(computer game sounds)
(upbeat music)
- [Seth Rosenthal] Here's a game you don't wanna win.
You're a basketball player.
You get one point every time you lose possession
of the ball before your team can attempt a shot.
Maybe it's because you traveled,
maybe you stood somewhere you're not supposed to,
or let the ball go out of bounds.
Maybe you just lost the ball straight into
an opponent's hands.
Do this a handful of times in one game
and no one's gonna notice.
Do it like a dozen or more times,
and you might just set a high score.
These are turnovers.
They've always existed, but the NBA didn't start
keeping track of them individually until the 1970s,
after the ABA did so.
These days, NBA teams average 14 or 15 turnovers
per 48-minute game.
But every once in awhile a player, one person,
will commit nearly that many TO's by themselves.
How the hell does that happen?
To answer, we should begin by looking at
John Drew's high score,
which went unmatched for decades.
Drew is perhaps most famous for being the first player
banned from the NBA under David Stern's severe
substance abuse policy.
But even as addiction began to derail his career
in the late 70s, Drew starred for the Atlanta Hawks.
The forward led Atlanta in scoring
as they improved from bottom dwellers to playoff contenders
under coach Hubie Brown.
As Atlanta's centerpiece, Drew had
an extremely high usage rate.
In the 1978 season, a league-leading 31 percent
of Hawks' possessions with Drew on the floor
ended with him making a play,
mostly because he took a lot of shots
and drew a lot of fouls.
On March first of '78 in New Jersey,
Drew burned up even more possessions than that.
In an absolutely dismal performance
the forward missed 19 of his 28 shots,
including a deep buzzer beater that would've won the game.
And even worse, Drew committed an NBA record 14 turnovers.
The last of which was a timeout he tried to call
when the Hawks didn't have any.
Drew's nightmare game establishes a theme.
To turn the ball over a lot,
you first have to possess the ball a lot.
Your team has to be depending on you,
which isn't always a pleasant situation.
In the prime of his career, Chris Mullin was elite.
An All-Star and All-NBA first teamer,
the leading scorer for Don Nelson's beloved
Run TMC Golden State Warriors.
But before all that, in 1987-88,
he was just a third year player in a very tough spot.
Mullin was struggling with alcohol addiction,
and after coach George Karl suspended him,
spent much of December in rehab.
By the time Mullin felt healthy enough to return,
the Warriors had thrown their season away.
A spate of trading dating back to November
left Golden State without any of the prior year's
top three scorers.
And the tanking only continued.
In mid-March Karl resigned as coach.
In the weeks following, Terry Teagle and Rod Higgins
suffered season-ending injuries.
Which meant that on March 31st in Utah,
the Warriors had no choice but to depend on
24-year-old Chris Mullin playing out of position.
Mullin finished plays remarkably well that night,
scoring an efficient 31 points.
But he was the focus of the league-best Jazz defense
and their legendary basketball stealer, John Stockton.
So on top of all those positive stats,
Mullin coughed the ball up 13 times.
But this is the hazard of being a first option.
For decades after John Drew had 14 turnovers,
Mullin's 13 was the only performance to come close.
But here's every NBA player ever to record
exactly 12 turnovers in a game.
Almost every single person on this list
was an All-Star at some point in his career.
The only one who wasn't is Damon Stoudamire,
who in January of 1997, had to play point guard
for the woefully undermanned Raptors,
against the mighty Chicago Bulls dynasty.
The young Stoudamire had 12 turnovers that night, yes,
but also 11 assists,
which brings us to another high score risk factor.
Passing.
Every pass is a dice roll.
The ball could miss its intended target,
sail out of bounds, or get picked off by an opponent.
So it's no surprise that when someone finally matched
Drew's high score of 14 turnovers,
it was Jason Kidd, one of the most
productive passers in hoops history.
It's important here to understand that Kidd
didn't rack up assists by throwing tons of
crisp, fundamental passes.
He was not John Stockton.
Kidd was ambitious and indulgent with his passing,
he rolled those dice.
He threw look-aways, and went behind his back
just for funsies.
My personal favorite Kidd assist is this one,
side-spinning the ball around several Knicks
to lead Lucious Harris on the break off four bounces.
Anyway thanks to his risk taking,
Kidd had a whopping six career games
with double-digit turnovers.
And clearly we need to talk about this one.
Kidd's performance in a loss to the Knicks
on November 17th, 2000
is perhaps the quintessential high score in this realm.
Kidd said he didn't take care of the ball.
Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy called Kidd's performance
one great 14-turnover game.
They're both right.
Kidd shot well, set up his teammates with 10 assists,
and completed the triple-double by grabbing
a bunch of rebounds.
He just mixed in a whole bunch of mistakes,
and made it a quadruple-double.
For better and for worse, Jason Kidd
played a ton of basketball that night.
Playing a ton of basketball summarizes why
Russell Westbrook and James Harden
contend for high scores in this game.
They both score a lot, and pass a lot.
Westbrook's got some Kidd-style
quadruple-doubles in the bag,
while Harden once surrendered possession 12 times
in a playoff game.
Some articles actually credit him with 13,
I think because a play like this one can be hard
to label as a steal or a blocked shot.
Either way, the Warriors won the decisive game five
of the Western Conference finals,
thanks in large part to Harden playing like
his skills had been taken by MonStars.
- [Announcer] As Harden dribbles it off his foot.
- [Seth] Here's an example of playing
a ton of basketball with bad results.
Harden was really pressing to create for others
just as much as himself,
but Golden State devoured all of his good intentions.
None of this is to say that only passers
run the risk of high-turnover games.
Look at a list of every player to record
10 or more TO's without a single assist,
and you'll see mostly big guys.
The types who don't roll the dice with passes,
but who, on their worst nights tend to travel,
get stripped, and commit offensive fouls.
Even low-risk basketball can go wrong.
But if you're looking for thee high scorer
in the turnover game,
I will make the case for Kristi Toliver of the WNBA,
where games are just 40 minutes.
Even in that shorter format,
Toliver managed to match Kidd and Drew
on their worst nights.
Playing for the L.A. Sparks on May 29th, 2012,
Toliver logged 31 minutes, scored 16 points,
grabbed some rebounds, threw some assists,
and turned the ball over 14 times.
But down two points in the final seconds
of her dismal outing,
Toliver dribbled the length of the floor,
hit the Tulsa Shock with a step-back,
and buried a buzzer beating, game-winning three pointer.
A pitiful high score with a heroic, happy ending.
After the game, Toliver said she let her teammates down
by "being careless and making bonehead plays."
But Toliver's teammates recognized that her turnovers
were an unfortunate hazard of high usage,
and they still wanted the ball in her hands
in crunch time of a close game.
And that is my big takeaway from this investigation.
You set a high score in turnovers not because you suck,
but because your team depends on you.
They need you to do a lot.
If you're in a dark period of your life,
unprepared, prone to risk taking,
or just off your game for a night,
doing a lot might also mean failing a lot.
It happens.