Heat 95, Hawks 79.
Pee-yoo, what a stinker. The effort was certainly ugly from a team standpoint: 27 first half points, 7 total team assists, and 19 turnovers. Eww. But on a night when so much went wrong for the team, point guard Mike Bibby deserves special mention.
As stat guy for the Hawks and Thrashers, I often dig up interesting nuggets that (for obvious reasons) we could never publish on the video board. Obviously, we're trying to pump up the team and its fans, so only positive graphics get keyed. This is as it should be. But it's worth mentioning - even if we can't in a more visible forum - that Mike Bibby had the single worst game of his 11-year NBA career last night.
Going by John Hollinger's "Game Score" stat, which aggregates a player's single game box score into one tidy metric, Bibby's line of 2 points on 1-6 FG, 0-3 FT, 0 assists and 5 turnovers in 32 minutes equals a Game Score of -5.5.
(For those interested in how Game Score is calculated, the formula is 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. )
How bad is a Game Score of -5.5? Put it this way: the infamous gag job by the Knicks' John Starks in Game 7 of the '94 Finals (8 points, 2-18 FG, 0-11 3FG (!), 2 reb, 2 assts) works out to -3.4. Ouch.
So yeah, Bibby had a rough outing. 767 games over 11 terrific seasons, and there's a single number that objectively states, "yup, that was pretty much your worst day at the office ever".
And...now you know.
