22.5 Plus and 30 Plus "Game Scores" -- Who is the Best?

The idea of a "Game Score" statistic is basically to determine whether someone had a good game or not (rather than me searching through the box score, what generally would these stats, when combined, say about a player.

A Game Score is calculated as noted here   https://captaincalculator.com/sports/basketball/game-score-calculator/

That calculator will also allow you to plug in some standard values for a player and figure out what that guy is probably doing on a nightly basis.  For example, LeBron so uniformly goes 27-7-7 with a steal and a block that the people have lobbied to have the 27-7-7 part called a "LeBron."  So if you plug in those values and have him shoot 50% from the floor and 70% from the line and turn it over 4 times, that is a 20.1 Game Score.

It is fair to say that a typical LeBron "Game Score" would be pretty welcome news to any coach in the league for any guy he had.  The inventor of Game Score says he intended for 10 to be a "good" starter Game Score.  I would consider the scale (based upon reviews I have done) to be as follows:

Good bench Game Score - 7
OK Starter Game Score - 10
Good Night for a Starter - 15
Very Good - 22,5
Outstanding (top 2 in the league that night) - 30
Superstar Level (rare for even great players) - 40
Call the Media - 50
Historically great 60 (it has happened 3 times)


With that as a baseline, I considered this question -- what NBA greats have had the most 22.5+ and 30+ games, and, more importantly, what percentage of their overall games were at these levels?

There were 23 guys who appeared on at least one of the "most total games" lists, limited to the top 20 in either category.

Of these 23 guys, here are how they did in percentage of regular season games over 22.5 Game Score

1.  Jordan 53%
James 51.3%
Durant 41.1%
Barkley 38.5%
David Robinson 35.6%
Karl Malone 35.5%
Larry Bird 34.3%
Shaq 34%
Hakeem 33.6%
Harden 33.5%
Curry 33.3%
Magic 33.2%
Iverson 31.2%
Nique 30.55%
Westbrook 30.3%
CP3 - 30%
Kobe 29.9%
Wade 29.8%
Clyde Drexler 25.7%
Dirk 21.5%
Stockton 20.2%
Garnett 19.9%
Duncan 19.3%

So, we should probably stop here.  Basketball-reference.com has records back to 1980.  So Bird and Magic are all in.  Kareem only gets the declining part of his career, Wilt, Oscar, West, Mikan, Pettit get nothing. 

And what we see is that Good Team Defense is not generally rewarded (Duncan, KG, Stockton, Wade, Kobe, CP3 all plus defenders) while big scoring generally is rewarded (Iverson and Dominique Wilkins are not better players than KG or Duncan). 

But, if you do a grading curve and say 10% get A's, 25% get B's, 35% get C's, 20% get Ds and 10% get Fs, you'd have

2 As - Jordan, James,
1 A minus -- Durant

1 B+ Barkley

6 Bs -- David, Karl, Bird, Shaq, Hakeem, Harden

8 Cs - Curry, Magic, Iverson, Nique, Westbrook, CP3, Kobe, Wade

1 D+  Drexler

2 Ds - Dirk, Stockton

1 D minus - Garnett

1 F - Duncan



On the 30 Plus Game Score, Michael Jordan so completely dominates this stat that he gets an A+ and literally no one else deserves an A.  Michael destroys the curve.

1 A plus -- Jordan 24%
1 B+ - James 14.3%

8 Bs - Barkley 13.2%, Harden 12.95%, Bird 12.5%, David 11.6%, Curry 11.4%, Durant and Hakeem 10.5%, Shaq 10.3%

5 Cs - Magic 9.7%, Karl Malone 9.4%, Iverson 8.9%, Westbrook 8.8%, Kobe 8.3%

4 D's -- Wade & Nique 7.8%, Clyde 7.5%, CP3 7.3%

4 Fs -- Dirk, Stockton, KG, Duncan (all under 4%).



The lesson here is that a Game Score of 30 is pretty rare, even for great players.  Jordan did it every 4 games, James every 7 games, but generally doing it even once out of every  8 games is pretty awesome and every 10 games is hard to do even for all-time greats.


If you drop down to 15+ as a Game Score, you will see that Jordan and James and Durant all are "good" or better 80% of the time (Jordan and James 81%, Durant 79%).  Charles and Karl are in the 70s and then everyone else is in the 60s or 50s.  Remarkably, Bird only had a 15+ Game Score 53% of the time, next to last after Stockton (50%).

 
We can examine that another time, but what is the answer here?  Who are the best and most consistent in the 22.5 and 30 Game Scores?

The guys who are top 12 players in those categories combined:

12th - Magic (ekes in, by far the least consistent of these 12)
11th - Shaq
10th - Curry (wins tie with Shaq as Curry has a 7th place v. Shaq's 8th)
9th - Karl Malone
8th -- Hakeem
7th - Harden
6th - Durant
5th - David Robinson
4th - Bird
3rd - Barkley
2nd - James
1st - Jordan

Upside surprises - Harden, David, Barkley

Downside surprises - Kobe, Russ, CP3.