Finally, A New Basketball Stat

I swear, I never intended to write about basketball here, and I probably will do so very rarely. Still, from Bill Plaschke’s argument for Carmelo to the Lakers Lakers comes the following piece of wisdom regarding Andrew Bynum:

How are you going to build a franchise around a player who has spent six years here without one defining moment?

So many things going on in this one sentence alone. What exactly qualifies as a defining moment? Plaschke seems to have worked it out for himself, but he’s not sharing. How many defining moments do you need to have to be considered a good basketball player? Can we measure them on a per-48-minutes basis? Who’s this year’s NBA leader in defining moments as defined by Bill Plaschke (henceforth, to be referred to as DMADBBP, for the sake of being concise)? How many championship teams do you need to play on before winning a championship counts as a defining moment? How many points does a DMADBBP count for?

Also, this:

The Lakers are near the top of the league in rebounding but are only 15th in the league in field goal percentage in the fourth quarter of games they trail.

What the fuck kind of stat is that? The Lakers have only lost 17 games all year; is their field-goal percentage in the fourth quarter of games they trail on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 10 or more points and Jack Nicholson’s hemorrhoids are acting up really a meaningful or relevant statistic? Who the fuck keeps these stats and who the fuck thinks they’re relevant? Does this stat count their field goal percentage after they catch up? If they tie the game, does it not count the next shot, but if they fall behind after that, it starts counting again?

This makes my brain feel melty.