By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net
Basketball and statistics have been going hand in hand for years – before, during and after the games. The computers are turned on, the lists get renewed and all this until the next game. At the same time, there are records that are hard to beat, or at best equaled. This is what the situation looks like with triple-doubles in the EuroLeague.
If you’re still trying to remember how many have been recorded and by whom, that’s precisely because they are such a rare phenomenon in the competition. Unique, one could say. Just like the player who got… all of them!
“I can still remember the games,” says Nikola Vujcic, the only Mr. Triple-Double in the history of the EuroLeague. One was against Arka Gdynia on November 3, 2005, and the other against Olimpija Ljubljana almost a year later, on November 30, 2006. Both came with Vujcic wearing the uniform of Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv, a team with which he has only good moments to remember, the best of which were the back-to-back titles of 2004 and 2005.
“Before the first one, I didn’t know that no one had ever recorded a triple-double in the EuroLeague before. It was a pleasant surprise for me. Of course, I was playing in a team that helped me a lot to get them,” says Vujcic, 40, who is now team manager for Maccabi.
“When I got the first one, I only found out about it after the end of the game,” he said about that night in the Menora Mivtachim Arena with his 11 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists.
“With the second one, my coach (as luck would have it, the team’s current coach, Neven Spahija) had taken me out of the game and somebody who was keeping track of the stats came up to him and told him I was only missing one more rebound. I had no idea. Who counts his rebounds and assists in a game?”
Well, if not the players, then the stat services definitely do. Like they did then, when they counted his 27 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists.
|
GAME |
POINTS |
REBOUNDS |
ASSISTS |
|
vs Arka Gdynia 95-68 (2005-06 RS R1) |
11 |
12 |
11 |
|
vs Petrol Olimpija 110-87 (2006-07 RS R6) |
27 |
10 |
10 |
Twelve years have gone by since then and the player who will manage to keep him company on the relevant list still hasn’t been found. Not that there haven’t been plenty of times someone got close to a triple-double. It’s just that, as it turned out, they were as close as they were far.
Panathinaikos OPAP Athens’ Nick Calathes got close three times last season.
|
GAME |
POINTS |
REBOUNDS |
ASSISTS |
|
at Anadolu Efes Istanbul 81-82 (RS R8) |
29 |
9 |
10 |
|
vs Zalgiris Kaunas 94-93 OT (RS R20) |
14 |
8 |
9 |
|
at Unicaja Malaga 79-90 (RS R26) |
12 |
8 |
11 |
Luka Doncic also got close before winning everything with Real Madrid.
|
GAME |
POINTS |
REBOUNDS |
ASSISTS |
|
at Fenerbahce Istanbul 77-79 (RS R15) |
20 |
8 |
10 |
But, again, Vujcic’s two remain the only ones.
“Calathes can definitely become the next player to get a triple-double. The rebound is his biggest obstacle,” Vujcic explains. And he’s right.
Panathinaikos‘s captain had the most double-doubles last season with 11, all of them in a combination of points and assists. And on those occasions when he got closer to a triple-double than ever before, one or two rebounds kept him from achieving this historic record. But that was last season.
The new EuroLeague season has begun and so have the double-doubles. Who will record the third triple-double in the history of the competition and when will they do it? Only time will tell…