The NBA All- Star box score you have to see to believe
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The 65th NBA AllStar Game was a recordsetting event Sunday night from Air Canada Centre in Toronto.
In the West’s runaway 196-173 victory, we saw the teams shatter both the record for total points scored and points scored by a team. The 369 combined points were 48 more than last year’s All-Star record, and both teams easily surpassed the previous team record of 163 points.
Not surprisingly, in such an offensive explosion there were some eyepopping stats that jumped out when it was all over. Just look at the box score from Sunday night.
The first thing that jumps out to me is the assists column. The West had 51. Fifty-one! The NBA high thus far is 40, set by Golden State on Nov. 6 against Denver. The NBA record for assists is 52, shared by the 1983 Sonics and the 1989 Nuggets. It’s been 16 years since a team registered at least 45 assists in a regular-season game. Milwaukee was the last to do it, in a 137-87 laugher over Charlotte on Jan. 10, 2000. You’d have to go back 25 years to find the last time a team posted 50 assists in a regular season game. Phoenix did so against Denver in a 173-143 blowout on Nov. 10, 1990. As a huge fan of ball movement and the philosophy of passing up a good shot to get a great shot, I love seeing that 51 posted at the bottom of the assist column — even in a defenseless All-Star game.
Of course, the nemesis of the assist is the turnover. But the West turned it over only 14 times, which is the second thing that stood out. In a game in which the West hoisted 149 shots and dished 51 assists, it had just 14 turnovers. Two players, Chris Paul (game-high 16 assists) and Russell Westbrook (your MVP with a team-high 31 points), were responsible for half of those. That’s an extraordinarily clean game.
Eighty 3-pointers!! That’s how many the West took. These guys were gunning! Four players from the West launched at least 10 3-pointers. A fifth, Kevin Durant (23 points, five rebounds, seven assists), squeezed off eight 3-point tries. Welcome to the new NBA, where teams live by the 3 and players are dying to take them. Westbrook, a 30 percent career 3-point shooter, jacked up 17 3-point bombs. They accounted for nearly three-quarters of his shot attempts. The ratio was more staggering for James Harden (85 percent of his attempts) and Klay Thompson (90 percent of his field goal tries). New Orleans star forward Anthony Davis was the game’s only player that didn’t launch a 3-pointer. He finished 12 of 13 from the floor for 24 points in 15 minutes off the bench. But I’m sure somewhere someone is dissecting the analytics and screaming how much more of an efficient night he could have had if he only stepped behind the 3-point line.
While I’m on the subject, congratulations to Indiana forward Paul George. He set an All-Star Game record for nine made 3-pointers. He needed only 19 3-point attempts. But he netted a game-high 41 points.
In case you were wondering, the NBA record for 3-pointers attempted in a single game is 49, set by Dallas against New Jersey in March 1996. At this rate, that record is going down any day. The NBA high this season is 46, set by Boston against Orlando on Jan. 31.
Check out the points in the paint. The East scored 96. A staggering number. The West had 88. Again, it’s a defenseless All-Star game, but it sort of paints the picture of the direction the league is going in: layups and 3-pointers. The East scored 156 of its 173 points either in the paint or from 3-point range. That’s 90 percent of its scoring output. The West scored 181 of its 196 points either in the paint or from 3-point range. That’s 92 percent of its scoring output.
Check out the score by quarter. It’s a shame the West got off to such a slow start and scored only 40 points in the opening period. It would have easily eclipsed 200 points had it not struggled out of the gate.