THE WEIRD STUFF · SOURCED AND CHECKED
The weird stuff, from around the league and from inside ours
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The 2025–26 season broke records that had stood since the sixties. The Knicks won it all, beating San Antonio 4–1 for their first title since 1973, and Jalen Brunson took Finals MVP. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won his second straight regular season MVP. That was the normal part. Here's the rest.
Bam Adebayo, a career 15.8 point per game center known for defense, dropped 83 on Washington in March. Only Wilt Chamberlain has ever scored more in a game. His previous career high was 41. In the same game he made 36 free throws on 43 attempts, both single-game records, after averaging under five attempts a night all year.
ESPNNikola Jokic became the first player ever to lead the NBA in both rebounds per game (12.9) and assists per game (10.7) in the same season. Wilt led in totals once in 1968, but the league has awarded these titles on a per-game basis since 1970.
NBA.comShai Gilgeous-Alexander ended the year on a 140-game streak of scoring at least 20, breaking Wilt Chamberlain’s record of 126 set in 1963. He scored 20 or more in literally every game he played.
NBA.comCharlotte rookie Kon Knueppel made 273 threes, more than anybody in the league, obliterating the rookie record of 206. He is the first rookie ever to lead the NBA in threes made, and he beat his own teammate LaMelo Ball by exactly one.
Yahoo SportsCooper Flagg put up 51 in April at 19 years and 103 days old. Nobody that young had ever scored 50 in an NBA game.
NBA.comVictor Wembanyama took every single first-place vote for Defensive Player of the Year, the first unanimous winner in the award’s 43 years. He also led the league in blocks for a third straight season at 3.1 a game.
ESPNDetroit went 60–22 and took the East’s top seed two years after losing 68 games. No team in NBA history had ever won 60 two seasons after losing 60. San Antonio pulled off nearly the same climb in the same year.
WikipediaThe Clippers started 6–21 and finished 42–40. No team had ever fallen 15 games under .500 and still finished above it. The 2017 Heat came close and stalled out exactly at even.
Yahoo SportsIn his 23rd season LeBron passed Kareem for the most field goals ever made, and became the oldest player to record a triple-double at 41 years and 44 days. Then he broke that age record again.
NBA.comTeams averaged 115.6 points a game, up from 113.8 the year before. You have to go back to 1969–70 to find a higher league-wide scoring average.
Basketball ReferenceFor the first time since 2023, three-point attempts actually fell, from 37.6 a game to 37.0. Free throw attempts jumped from 21.7 to 23.5. The league had told referees to start whistling defenders who swipe at a shooter’s hand, though nobody has formally connected the two.
Basketball ReferenceLuka Doncic won the scoring title at 33.5 a game and finished fourth in MVP voting without a single first-place vote. Cade Cunningham finished fifth and got two.
CBS SportsThe Knicks and Spurs met in the NBA Cup final in December and again in the Finals in June. New York won both, the first team ever to take the in-season tournament and the championship in the same year.
NBA.comEvery number above was checked against the source linked under it. A couple of the league-wide trend figures come from a single outlet and are marked as such in those links. Nothing here is estimated.
Our numbers are sitting this one out until October 20, and here is the honest reason why.
The scoring settings changed, and Sleeper rescored every old week to match. That means last season now reads as it would have gone under the new rules, not as it actually went. Records move. A 14–5 season becomes 10–9. Nobody wants to look at that.
So the rivalry grid, the record book, the luck index and the schedule swap all stay dark until we have games that were actually played under these settings. The moment the season tips, this whole section fills in on its own and every number in it will be real.
Nothing was deleted. It is all still in the database, it just is not worth showing you yet.
Everything below is pulled from Sleeper and recomputes on its own. Rivalries and extremes cover every season. Luck and schedule swap cover the season in progress, or the last one played.
Each week, every team is scored against all seven other teams, not just the one they were scheduled against. That all-play record is what you deserved. The gap between it and your actual record is luck.
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Keep your own weekly scores. Take someone else's opponents. Read across your row for every record you could have had. Green means that schedule was softer, red means it was rougher. The gold cell is your own.
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Every pair of you, head to head, every season this league has existed. Green means you own them, red means they own you. Read across your own row. Hover any box for the points in that series.
Pulling every season from Sleeper…
All-time, across every season. Updates itself.
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