The Case for Shifting Attention to Totals in NBA Statistics

[Spurminator]

I am not operating under any delusion that I am the first person to pose this question, but why is the NBA the only major sports league that focuses on per-game stats instead of totals?

• In baseball, the homerun king is the player who hit the most homeruns that season. The strikeout leader is the pitcher who got the most strikeouts, not the one who had the highest strikeouts-per-appearance average.
• In football, we crown players who get the most yards, the most TDs, the most sacks, etc.
• In hockey, it's the most goals, the most points, saves, assists, etc. (I could be wrong on this, I don't follow hockey. Feel free to correct.)

Those stats (in addition to team wins and place) are the bases on which MVP's and other award decisions are discussed, dissected, and decided in those three leagues. If an MLB slugger gets injured for 20 games, and hits 2 fewer HR's than a player who played all 162, no one considers him the homerun leader even though he likely would have had the highest total if not for the injury. Injuries are part of the game.

Why don't we treat NBA stats the same way? Shouldn't the scoring leader simply be the player who scores the most points that season instead of the one who has the highest per-game average? Isn't it better for a player to score 2,100 points in 80 games (26.3ppg) than to score 1,800 in 65 games (27.7ppg)? The latter gave you 300 fewer points, including 0 points in 17 games. Why does the NBA narrative deem the player who scored fewer total points to be more valuable?

The NBA was so concerned with load management among star players that it instituted a ridiculous 65-game rule which does nothing but guarantee that many star players will miss as many of the 17 allowed games as possible while maintaining award-worthy per-game averages. I believe that if we focused on stat totals, there would be more incentive and motivation to play as many games as possible. I'm not completely against load management either, but the current NBA rules basically allow for a mulligan on 20% of the season's games with zero ramifications towards end of season awards.

Seven of the last 10 NBA scoring champions had both the highest PPG and the highest Total Points in the league for their respective seasons, so I would not expect this to be an entirely new paradigm shift. But I do think it would have a positive effect on the value of playing as many games as possible when healthy. Thoughts?

 

[Fabbs]

Agree.
Would also add a "per minute" with of course a minimum requirement can be very telling.
Wemby since coming back from his December injury has been a Per Minute dynamo and it's not like he's stat padding. 29 min per game..

 

[Blake]

Baseball puts more of a premium on batting average than number of hits and the number of wins a pitcher gets is weighted ridiculously high but I tend to agree