Tor_Raps]

Nah... this era of rule changes to make things so easy for the offensive players did.

[ShulaDon92]

You could say the same thing about Oscar. The answer is no.

[chilluminati]

getting a trip dub is great for your team, just like scoring 40. but like scoring 40, theres a good way and a bad way to do it.

if anything, russ brought nuance to the triple double, since people dont think about it as some obviously incredible thing anymore

This. I'd call it a "winning triple double" vs a "stat padding triple double".

[ChaseDown]

It’s not as impressive when someone like Russ or Ricky Davis do it. But if you told me Jokic did it in a winning fashion, I’d be impressed. Same with the Don v Book 79 pt games - Don’s was 10x more impressive.

[bisme37]

I've never really understood the insane hype triple doubles get in the first place. I know 10 is a nice round number but it's not a whole lot more than 9 when you think about it. A guy goes for 39/9/9 and it's crickets chirping and tumbleweeds rolling by, then another guys gets 28/10/10 and my phone is going off with notifications like he just cured cancer.

[SOA]

Westbrook didn't ruin the triple double. But Silver and the league sure did with their attitude for their sense of "enhancing the game."

[Jables]

I've never really understood the insane hype triple doubles get in the first place. I know 10 is a nice round number but it's not a whole lot more than 9 when you think about it. A guy goes for 39/9/9 and it's crickets chirping and tumbleweeds rolling by, then another guys gets 28/10/10 and my phone is going off with notifications like he just cured cancer.

Things that are hard to achieve have value, news at 11. Scoring lots of points is hype too, yet making it easier for players to put up big numbers hasn't produced any kind of explosive growth for the sport. Look at the amount of guys having 50 point games every season, I don't even keep track.

When stars contribute heavily in all these stats now, it loses the achievement or wow factor, but anyone getting lots of triple doubles is probably a star.

[jk31]

which value?

[hauntedcomputer]

No, it was the humans who decided upon a base 10 counting system and the morons who assigned some magical significance to that.

[mattao313]

No the league did awarding assists when a guy goes iso after a pass.

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[hardenASG13]

getting a trip dub is great for your team, just like scoring 40. but like scoring 40, theres a good way and a bad way to do it.

if anything, russ brought nuance to the triple double, since people dont think about it as some obviously incredible thing anymore

This. I'd call it a "winning triple double" vs a "stat padding triple double".

Westbrooks teams have won 75% of the games he's had a triple double. He was a winning player his whole career in OKC, which was essentially his prime. He played with unmatched energy and athletics and dominated games, got in the mix for every rebound and broke down defenses all night with no spacing and slow centers on his roster.

[Harry Garris]

No. Westbrook getting triple doubles on the Thunder was highly correlated with the team winning the game. It was still a valuable achievement.

What ruined it is exposure. Westbrook got triple doubles so often that it was no longer special because of how often it occurred. Humans naturally appreciate things less when they experience them more. It has nothing to do with Westbrook or basketball it's more of a human psychological phenomenon.

Basically the reason why you no longer care about triple doubles is the same reason that eating ice cream or going to a theme park is no longer as exciting as it used to be when you were a kid. You've been there and done that before so your brain no longer hits you with as much dopamine. That's all it is.

[Doctor MJ]

As long as I remember, the triple double was always seen as this huge accomplishment. People always admired Big O's triple double season and heard people say we will never see a person average a triple double again. Commentators/fans would get excited when a player was nearing a triple double, you even had a player brick a shot off his own net to try to secure a triple doubles years ago (think it was Ricky Davis).

But I feel ever since Westbrook had those 3/4 seasons where he averaged a triple double people don't value it as much anymore. I mean, he had an incredible season in 2017, but people later caught on and realized he wasn't as good as his numbers say. Jokic right now is basically averaging a triple double, but nobody is talking about it. Just feel it's not as cherished as it once was.

Westbrook didn't ruin the triple double, the Triple Double ruined the triple double...and then it ruined Westbrook.

In economics there's something called Goodhart's Law that typically gets summarized:

When the measure becomes the target, it becomes a worse measure.

In basketball this is problem with basically all box score stats, but it's not equally as bad of a problem for all of those stats, and how bad of a problem it is can change with time.

Once people started thinking that a guy getting points + rebounds + assists was automatically being more impressive than a "one dimensional" guy who focused on playing in a style that only racked up numbers in one or two of these areas, it encouraged players to horde box score-tracked actions that weren't typically their focus.

This then to say:

The Triple Double was not a thing when Oscar Robertson was doing it, and as far as I know really only became significant in the vocabulary in the '80s with Magic Johnson. And of course, both of those guys were extremely valuable basically whenever they happened to be getting Triple Doubles.

But afterward, over time, players began chasing the Triple Double harder and harder until eventually you got Westbrook showing us that it's very possible to get a Triple Double in a game where they would be better off without you.

To be fair: I'm not talking about Westbrook's MVP campaign when I say that last part, but about what came after. Westbrook was never a player in Oscar or Magic's league, but he was extremely valuable in his MVP year...however in the years that followed what we saw is a guy who really, really needed to relinquish primacy and shift back more toward the style of play he played in college at UCLA, but it seems pretty clear that he never even considered that this would be a good idea. And while his ego was BIG in this equation, so was the fact that he had become convinced that he was valuable if he was racking up the stats that led to the Triple Double.

The end result of all of this is that Westbrook isn't having anything like a normal career arc when it comes to his value on the floor. He's had a steep, steep drop off even compared to volume scorer standards, and I think there's good reason to think that things could have been different.

[JordansBulls]

Nah... this era of rule changes to make things so easy for the offensive players did.

This!

[Sofia]

I've never really understood the insane hype triple doubles get in the first place. I know 10 is a nice round number but it's not a whole lot more than 9 when you think about it. A guy goes for 39/9/9 and it's crickets chirping and tumbleweeds rolling by, then another guys gets 28/10/10 and my phone is going off with notifications like he just cured cancer.

Yep.

People complaining that the “value of a triple double” has decreased were very likely overrating the “value” of it to begin with.