For 1st-time playoff triple-doubles, it’s LeBron, Magic and, wait, who?
Russell Westbrook’s historic season of swishing jumpers, snagging rebounds and dishing dimes has placed a statistical anomaly at the forefront of the NBA landscape. And now, as the playoffs loom, here’s a sure-fire way to double down on a triple-double bar bet.
Just three players in history have recorded triple-doubles in their first NBA playoff games. Who are they?
Some will guess Westbrook, who averaged a triple-double this season.
Some will guess Oscar Robertson, who averaged a triple-double 55 years ago.
Those are good guesses — no one else has averaged double figures in three statistical categories over a full NBA season — but they are incorrect answers to our query.
How about Wilt Chamberlain? Larry Bird? Or Michael Jordan? Wrong. Wrong. And wrong.
Allow the patrons perched on their barstools enough guesses and they’re bound to come up with LeBron James and Magic Johnson. And those worthy hunches are right on the money.
Even so, give those barflies all day and they’re not likely to come up with the other one, at least not without a glance at Google. Heck, that former player — and, yes, we’ll tell you soon who it is — didn’t know himself for more than 55 years that he’d done something noteworthy.
“Triple-double wasn’t a thing when I was playing,” he tells USA TODAY Sports. “Points. Rebounds. Maybe assists. That’s the only stats we knew.”
James had 32 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in his first playoff game in 2006. That led statisticians to scrub box scores to discover who else had managed the feat. Sure enough, they found Johnson scored 13 points and had 11 rebounds and 11 assists in his first NBA playoff game in 1980. And then there is Johnny McCarthy. Wait. Who? McCarthy scored 13 points to go with 11 rebounds and 11 assists in his first playoff game in 1960. He had no idea it would make him the stumper to a trivia question someday. He was just happy that his St. Louis Hawks beat the Minneapolis Lakers.
When James recorded that triple-double in his maiden playoff game, newspapers carried an item that mentioned the two others who’d done it. And that’s how McCarthy found out he is in a club so exclusive that its other members are on the short list for greatest players of all time.
“I’m pretty sure LeBron and Magic have never heard of me,” McCarthy says by phone from suburban Buffalo.
Lots of NBA fans have never heard of him. Chances are some of you reading this now are among them. But I’ve known the name for as long as I can remember.
McCarthy played at Canisius College in Buffalo in the mid-1950s and twice led the Golden Griffins to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, including once within a whisper of the Final Four. That year the Griffs beat No. 2 North Carolina State 79-78 in four overtimes in a firstround game at Madison Square Garden.
I was a toddler at the time but my father was chair of the English department at Canisius and McCarthy was one of his students. So I was steeped in McCarthy’s collegiate legend and followed it to the end of his NBA career in 1964, when he played for the Boston Celtics and earned a championship ring he still wears.
McCarthy coached Canisius in the mid-1970s, when I was a student writing sports for The Griffin. Sometimes, after news conferences, I’d hang around to ask a few more questions. Sometimes he’d take me to a tavern down the street and buy a pitcher of ale.
I learned things there that hadn’t come up at the news conferences. That got me noticed at the Buffalo newspapers — and led to the career I have today.
This Irish-American “broth of a boy,” as the college’s centennial history styles McCarthy, turns 83 this month. He still shoots around on the backyard hoop when he visits his sons in the Boston suburbs. (Watch out for his lefty hook shot.) And his grandchildren call him “Mr. Triple-Double.”
Maggie McCarthy scored her 1,000th career point last month on her 17th birthday as she and her Medfield (Mass.) High School Warriors won a state championship that got them introduced at a Celtics game. Her grandfather has a lot of history with those Celts. His Hawks lost twice to Boston in the NBA Finals before he won his ring there. And he coached against the Celtics as bench boss of the Buffalo Braves in the early 1970s.
McCarthy played against Robertson when the Big O had 41 triple-doubles in the 1961-62 season. “Oscar was the best guard I ever played against,” he says. “So smooth, so strong.”
Westbrook had 42 triple-doubles for Oklahoma City entering Wednesday’s game vs. Denver. That impresses attorney John McCarthy, Johnny’s son and Maggie’s father. “My dad had only one in his playoff career,” he says, “but he sure did it in the right game.”
So feel free to win bets at your favorite saloon with my favorite trivia question. And as long as you’re there, raise a glass — make that a double — to the triple threat of LeBron, Magic and Johnny.
I owe one of those guys a pitcher of ale.