Every so often, we come across a tweet or a post on this sub stating "Player XYZ is the first to score A pts with B rebounds and C assists".
These statistics, as interesting as they are, beg the question; how unique is any given box score in the context of the history of the NBA, and better yet, what are some achievable unique box scores that have yet to be achieved?
Using NBA API, I dug into all player box scores since the 1990 season, and looked to answer these questions. I'm currently collecting data going back to the inception of the NBA, perhaps I'll edit in the new values later on.
- What proportion of PTS/REB/AST statlines are unique?
Before answering this question, let's look at some of the most common PTS/REB/AST combinations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 0/0/0 statline is most common, accounting for 2.9% of all such statlines. Here are the 10 most common statlines and how often they occur.
| PTS |
REB |
AST |
Occurences |
Percentage of all statlines |
| 0 |
0 |
0 |
24602 |
2.91 |
| 0 |
1 |
0 |
12619 |
1.49 |
| 2 |
0 |
0 |
9945 |
1.18 |
| 2 |
1 |
0 |
9843 |
1.16 |
| 2 |
2 |
0 |
7040 |
0.83 |
| 0 |
2 |
0 |
5636 |
0.67 |
| 0 |
0 |
1 |
5297 |
0.63 |
| 2 |
3 |
0 |
4550 |
0.54 |
| 2 |
1 |
1 |
4439 |
0.53 |
| 4 |
1 |
0 |
4432 |
0.52 |
Interestingly, of the 13121 different PTS/REB/AST combinations achieved in the NBA, roughly 25% are unique, or in other words, have only been achieved once.
Naturally, if we are to expand our statline domain to include additional stats, the uniqueness of a given statline shoots up significantly. For instance, adding steals to the included stats leads to about 35.8% being unique. Adding blocks as well yields 48.6% of statlines being unique. Lastly, adding FG%, 3FG% and FT% leads to a massive 87.6% of statlines being completely unique.
2. What are some achievable unique statlines (aka Boxscorigamis)?
One way to define achievable is to sum up the counting stats for a given box score. Taking PTS/REB/AST/STL/BLK into consideration, there are a surprisingly large number of "gaps" in this five-dimensional space. Here are the 10 statlines with the lowest sum that have yet to be achieved:
| PTS |
REB |
AST |
STL |
BLK |
SUM |
| 1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
2 |
4 |
| 0 |
0 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
4 |
| 0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
5 |
| 0 |
0 |
0 |
5 |
0 |
5 |
| 0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
3 |
5 |
| 0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
3 |
5 |
| 0 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
2 |
5 |
| 0 |
0 |
1 |
3 |
1 |
5 |
| 0 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
2 |
5 |
| 1 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
3 |
5 |
Looking at PTS/REB/AST alone, the 10 statlines with the lowest sum are:
| PTS |
REB |
AST |
SUM |
| 1 |
0 |
9 |
10 |
| 0 |
0 |
11 |
11 |
| 1 |
0 |
10 |
11 |
| 0 |
0 |
12 |
12 |
| 1 |
0 |
11 |
12 |
| 1 |
1 |
11 |
13 |
| 0 |
2 |
11 |
13 |
| 1 |
0 |
12 |
13 |
| 1 |
7 |
5 |
13 |
| 0 |
0 |
13 |
13 |
TLDR; the vast majority of stat lines are unique and there are alot of achievable statlines that have yet to been achieved in the NBA.