Three More Stats About the 2024 Playoffs That Will Capture Your Attention
From James Harden’s prolific iso scoring to the Pacers’ historically low turnover rate to the Celtics' puzzling fourth quarter struggles, yesterday’s article outlined three improbable stats that you wouldn’t expect to all occur in the same round of the same postseason. But wait. There’s more. Here are three more stats that will change the way you see some of the best players in the league.
1. DLo’s Impressive Turnaround
Last season, the Lakers played the Nuggets in round one of their two-year-long series of playoff duels. In a lopsided conference finals matchup, Denver swept the Lakers. No player received heavier criticism that D’Angelo Russell, and rightfully so. In four games, Russell averaged 6.3 points per game, shooting 32.3% from the field and 13.3% from three. As a result, Russell posted an ugly plus minus of -47 for the series—the worst by any of the 22 players in the series.
Despite a rough game one in which Russell shot 6-20 from the field and went 1-9 from three, he bounced back by posting a plus minus of +22 in a series where the Lakers were outscored by nine points.
As you can see, Russell not only had the best plus minus of any Laker in the series, but until Jamal Murray’s game-winning shot in game five, Russell had the highest plus minus of any of the 19 participants in the series. After posting terrible stats in 2023 vs Denver, Russell averaged 14.2 PPG, 4.2 APG, and 31.8% from three against them in 2024 (still not great but much better than last year).
Russell is likely to be traded out of LA for the second time in his career this offseason, but at least he can say that he rebounded well against a tough opponent in this year’s playoffs.
2. Murray’s Late Game Magic
We all know Jamal Murray is clutch. He has now become the first player in NBA history to hit a go-ahead shot with under five seconds twice in the same series (buzzer-beater in game two and 3.8 left in game five). But it hasn’t just been the two shots which sealed the deal for Denver that Murray has made. Here are some of his clutch stats this postseason.
No. 1 in points with 15.
6-7 from the field.
1-1 from three-point range.
2-2 from the free-throw line.
The Nuggets are 3-0.
Murray’s clutch stats in the 2024 postseason are virtually perfect, but he’s sustained an extremely high level of play in the clutch all season, shooting 57.1/40.0/84.2 splits. Of the 264 players with at least 10 games played in clutch time, Murray is ranked third in plus minus behind Kyrie Irving and Dereck Lively III with a +3.1 differential.
Murray is a true killer in crunch time, and after knocking off The King and The Brow in round one, I look forward to seeing if his clutch play sustains through the rest of the postseason.
3. Hart Hounding the Glass
From hitting timely threes to guarding the 76ers’ best players, Josh Hart has done it all in the Knicks’ first round series. But what has stood out to everybody about Hart’s performance his been his elite rebounding.
In this series, he’s averaged 12.0 rebounds which is very rare for somebody of his small stature. Since 1996 (the beginning of the stat being tracked), Hart and Russell Westbrook are the only guards who stand at 6’4 or shorter to average 12 rebounds in any playoff series.
Westbrook averaged exactly 12.0 rebounds in the Thunder’s 4-2 first round loss to Utah in the 2018 playoffs.
Unlike Westbrook, who only posted 1.8 offensive rebounds per game against Utah, Hart has been active on both ends of the floor, averaging 3.2 offensive rebounds per game despite spending most of his time on the perimeter.
Below this paragraph are the nine guys who have out-rebounded Hart in the playoffs so far. Every player on this graphic is 6’8 or above, a forward or center, and spends the majority of their time in in or near the paint. With Hart at 10th on this list, no other guard appears until Jaylen Brown who is 19th with 2.3 OREB per game, and nobody 6’4 or below emerges until 23rd place where Lu Dort has logged 2.0 OREB per game.
After ranking 2nd among all guards in the NBA with 8.3 rebounds per game (Luka Doncic had 9.2), we shouldn’t be surprised by Hart’s ownership of the boards in the scrappy, hustle-minded Philly vs New York series. But 12 rebounds per game for a guard is historically rare and shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Let me know if you like this stat-based content! There will be plenty more odd-looking stats that don’t seem real to the naked eye, but somehow, someway, are real. Records are broken in every game, so there are always more stats to be recorded.