Since the inception of the WNBA’s first season back in June of 1997, there have been roughly 8,100 games played – there could be a lot more, but I’m erroring on the side of caution. I could not find exactly how many games have been played, so I based this number on 10 teams and 30 games played each year since 1997. (They played 28 games the first season and are now playing 40. So I rounded it down to 30 games a year in rough estimation: there could be more than that, but I’ll stick with 30 games a year. There were also 8 teams to begin with and now there are 12, so I split the difference.)
Since its inception, there have been just 35 Triple-Doubles in the 27 year history of the WNBA. Caitlin now has one of those.
Based on my estimation of 35 Triple-Doubles in roughly 8,100 games, a Triple-Double has only happened in 0.0043% of those games. That’s how rare a Triple-Double is in the WNBA! Again, it could be an even lower percentage than that because I’m fairly certain that there’s been more games played than that because I’m not even counting the playoff games or the championship games.
Now. There have been hundreds and hundreds
This proves that statistically speaking (admittedly roughly for my part of it), it is EXPONENTIALLY harder to get a Triple-Double in the WNBA than it is to get a Double-Double. Caitlin got a Triple-Double on Saturday against the Liberty and almost (one rebound shy!!) had one against Pheonix 2 games ago – and she’s only played in 22 games of her WNBA career so far – PLUS, she’s the only rookie to have a Triple-Double!
Taking all of this into consideration, and all of the other records she’s broken and all of the wonderful things she’s done for the WNBA since becoming a member, how could she NOT be the overwhelming favorite for the ROOKIE OF THE YEAR?!
Thoughts? =)
EDIT: As pointed out to me by ‘MasterMisterPoopy’ below, the correct percentage is 0.43% – not 0.0043%. I just forgot to move the decimal point over two spots. 😉
It’s STILL less than 1% though! =D
