Dancing With Noah

I arrived home last night (12/14/12) after an evening of wrestling with tallboys of Rainier and eating massive slices of New York style pizza and promptly did what I often do: Scoured NBA box scores in search of anything out-of-the-ordinary. This exercise is typically futile which is why it’s out-of-the-ordinary, but on this Friday night, I noticed something in the Kings-Thunder box score that caught my eye:

In the box score above, I highlighted the most intriguing stat of the night: Isaiah Thomas scored 26 points … in 16 minutes. This is no small feat; it’s prolific. It’s Reggie Miller prolific, Kobe Bryant prolific. I was curious to see if/when this had previously occurred and cross-referenced Basketball-Reference’s Player Game Finder which shows individual game data from 1985-86 to present. After plugging in the criteria (26 points in 16 minutes or less), I was pleased to get the following message:

All of this leads to a few quick observations:

• If Isaiah Thomas earned the starting spot last year and the team isn’t winning with Aaron Brooks running point … and IT’s stats are better across the board, why is Brooks still starting?
• As a follow-up question to the first point, is it possible that the same reason Thomas dropped to the bottom of the draft in 2011 (his height—5’9”) is the same reason Kings coach Keith Smart insists on starting Brooks (6’0”)?
• I can honestly say I didn’t see any of the game last night. And with that admission, there’s a good chance IT entered after the game was already out of hand and just gunned for the 16 minutes (15 minutes, 42 seconds to be precise) he was on the floor.
• That’s a lot of points in a short amount of time whether you’re playing with grade schoolers or in a JV game or in summer league, but against pros who are paid millions to prevent you from scoring? It’s a hell of an accomplishment.

So for your efforts on Friday, December 14^th, 2012, I award you, Isaiah Thomas, the first ever Dancing with Noah Extraordinary Performer of the Night (EPN) award. The opposite of this award would be given to Keith Smart for his complete inability to logically choose which players should be on the court and how much time said players should spend on the court.