Heading into this postseason, former Razorback Patrick Beverley had played in 17 playoff games since his first postseason foray with Houston in 2013. On Sunday night, he bested them all with 21-point, 10-rebound, 3-assist, 2-steal masterpiece as the Rockets blasted the Thunder 118-87.
He walked away with an all-time playoff-high 19.4 “game score,” which is a metric stats maven/Grizzlies executive John Hollinger created to roughly measure of a player’s productivity for a single game.
Beverley’s previous two best playoff games came in the first four games of the opening round of the 2013. That series also featured a matchup against the Thunder, and Beverley’s most memorable came on the heels of the unintentional injury he caused to Russell Westbrook:
As you can see in these basketball-reference.com stats below, Beverley had a 17.6 game score in Game 2 of that series, and a 15.2 game score in Game 4. Otherwise, until Sunday night, he’d mostly struggled during the postseason. [The tables below are scrollable. Scroll to the right to see more stats such as game score].
2013
2014
2016
*Game Score, according to basketball-reference.com, is the formula PTS + 0.4 * FG – 0.7 * FGA – 0.4*(FTA – FT) + 0.7 * ORB + 0.3 * DRB + STL + 0.7 * AST + 0.7 * BLK – 0.4 * PF – TOV. The scale is similar to that of points scored, (40 is an outstanding performance, 10 is an average performance, etc.)
Similarly, former Razorback Joe Johnson had experienced a 20-game playoff struggle heading into this weekend. Since the 2014 playoffs, when he detonated against Toronto and Miami, Johnson had put together a string of 20 straight playoff games in which didn’t notch a game score over 14.2. Last year, when he played for the Heat, was especially depressing. The Little Rock native had eight postseason games with eight game score points or less.
That drought came to a halt against the Clippers, though, when Johnson’s 21-point performance on 9 of 14 field goal attempts led to a 20.1 game score and kicked off a weekend of Pro Hog greatness.
