The Absurdity of Triple-Doubles and the Incredible 2017 NBA Season

What happens when five or ten NBA players all have historic seasons at once?

James Harden had a triple-double yesterday. You may not have noticed between Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins becoming the youngest 40-point teammates in NBA history and LeBron putting up a triple-double before blowing a 26-point lead and Russell Westbrook going nuclear and breaking records and ending seasons. Amidst all that, James Harden had an effortless 35 points, 15 assists, and 11 boards in another Rockets win, and it was barely even a footnote. Ho hum, another triple-double. Yawn.

We’ve become desensitized. We don’t let children watch movies with a lot of violence because of how much it normalizes it, but we’ve let the NBA regular season do the same thing to us. The stats and scoring lines are so explosive night after night that we’re barely even impressed anymore. Two nights ago Damian Lillard set the all-time Blazers scoring record and single-handedly saved their season. You already kinda forgot it happened, right?

And triple-doubles are at the center of it all, to the point that they’ve practically become a dirty word among NBA fans. James Harden had his 21st triple-double of the season yesterday. That’s more than any human not named Oscar or Wilt had ever had in a season before this year — and yet it’s literally half as many as Russell Westbrook. That’s ridiculous. We don’t know how to comprehend this stuff…