Spurs largely spectators to NBA’s Season of Triple Doubles

Long before he became America’s coach, Gregg Popovich was a kid growing up in northern Indiana in the 1960s with basketball on the brain.

He watched as much of the fledgling NBA as he could, which in the early 1960s was still not much.

Whenever games were on TV, Popovich often found himself drawn to a do-it-all point guard for the Cincinnati Royals named Oscar Robertson.

“I was a big Oscar fan,” the 68-year-old Spurs coach said. “I remember being a kid, every once in a while we could get at game on TV and watch him. He was incredible.”

Robertson was a fantasy basketball star before such a thing existed. He piled up

triple-doubles like firewood two decades before the term was even invented.

What leaves Popovich gob-smacked today: Were Robertson playing in 2017, he would just be one of the crowd.

After Sunday afternoon’s games, 22 players had combined for 99 triple-double this season, crushing the old record of 79.

The triple-double has become so commonplace that Cleveland star LeBron James, the four-time MVP who brings the defending champions to the AT&T Center on Monday, has recorded 10 this season — and ranks a distant third.

“I think it’s astounding,” Popovich said of the triple-double outbreak.

Move over, Oscar

Oklahoma City’s Russell Westbrook has positioned himself as a modern-day answer to the Big O, posting 36 triple-doubles.

He is averaging a league-leading 31.2 points, 10.5 rebounds and 10.4 assists, constructing a compelling MVP case on the back of a three-pronged statistical anomaly.

The only other player in league history to average a triple-double for an entire season? You guessed it — Robertson, who logged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists in 1961-62.

Houston’s James Harden, perhaps the MVP front-runner, has posted 19 triple doubles — a number that in most any other season would have lapped the field.

Memphis coach David Fizdale grew up in Los Angeles at a time when Magic Johnson was a safe bet to go triple-double on any given night.

He was also an assistant coach in Miami when James — this generation’s Magic equivalent — was packing box scores for the Heat.

“It shows a person deeply engaged in all aspects of the game,” Fizdale said. “The triple-double just became a thing that if you are always involved, engaged, locked in — that was something you are always going after. You rebounded the ball, you passed the ball, you shot the ball. That’s what the great ones do.”

So far, the NBA’s triple-double explosion has escaped the Spurs.

They haven’t had one since Tim Duncan, at age 38, posted 14 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists at Memphis in December 2014.

The closest a Spurs player has come this season was Nov. 23, when Kawhi Leonard notched 23 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists in a road victory over the Los Angeles Lakers.

That’s not to say the Spurs have escaped the Season of the Triple-Double entirely. Westbrook got them for one earlier this month, going for 23 points, 13 rebounds and 13 assists in a March 9 OKC victory.

Minnesota’s Ricky Rubio had 11 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists in a March 3 loss to the Spurs, posting the triple-double that officially snapped the league record.

“I don’t think people appreciate how hard it is to do, just one time,” Spurs guard Patty Mills said. “Night after night after night, people struggle to show up, let alone get a triple-double.”

A product of pace

Mills says he’s never flirted with a triple-double at any level of basketball.

At 6 feet tall on tiptoes, one particular category was always his downfall.

“The rebounds always got me,” Mills said.

For players like Harden, Westbrook and James, the up-tempo style of play that has become en vogue across the NBA has made the once-rare triple-double a near-nightly occurrence.

After all, more possessions equals more opportunities to stockpile statistics.

Harden has benefited from the arrival of coach Mike D’Antoni, whose fun-and-gun offense once made an MVP out of Steve Nash in Phoenix.

Westbrook, meanwhile, has seen his numbers skyrocket after a significant offseason defection from OKC. When Kevin Durant left for Golden State, it put the ball almost exclusively in Westbrook’s hands for the Thunder.

“It’s all pace,” Mills said. “That’s the similarity. More possessions and shoot the ball and get up and down. It’s the way the game is going. It’s very impressive to watch.”

Spurs center Pau Gasol has recorded nine career triple-doubles, most on the team, though none this season. He too believes the NBA’s focus on tempo has rendered the league fertile ground for triple-doubles.

“When you have the skill set those players do and the players around you that can make shots, you have that possibility on a nightly basis almost,” Gasol said. “But you’ve still got to give them credit, because it’s not easy to do.”

Wins vs. statistics

Westbrook needs five triple-doubles to match Robertson’s single-season record. That pursuit has opened him to charges that he “chases” triple-doubles — that he goes out of his way to gain them at the expense of the team.

The argument has predictably spilled over to Twitter, where — of course — Westbrook’s wife and Durant’s brother recently engaged in a spirited back-and-forth.

Westbrook’s response to allegations of stat stuffing was succinct and memorable.

“I just play, bro,” he said.

OKC coach Billy Donovan has similarly brushed off criticism that he plays Westbrook longer in blowouts to pad his numbers. Thunder fans, meanwhile, can trumpet this statistic: Since the start of last season, OKC is 47-7 when Westbrook gets a triple-double.

“Give me a guy that’s trying to do too much and get all that done,” Fizdale said. “I’ll take those guys. I never looked at LeBron and said, ‘Hey LeBron, you are doing too much.’”

James, at age 32, is the old man of the NBA’s current triple-double club.

He drags the Cavaliers to San Antonio on Sunday with bigger fish to fry than personal statistics. Cleveland is 5-8 in March, and in danger of surrendering its grip on the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference.

Still, triple-doubles are important to James in one sense. They are a measure of a Cavs’ offense that is flowing properly.

“I can feel the assists because I know the ball is popping, especially out of my hands,” James said earlier this month. “The points I never think about, and the rebounds just kind of happen in the flow. But the assists, I always try to be conscious of that because I have to get my guys the ball.”

What does Popovich really think of the NBA’s growing rash of triple-doubles?

For a noted curmudgeon not easily impressed by individual accolades, his answer sounds a lot like a kid who grew up in the 1960s, rooting for Oscar Robertson.

“I’m not against anybody getting a triple-double,” Popovich said with a chuckle. “I’d rather have it be our guys.”