Did I see a lot of his full games? No. I never saw a full game Babe Ruth played in either, but I'm fairly confident that he hit a lot of home runs. Not seeing something yourself doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
How is this relevant?
This is probably the only Rondo trade I've ever been on board with in my history on Celticsblog.
Ibaka is not where I thought he'd be by now, but he's still the guy who had 3 10+ block games in 1 month. I'm not even sure Russell ever did that. He still has HOF potential.
I'm fairly confident that Russell did that, probably on a regular basis.
How many other NBA players have done that?
How many full games of Russell's have you seen to make you so confident?
Don't get me wrong, I totally hope Russell did it too. I'm not really going to go searching for the record but in Hakeem's entire 4.6 bpg season he had 4 10+ block games. What, did Russell average 9 bpg per game in order to do this on a regular basis? (again, I hope so)
Most of the estimates I've seen on Russell's blocks/game are around 7.
Most I've seen are 6 bpg, but fair enough. I certainly didn't correlate that with 3 double-digit games in a month on a "regular basis."
The Hakeem example I gave was actually an outlier. Eaton, Robinson, and Mutumbo all managed to average 4 and a half blocks while only having 1 double digit block night the entire season. You do the math.
It's extremely possible for Russell to have averaged 7 bpg with 2 or 3 double digit block games per season.
It's totally possible he could have done it with zero 10 block games.
It's possible he had 10 of those games per season like some other poster who was too young to watch him randomly blurted out, which I showed was still not even close (~1.3 10+ games per month)
To do it in 5-6 months out of an 8 month season he would have likely needed over 20 10+ games per season.
Which would also mean Russell spent a solid chunk (another 4th?) of the season having bad nights. (are you seriously trying to make a convincing of an argument out of that Tim?)
That's why I was questioning your knowledge of Russell and how streaky his blocks were, since you said you were confident in your "regular basis" assertion.
Yes, I suppose that it's possible that if he averaged 7 blocks a game he got between 6 and 8 every game, or maybe that he got exactly 7 blocks a game every single game and never got 10 even once. But even without watching much of Russell, I'd guess that most people who know much at all about any nba stat would be able to tell you how remote the possibilities of such tiny variations in the numbers you're talking about.
If Russell averaged 7 blocks a game he'd need to exceed his average by just over 40% to get to 10. For the guys you mentioned, exceeding their averages by that amount would land them at roughly 6.4 blocks a game. All of them had at least 7 blocks in a game between 14 and 20 times in the seasons you're talking about. So they *averaged* hitting that number 3 or so times a month.
If you're taking the highest end of those estimates as fact. And even then it's right on the edge of maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. I've seen estimates as low as 3-4 bpg. The bottom line is there's too many variables that you can't answer to be saying it happened with such certainty.
I'm not taking the highest end of those estimates as a fact. I'm taking the middle of the estimates I've heard. Also, I said "I'm fairly confident". I don't think that really qualifies as "certainty". It's true there are variables, but there are also numbers to go by which you brought up, namely the frequency of high block games of the players you chose. You've said nothing to point to it being unlikely that a player averaging 7 (or so ) blocks a game would get 10 or more fairly regularly, and you didn't seem to interested in disagreeing with my estimates of his blocks/game until I pointed out how unlikely your claims were if you used that number.
Sure I did, I said the highest I remember seeing is 6. Again, I've also seen 3s and 4s. If 7 is your middle then I'd love to see which credible guys are saying 10. Hakeem and Robinson were about as athletic as they come, I'm not sure a guy 4 inches shorter than them could average 3 times as many blocks.
The numbers I brought up were to paint a picture of how tough it was for the league's best shot blockers to put up 1 double digit block game throughout an 82 game season, let alone one in every 4-5 games like you're guessing Russell did every year. Those guys were also throwing up nights where they had 0, 1, or 2 blocks and I figured/heard Russell was rather consistent, compared to you who went straight to assuming he had a decent variance. That's why I asked if you were pulling this from actually watching him play.
Most of the time when people say they are confident in something it's because they have either data or observation to base it on. Not because, "well, these projected numbers show it's possible."