Unprecedented Equivalence on Friday the Thirteenth

How many games do you suppose have been played since the NBA was formed 70+ years ago? I’d “guess”-timate that, considering just regular season play, they can’t be too far from the league’s 50,000th game – and if so, I’d also speculate that Silver & Associates (along with their media partners) already have a marketing plan in place.

I’ll bet damn few of those tens of thousands of games wound up like the C’s tussle with the Hawks Friday (the 13th, ironically) … and I’m not referencing the exciting closing sequence.

In this game of alternating stretches of sustained scoring, each team ended up making 36 of 83 field goal attempts, snared 43 rebounds and committed 12 turnovers. That’s uncanny.

In fact, I can’t remember ever seeing such a box score – and one of the statistical trends I’ve tracked from time to time is the notion that victory goes to the team that gains a statistical edge in two of those three categories. Teams frequently “tie” in one category, even two … never all three, that I can recall.

Even in these recent times of increased three-point shooting, this “Two-out-of-Three” test has proven to be valid 75+% of the time.

But Coach Stevens’s boys are pushing the proportionality of my theory to the limit. In eight of their first 40 games, the winning team had a numerical disadvantage in two of the three categories (FG%, Tot. Reb, TO’s). Boston was that winning team in seven of those games. (The C’s lost the one game where they split two categories and tied in the third.)

Further evidence that our boys are successful more on the basis of their savvy than their talent?


photo: espn.com