Sports Staturday: Recap The Last Week In Sports With Some Wild And Irreverent Stats
Welcome to Sports Staturday. Grab a coffee and plop on back down on the couch. You won't get any breaking updates in this blog. Just a fun walk through the past week in sports through the lens of whatever remarkable, weird, or perhaps even just markable stats that cross my desk.
How'd your week go? Each and every holiday season I challenge myself to avoiding hearing Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" as long as humanly possible. How it goes is I forget I'm ever playing until I hear it and then I lose. Pretty fun game. Made it to December 3rd this year walking out of my son's daycare. Honestly, that might be a record for me. If you want a little fun make a tontine out of it with your friends to see who wins. Scouts honor. Joke's kind of on the winner though, because everyone else gets to make fun of them for being a literal hermit.
That's good on the small talk. Let's hit it. Take a sip and relax. This is Sports Staturday.
LeBron James
Have to start with LeBron. The streak is over. 1,297 games scoring at least 10-points and he broke it by passing the ball for the game winning shot. Classic LeBron drive and kick out. Just an all time chess not checkers play. He just came off a game where he stayed in during a blowout to get that tenth point before immediately checking out to extend what many see as a selfish, largely meaningless, streak. He knows the end is nigh. Why not go out a martyr? Brilliant. Seriously brilliant.
Let's do a choose your own adventure stat related to this. LeBron is quite the "love him" or "hate him" type of guy, so whatever side you fall on I'd like to offer some confirmation bias numbers. Just find the subheader that matches your stance. No reading the other side, now.
"I Do Not Like LeBron"
So, the thing about this stat is that it conveniently doesn't include playoff games. You know, the part of the season that really matters? Weird how that works. But pretty much every stat like this defaults to "regular season only". Makes sense if it's like a total stat so those that make the playoffs aren't given the benefit of playing more games. But something like this just doesn't seem to make sense leaving out the playoffs.
What happens when you DO include playoffs? LeBron goes down to his rightful place. Number 2.
Michael Jordan's streak ended as a Wizard. Not surprising. And it started right after a game he played just 16-minutes. This was when Jerry Krause demanded his minutes be restricted after Jordan was back from that second-year foot injury. Literally the only game he ever played as a Chicago Bull not scoring 10-points or more. He scored eight.
"I Like LeBron"
Now that the streak is over, we have to move the goal post a little bit. He still scored eight-points, so let's see what his streak is for that. Who cares about the number 10 anyway? So arbitrary. We'll only count regular season again, because as you totally didn't read above, Jordan scored eight in all his games until he was a Wizard. Here are the results. 1,464 in case the black on dark red is too hard to read (my bad), which is pretty much 1/3rd more than Jordan. That's… pretty darn good.
Caleb Shot Call
Get ready for some homer wish casting. What if this is the week Caleb Williams throws 70 percent for the first time in 2025? I've been a big critic of his lately, but hear me out (always a good sign when you start an argument with hear me out). This is the biggest Bears game since the double-doink. Not great that Rome Odunze is now out. But Caleb Williams might be more than just good in the clutch. He might have Green Bay's number. Out of the five games he's connected on 70% of his passes, two of them were against the Packers. That means both were with either Matt Eberflus or the carcass of him.
You'd think with Ben Johnson at least one of those 70 percent completion games would be under him in 2025 seeing as that was his literal goal for Caleb as well. And you'd be wrong. Williams' failed to hit even 60 percent in the last five games. But what if Ben Johnson is hiding something? What if he knows all the attention is now on the elite run game the Bears possess and this is the game to air it out? He clearly thinks he has something on LeFleur. What is Ben up to…?
HOMER STUPID BET ALERT (before the Odunze news!!)
2024-25 NBA Finals Teams: Where Are They Now?
OKC Thunder
OKC is 22-1. Remember when Pardon My Take said last year's Thunder team might be the worst team of their brewing dynasty? That's looking about right. The only NBA teams to ever start a season 22-1 are the 1969-70 Knicks, 1993-94 Rockets, and 2015-16 Warriors. Only the Warriors failed to win it all.
Indiana Pacers
Things did NOT start great this year for the Pacers as they try to figure out life without Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner. Especially in the shooting efficiency arena. They failed to hit the league median in shooting efficiency in any of their first 14 games. That is… not good.
Blue curve shows league-wide shooting efficiency distribution. Dots start at bottom and go up.
They follow that up with an inexplicable 92nd percentile (pays to play the Hornets I guess) efficiency game before kind of regressing to league average. Which is a great improvement. All in all - this team is 4-18. This is sad to see because they were legitimately the most fun team to watch in the playoffs last year. Not even just those crazy end game come backs. Just the way they played. Easy team to root for as a neutral fan.
Chicago Bulls WTF…
I don't even think I can say I'm a Bulls fan anymore. I stopped watching them on a regular basis after Derrick Rose and I tell myself it's in protest of what Jerry Reinsdorf is doing with this franchise. If y'all keep watching and going to the games, it's kind of on you for what he's doing. I am part of the resistance (I also don't have whatever package to watch the games out here in California and they just aren't worth clicking x's for).
The Bulls started off to a surprising 6-1 start that no one really saw coming. Now they are in contention for the play-in spot which is what everyone was expecting. Death. Taxes. Bulls in the play-in. From 6-1 to 9-12. This includes a loss to the 3-15 Pelicans, 5-14 Hornets, and 4-16 Pacers consecutively. And hang on now - again to the Pacers last night. They aren't the first team to go 6-1 and 9-12 in the same season though. Shout out 2004-05 Jazz. They would go on to have the second worst record in the West.
That's all I got for today. Enjoy college football. Will try to have some stuff on that next week.