Monday Tip-Off: Crunching Those Virtual NumbersGrumpy Elder Millennial of 39 that I am, I have a love-hate relationship with stats. I dislike how basketball and NBA discourse has been reduced to numbers, often cherry-picked to suit an agenda. Of course, even in my 20s – when I wasn’t quite as old or as grumpy – I disliked the way advanced metrics were beginning to creep into hoops talk. Some of the statistical feats being cited these days are utterly ridiculous: “first player to have 39 points, 17 rebounds, 13 assists, three steals, two blocks, and shoot better than 54%, on a Monday, in a blue jersey”. Just stop!
With that being said, stats are still interesting, and they do factor into analysis of the sport. They’ve always been relevant to some degree, and part of the discussion. Big performances matter, and are fun to watch. After all, if a player scores 50, they’ve clearly hit a lot of shots, potentially on some spectacular plays. The same goes for the numbers we post on the virtual hardwood. Whether we’re controlling NBA players or an avatar in a career mode, most of us enjoy filling the stat sheet. Game-to-game, it keeps things interesting. Over the course of a virtual season, those numbers can be almost as fun to look at as the statistics that star players are tallying in the real NBA.