In NBA history, only eight teams have kicked off their season by scoring 140 or more points.  You’d think that kicking off the season with such a barrage of points would be a good sign for the team going forward, but…

It happened 4 times in the sixties.  In 1960, the Cincinnati Royals beat the LA Lakers 140-123 to kick off their season, they finished that season 33-46.  In 1962, two teams did it.  The San Francisco Warriors beat the Detroit Pistons 140-113 but only finished the season 31-49.  The Boston Celtics fared much better – after their opening day demolishing of the New York Knicks, 149-116, they finished the season 58-22 (and won the NBA championship).

Later, in 1967, the San Francisco Warriors again kicked off the season sizzling, with a 144-116 win over the Seattle Supersonics. But they finished the season tepid, with a record of 43-39.

The same thing happened in 1984.  The Portland Trailblazers demolished the Kansas City Kings, 140-119, but finished the season at a highly mediocre 42-40.  In 1991, however, the San Antonio Spurs bucked the trend.  They followed up their 140-99 shellacking of the Dallas Mavericks by finishing a very respectable 47-35.

However, the grandaddy of all kickoff games was the one between the Golden State Warriors and Denver Nuggets, on November 2, 1990.  Golden State won the game (in regulation!) 162-158, even though Denver took 130 shots!  The overwhelming offensive prowess didn’t translate much to the rest of the season, though, as Golden State went 44-38 and Denver was the worst team in the league, finishing at 20-62, despite scoring nearly 120 points a game.

Everyone has seen the last-second full-court shot, tossed up as a hail mary at the last second (or sometimes just after the last second, by savvy players looking to keep their field goal percentage intact).  There doesn’t seem to be much reason why a player would take a shot from 70+ feet at any time besides the end of a quarter.  But it has happened three times in the last 7 years – let’s see if we can figure out why.

Feb. 7, 2012 – Utah Jazz vs. Indiana Pacers – 9:14 left, 2nd quarter.  With about 13 seconds remaining on the shot clock, C.J. Miles takes a shot from 80 feet.  Without video to watch and figure it out, my best guess is that the ball got knocked away into the backcourt and Miles either thought the shot clock was about to expire or he tried to make a long pass that ended up looking more like a shot.

Mar. 27, 2017 – New Orleans Pelicans vs. Utah Jazz – 3:23 left, 4th quarter.  This one is a little more obvious from the play-by-play data.  The shot clock was winding down and Raul Neto must have gotten the ball knocked into the backcourt and had no other choice but to attempt a 74 foot shot.  He didn’t manage to hit the rim, however, and the Jazz suffered a shot clock violation.

Apr. 22, 2016 – San Antonio Spurs vs. Memphis Grizzlies – 0:35 left, 2nd quarter.  This one also appears to be shot-clock related, and Matt Barnes must have at least caught the rim because there was no shot clock violation.  The other possible explanation for a 74-foot shot with 35 seconds left in the half?  Matt Barnes is Matt Barnes.

Mike D’Antoni and Steve Nash ran one of the most fantastic offenses the NBA has ever seen – with their philosophy of getting a shot up in seven seconds or less.  But you don’t often see a shot go up that quickly at the beginning of a game.  Here’s a list of those from the last five seasons who are trying to keep the magic of SSOL alive by taking the first shot of the game only three seconds in!

Notes:

• Tobias Harris was the only player to take a three-seconds-in shot from further out than 4 feet.
• Harris was also one of two who received the ball from a pass, rather than grabbing the jump ball himself. Brandon Jennings made the pass.
• The other was Joakim Noah who received a quick pass from Kirk Hinrich.
• Noah was the only shooter who also participated in the jump ball – quick moves from Jo!
• Shooting percentage on these is only 33% – not gonna win too many games shooting like that.
• Tim Duncan was involved in three of these jump balls.  I don’t know what that means, but I’m pretty sure it is important.

I tried to figure out which two players of the modern era have played against each other the most times.  I looked only at the last 30 years or so to keep the search simpler, but also because when there were fewer teams in the league, they played much more often.  For example, in the calendar year 1960, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain played 18 games against each other!

I searched around and couldn’t find anywhere this information existed.  So I did some research.  Assuming that to have the all-time record you’d need a lot of playoff games, I found the list of most playoff games played and started comparing players using Basketball Reference’s Head2Head tool.

The highest number of head to head games I could find is Derek Fisher and Tim Duncan, who have played each other in the regular season 49 times, and in the playoffs 47 times!

Though the number of wins is close (50-46 advantage for Fisher), unsurprisingly the stat contests easily favor Duncan.  He averaged nearly 19 points and 12 rebounds a game, while Fisher averaged about 12 points, 2 assists and less than 2 rebounds per game.

Fisher and Duncan faced each other in the playoffs 4 years in a row, from 2001 to 2004.

Courtesy of Basketball Reference

Six teams since 1983 have outrebounded their opponents at least 15 regular season games in a row.

The Cleveland Cavaliers did it from Dec. 2007 to Jan. 2008, winning 12 out of 15 games. That year the team surrounded Lebron James with many great rebounders, including Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden, Anderson Varejao, and Ben Wallace.  During the streak they outrebounded their opponents 48.0 to 39.5.

The New Jersey Nets and Chicago Bulls both did it for 15 games during 1997, two teams at the opposite end of the spectrum.  The Nets won only 6 of the 15 games spanning two seasons.  Strangely, the streak began after the Nets lost their best rebounder, Jayson Williams, to injury. Eric Montross and Tony Massenburg stepped up and each averaged over 10 rebounds a game in his absence.

As for the Bulls, they won 13 of 15 games in the streak, on their way to the NBA Championship.  They outrebounded their opponents by over 10 a game, 48.8 to 37.7.  Dennis Rodman was the key to this streak, fetching over 14 rebounds a game.

The Utah Jazz have had two streaks of 16 games outrebounding their opponents – with two very different teams.  The first time was in 2002, with a team led in rebounding by a 38-year old Karl Malone.  This was not an exceptional rebounding team, only outrebounding their opponents by 4 a game over the season.  They won 8 of the 16 games.

The 2015 Utah Jazz team traded away Enes Kanter at the All-Star break, leaving space for Rudy Gobert to begin starting for the team.  After the trade, they outrebounded their opponents by almost 7 rebounds a game, with Gobert averaging over 13 rebounds per game.  This trade turned the season around for the Jazz, as they won 13 of the 16 games in the streak after starting the year 19-34.

But the best streak of all time belongs to one of the best teams of all time, the 1985-86 Boston Celtics.  They had a streak of 17 straight games outrebounding their opponents, winning 13 of them.  The team was lead, of course, by the talented trio of Bird, Parish and McHale, and went on to win the NBA Championship that year.

Courtesy of Basketball Reference