[Ed: This was written July 2020] We’re just gonna go ahead and assume the 2019-2020 regular season is over... If that changes, well then this article is irrelevant. Today we’re going to look at the record book, aka the highs and lows from each category accumulated over the season.
I won’t bore you with the charts but suffice to say I’ll be tracking the best weekly numbers from each of the categories — with a few exceptions noted below — and will update it season by season. Welcome to the RDA Hall of Fame and Hall of Shame! [ Record Book ]
Methodology
We’ll be highlighting the top five numbers from each of the nine categories, and the bottom three from the seven non-percentage categories. We've also logged historical numbers for 9Cat wins and losses, W/L wins and losses, and winning percentages for both methods.
Note: For high marks, we’re erasing WK21 as it was abbreviated by the NBA shutdown. And for the low benchmarks, we eliminated stats from WK1, WK17, WK18, and WK21 as they were all short weeks as well, owing to the beginning of the season, the All Star break, and the March 11th shutdown.
PTS
Despite being only ranked seventh on PTS for the season, NYK shows its explosive scoring upside by recording 633 PTS in WK20. In fact, all three of the top showings for PTS were from WK20, which leads me to believe that something was definitely in the water from March 2nd through March 8th. Or were there lots of Games Played that week for some reason? Regardless, we’re looking for the highs so 633 will be our first PTS all-time record. Surprisingly, there’s no showing by GSW here, who led the league in PTS on the season. It shows that while they were likely solid and steady, their PTS upside wasn’t as high as some of the other teams.
And start getting used to seeing MIL in the “low” section of these categories. I was only going to record the worst number from each category but MIL in WK9 was so putrid that they ended up making the low mark for nearly every category so I had to expand that section to top/bottom three. Strangely, WK9 wasn’t even MIL’s lowest Games Played mark — they recorded seventeen GP in WK9 — but hit fifteen a few times and then an ultimate low of thirteen GP in WK14. You would think WK14 was when MIL would set the low bar(s), but instead they were just really bad in WK9 I guess!
• High: NYK (633), MIN (612), CHI (599), POR (594), BKN / LAL (593)
• Low: MIL (78), MIA (89), SAC (100)
3PT
BKN held the 3PT crown for a few weeks until some wild shooting in WK19 and WK20 got NYK and MIN two showings each atop the 3PT record books. In the end, it was NYK’s 102 3PT explosion in WK20 that will stand as the benchmark for future generations
As expected, MEM was one of the poorer 3PT teams this season, and they threw in a measly four threes in WK6, followed up a few weeks later with another top three showing with just six treys for the period. Which record will be harder to beat? 102 or 4 threes?
• High: NYK (102), BKN (89), MIN (80), NYK (78), MIN (77)
• Low: MEM (4), PHX / MEM (6)
REB
Whew, now this makes sense. NYK and MEM were the two best REB teams on the season and they appear here — with NYK notching four top five weekly efforts. Interestingly, ORL was ranked a mere sixth in total REB but earn the high mark in this category with ORL for their WK5 attack on the boards with 264 REB for the period.
MIL sets the low mark in REB at all three worst spots — in WK9, WK14, WK2, respectively. Impressive stuff Dr. Zev! Only Thomas Bryant and Draymond Green averaged more than five rebounds per game for MIL, and they both missed plenty of games this season. Where art thou Jusuf Nurkic?!
• High: ORL (264), NYK (262), NYK (257), MEM (256), NYK / NYK (254)
• Low: MIL (41), MIL / MIL (42)
AST
CHI, UTA, and LAL were the second third and fourth best AST on the season, and they sit atop the single week AST rankings as well -- UTA shows up twice on the list. Again, WK19 and WK20 efforts had four of the top five showings. Seriously what was going on those weeks? And then once again, GSW was top ranked in AST for the season but doesn’t appear on the leader board here either.
OKC had the second lowest total AST on the season but didn’t dip low enough in any one period to crack the bottom three. Instead it’s MIL (again), ORL, and MIA showing us how not to pass the rock.
• High: CHI (173), UTA (155), LAL (142), UTA (136), POR (134)
• Low: MIL (15), ORL (20), MIA (21)
STL
Did you know that UTA was second in the league in STL this season? They were led by Thaddeus Young, Kyle Lowry, and Shabazz Napier — who were at 1.4 to 1.3 STL on the season. Only Young was top ten in total NBA steals, which means UTA really achieved their ranking through depth as they had eleven players average 0.7+ STL. With the whole team working together, UTA racked up 50 STL in WK19. MEM, the top ranked STL team on the season, only appears at the tail end of the top five, off by seven steal to own the single period STL crown. Maybe next year Grizz!
MIL “led" the way in worst STL with six swipes in their WK9 effort. MIA joined them with a terrific seven steals in WK9 as well. Six steals! That’s just three games worth from NBA steals leader Ben Simmons... Three other teams tied for third worst STL in a period with eight apiece.
• High: UTA (50), WAS (47), DET (46), NYK (44), MEM (43)
• Low: MIL (6), MIA (7), BOS / PHI / SAC (8)
BLK
The big boys dominated this category, as MEM and NYK were one-two in total BLK for the season and they show up all over the top five here. Hassan Whiteside paced the NBA in blocks this season with 3.1 per game and helped lead NYK’s plethora of big men to these massive BLK weeks, setting the high bar at 50 BLK from a WK11 effort. As for MEM, they cycled through a lot of bigs through their many trades but one constant was Mitchell Robinson's two blocks per game.
The third ranked BLK team on the season, LAL, was the only other team to crack the top ten in BLK by period, as they hold the seventh highest BLK with thirty-nine in WK3, breaking up the MEM+NYK monotony in this category.
MIL and PHX both tallied a single block once, with PHX gathering up just two BLK another time as well. And as expected, MIL’s one block effort came in their possibly historically bad WK9. We’ll just call it now: the worst week ever was WK9 by MIL.
• High: NYK (46), NYK (43), MEM (41), MEM / MEM / NYK (40)
• Low: MIL / PHX (1), OKC / PHX (2)
FG%
The high for this category was set by IND and MEM at 0.568, but there’s a bit of an asterisk. IND did their work on a total of 111 field goals in WK17 — the first week of All Star break — while MEM notched their share of the record with a robust 213 attempts in WK19. John Collins led the way for IND by shooting 73.1% on twenty-six shots while Elfrid Payton chipped in with 60.0% shooting on ten field goal attempts.
For MEM’s record tying week — perhaps the rightful actual record — Mitchell Robinson threw down 74.2% of his thirty-one field goal attempts, with Jarrett Allen and Nerlens Noel presumably dunking their way to higher percentages than Robinson’s but on much lower volumes. Since MEM led the way this season with a cumulative 0.528 FG% average, so its no surprise they show up here multiple times.
We’re not actually going to keep stats for this since it’s kind of a toss up, but for this year we’ll track it. The low was set at 0.329 by MIL in, you guessed it, their WK9 matchup.
• High: IND / MEM (0.568), CHI / MEM (0.563), MEM / SAC (0.560)
• Low: MIL (0.329)
FT%
Wiping away a perfect showing from the free throw line in WK21 from DET, the highest FT% mark was 0.966 from BKN in WK18 — the second All Star week — as they went 28/29 from the line, with the lone miss coming from Kyle Anderson. However, that was only in eleven Games Played. For comparison’s sake, DET’s WK21 shortened week also featured eleven Games Played, with Pascal Siakam and company hitting all twenty-two of their foul shots for the abbreviated period.
Due to those shortened weeks, the real FT% record probably should be 0.962 from LAC in WK6, but LAC also shot a very low volume, canning 26/27 free throws overall— albeit in thirty-four Games Played — with the lone miss coming from Nassir Little. I guess the key to a great FT% period is low volume!
The only top five FT% team on the season to show up on the top five leaderboard was BOS —with third-ranked FT% overall —they shot a fourth-best 0.931 in WK12. It’s too hard to manually add up all the FTM versus FTA so we’ll just roll with what we have, but note that any of these % records were probably set on low volume, which probably accounts for LAC showing up twice, as they were only the twenty-second ranked FT% team on the season.
We’re also not keeping official stats for lowest FT% either, but for posterity, the worst was MEM with 0.471 from their WK21. As that was the abbreviated week, the real low free throw percentage over a period was probably 0.500 FT% — from MIA and PHX in WK19 and WK18, respectively. Fun fact: That 0.471 effort by MEM was the only sub-0.500 mark in any scoring period for free throws, so good job tanking this category Josh!
• High: BKN (0.966), LAC (0.962), LAC (0.933), BOS (0.931), DET / HOU (0.922)
• Low: MIA / PHX (0.500)
Wins, Losses, Winning Percentage
We’re keeping track of two stats for all these, using 9Cat and W/L methods. The high for 9Cat wins is 133 by NYK and their 0.744 category winning percentage will pace the league until someone can beat it. NYK also had the least number of 9Cat losses, with only forty-five categories lost for the season.
MIL and PHX both only tallied forty-five category wins total, with MIL suffering 133 category losses to lead the way there. MIL’s 0.256 winning percentage is also the new low mark for 9Cat.
Going straight W/L, NYK had a 20-1 record, good for 0.952 on the season. The low there is MIL with their 2-19 record, with a paltry 0.095 winning percentage. Note: PHX tied MIL’s low with two total wins, but they had a tie versus ATL in the abbreviated WK21, so they only suffered eighteen period losses versus MIL’s nineteen. Three cheers for the league shutdown from Chad!
NYK’s lone W/L loss was a WK21 meeting against MIN. Thanks Jesse for preventing an undefeated season! Of course, that was also during the abbreviated week so maybe NYK could / did have an undefeated season after all? Needless to say, NYK’s twenty straight wins will likely stand as the W/L record for quite awhile…
9Cat
• High W, 9Cat: NYK (133)
• Low W, 9Cat: MIL / PHX (45)
• High L, 9Cat: MIL (133)
• Low L, 9Cat: NYK (45)
• High %, 9Cat: NYK (0.744)
• Low %, 9Cat: MIL (0.256)
W/L
• High W, W/L: NYK (20)
• Low W, W/L: MIL / PHX (2)
• High L, W/L: MIL (19)
• Low L, W/L: NYK (1)
• High %, W/L: NYK (0.952)
• Low %, W/L: MIL (0.095)
I won’t bore you with the charts but suffice to say I’ll be tracking the best weekly numbers from each of the categories — with a few exceptions noted below — and will update it season by season. Welcome to the RDA Hall of Fame and Hall of Shame! [ Record Book ]
Methodology
We’ll be highlighting the top five numbers from each of the nine categories, and the bottom three from the seven non-percentage categories. We've also logged historical numbers for 9Cat wins and losses, W/L wins and losses, and winning percentages for both methods.
Note: For high marks, we’re erasing WK21 as it was abbreviated by the NBA shutdown. And for the low benchmarks, we eliminated stats from WK1, WK17, WK18, and WK21 as they were all short weeks as well, owing to the beginning of the season, the All Star break, and the March 11th shutdown.
Despite being only ranked seventh on PTS for the season, NYK shows its explosive scoring upside by recording 633 PTS in WK20. In fact, all three of the top showings for PTS were from WK20, which leads me to believe that something was definitely in the water from March 2nd through March 8th. Or were there lots of Games Played that week for some reason? Regardless, we’re looking for the highs so 633 will be our first PTS all-time record. Surprisingly, there’s no showing by GSW here, who led the league in PTS on the season. It shows that while they were likely solid and steady, their PTS upside wasn’t as high as some of the other teams.
And start getting used to seeing MIL in the “low” section of these categories. I was only going to record the worst number from each category but MIL in WK9 was so putrid that they ended up making the low mark for nearly every category so I had to expand that section to top/bottom three. Strangely, WK9 wasn’t even MIL’s lowest Games Played mark — they recorded seventeen GP in WK9 — but hit fifteen a few times and then an ultimate low of thirteen GP in WK14. You would think WK14 was when MIL would set the low bar(s), but instead they were just really bad in WK9 I guess!
• High: NYK (633), MIN (612), CHI (599), POR (594), BKN / LAL (593)
• Low: MIL (78), MIA (89), SAC (100)
3PT
BKN held the 3PT crown for a few weeks until some wild shooting in WK19 and WK20 got NYK and MIN two showings each atop the 3PT record books. In the end, it was NYK’s 102 3PT explosion in WK20 that will stand as the benchmark for future generations
As expected, MEM was one of the poorer 3PT teams this season, and they threw in a measly four threes in WK6, followed up a few weeks later with another top three showing with just six treys for the period. Which record will be harder to beat? 102 or 4 threes?
• High: NYK (102), BKN (89), MIN (80), NYK (78), MIN (77)
• Low: MEM (4), PHX / MEM (6)
Whew, now this makes sense. NYK and MEM were the two best REB teams on the season and they appear here — with NYK notching four top five weekly efforts. Interestingly, ORL was ranked a mere sixth in total REB but earn the high mark in this category with ORL for their WK5 attack on the boards with 264 REB for the period.
MIL sets the low mark in REB at all three worst spots — in WK9, WK14, WK2, respectively. Impressive stuff Dr. Zev! Only Thomas Bryant and Draymond Green averaged more than five rebounds per game for MIL, and they both missed plenty of games this season. Where art thou Jusuf Nurkic?!
• High: ORL (264), NYK (262), NYK (257), MEM (256), NYK / NYK (254)
• Low: MIL (41), MIL / MIL (42)
AST
CHI, UTA, and LAL were the second third and fourth best AST on the season, and they sit atop the single week AST rankings as well -- UTA shows up twice on the list. Again, WK19 and WK20 efforts had four of the top five showings. Seriously what was going on those weeks? And then once again, GSW was top ranked in AST for the season but doesn’t appear on the leader board here either.
OKC had the second lowest total AST on the season but didn’t dip low enough in any one period to crack the bottom three. Instead it’s MIL (again), ORL, and MIA showing us how not to pass the rock.
• High: CHI (173), UTA (155), LAL (142), UTA (136), POR (134)
• Low: MIL (15), ORL (20), MIA (21)
STL
Did you know that UTA was second in the league in STL this season? They were led by Thaddeus Young, Kyle Lowry, and Shabazz Napier — who were at 1.4 to 1.3 STL on the season. Only Young was top ten in total NBA steals, which means UTA really achieved their ranking through depth as they had eleven players average 0.7+ STL. With the whole team working together, UTA racked up 50 STL in WK19. MEM, the top ranked STL team on the season, only appears at the tail end of the top five, off by seven steal to own the single period STL crown. Maybe next year Grizz!
MIL “led" the way in worst STL with six swipes in their WK9 effort. MIA joined them with a terrific seven steals in WK9 as well. Six steals! That’s just three games worth from NBA steals leader Ben Simmons... Three other teams tied for third worst STL in a period with eight apiece.
• High: UTA (50), WAS (47), DET (46), NYK (44), MEM (43)
• Low: MIL (6), MIA (7), BOS / PHI / SAC (8)
The big boys dominated this category, as MEM and NYK were one-two in total BLK for the season and they show up all over the top five here. Hassan Whiteside paced the NBA in blocks this season with 3.1 per game and helped lead NYK’s plethora of big men to these massive BLK weeks, setting the high bar at 50 BLK from a WK11 effort. As for MEM, they cycled through a lot of bigs through their many trades but one constant was Mitchell Robinson's two blocks per game.
The third ranked BLK team on the season, LAL, was the only other team to crack the top ten in BLK by period, as they hold the seventh highest BLK with thirty-nine in WK3, breaking up the MEM+NYK monotony in this category.
MIL and PHX both tallied a single block once, with PHX gathering up just two BLK another time as well. And as expected, MIL’s one block effort came in their possibly historically bad WK9. We’ll just call it now: the worst week ever was WK9 by MIL.
• High: NYK (46), NYK (43), MEM (41), MEM / MEM / NYK (40)
• Low: MIL / PHX (1), OKC / PHX (2)
FG%
The high for this category was set by IND and MEM at 0.568, but there’s a bit of an asterisk. IND did their work on a total of 111 field goals in WK17 — the first week of All Star break — while MEM notched their share of the record with a robust 213 attempts in WK19. John Collins led the way for IND by shooting 73.1% on twenty-six shots while Elfrid Payton chipped in with 60.0% shooting on ten field goal attempts.
For MEM’s record tying week — perhaps the rightful actual record — Mitchell Robinson threw down 74.2% of his thirty-one field goal attempts, with Jarrett Allen and Nerlens Noel presumably dunking their way to higher percentages than Robinson’s but on much lower volumes. Since MEM led the way this season with a cumulative 0.528 FG% average, so its no surprise they show up here multiple times.
We’re not actually going to keep stats for this since it’s kind of a toss up, but for this year we’ll track it. The low was set at 0.329 by MIL in, you guessed it, their WK9 matchup.
• High: IND / MEM (0.568), CHI / MEM (0.563), MEM / SAC (0.560)
• Low: MIL (0.329)
FT%
Wiping away a perfect showing from the free throw line in WK21 from DET, the highest FT% mark was 0.966 from BKN in WK18 — the second All Star week — as they went 28/29 from the line, with the lone miss coming from Kyle Anderson. However, that was only in eleven Games Played. For comparison’s sake, DET’s WK21 shortened week also featured eleven Games Played, with Pascal Siakam and company hitting all twenty-two of their foul shots for the abbreviated period.
Due to those shortened weeks, the real FT% record probably should be 0.962 from LAC in WK6, but LAC also shot a very low volume, canning 26/27 free throws overall— albeit in thirty-four Games Played — with the lone miss coming from Nassir Little. I guess the key to a great FT% period is low volume!
The only top five FT% team on the season to show up on the top five leaderboard was BOS —with third-ranked FT% overall —they shot a fourth-best 0.931 in WK12. It’s too hard to manually add up all the FTM versus FTA so we’ll just roll with what we have, but note that any of these % records were probably set on low volume, which probably accounts for LAC showing up twice, as they were only the twenty-second ranked FT% team on the season.
We’re also not keeping official stats for lowest FT% either, but for posterity, the worst was MEM with 0.471 from their WK21. As that was the abbreviated week, the real low free throw percentage over a period was probably 0.500 FT% — from MIA and PHX in WK19 and WK18, respectively. Fun fact: That 0.471 effort by MEM was the only sub-0.500 mark in any scoring period for free throws, so good job tanking this category Josh!
• High: BKN (0.966), LAC (0.962), LAC (0.933), BOS (0.931), DET / HOU (0.922)
• Low: MIA / PHX (0.500)
We’re keeping track of two stats for all these, using 9Cat and W/L methods. The high for 9Cat wins is 133 by NYK and their 0.744 category winning percentage will pace the league until someone can beat it. NYK also had the least number of 9Cat losses, with only forty-five categories lost for the season.
MIL and PHX both only tallied forty-five category wins total, with MIL suffering 133 category losses to lead the way there. MIL’s 0.256 winning percentage is also the new low mark for 9Cat.
Going straight W/L, NYK had a 20-1 record, good for 0.952 on the season. The low there is MIL with their 2-19 record, with a paltry 0.095 winning percentage. Note: PHX tied MIL’s low with two total wins, but they had a tie versus ATL in the abbreviated WK21, so they only suffered eighteen period losses versus MIL’s nineteen. Three cheers for the league shutdown from Chad!
NYK’s lone W/L loss was a WK21 meeting against MIN. Thanks Jesse for preventing an undefeated season! Of course, that was also during the abbreviated week so maybe NYK could / did have an undefeated season after all? Needless to say, NYK’s twenty straight wins will likely stand as the W/L record for quite awhile…
9Cat
• High W, 9Cat: NYK (133)
• Low W, 9Cat: MIL / PHX (45)
• High L, 9Cat: MIL (133)
• Low L, 9Cat: NYK (45)
• High %, 9Cat: NYK (0.744)
• Low %, 9Cat: MIL (0.256)
W/L
• High W, W/L: NYK (20)
• Low W, W/L: MIL / PHX (2)
• High L, W/L: MIL (19)
• Low L, W/L: NYK (1)
• High %, W/L: NYK (0.952)
• Low %, W/L: MIL (0.095)