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This triple-double should go in the stat book with an asterisk.
Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo appeared to purposefully pad his own stats during the closing seconds of Milwaukee’s 117-111 win over the Wizards on Sunday — seeming to deliberately miss a shot with no one around him so he could pull down his own rebound.
Through the first 47 minutes and 58 seconds, Antetokounmpo had 23 points, 13 assists … and nine rebounds.
“I was thinking about scoring the ball, but I feel like in those situations it’s best to kind of keep the ball,” Antetokounmpo said. “But yeah, I just try to play the game smart and kind of stole one.”
The extra board at the buzzer gave him a triple-double.
“NAH THAT IS THE GREATEST STATPAD OF ALL TIME,” one Twitter user wrote, supplementing the post with three crying emojis.
Giannis is in the thick of the MVP race, currently tied as the second-favorite with Joel Embiid at BetMGM, with both players well behind a heavy favorite in Nikola Jokic.
Jokic has a whopping, NBA-leading 25 triple-doubles on the season, with Antetokounmpo only having four even after the bonus one Sunday night.
It seems like the Nuggets star center has run away with the race, dealing as a -360 favorite at BetMGM (about a 78 percent implied chance to win).
Still, one can’t knock the hustle for one of the league’s premier stars boosting his own stat profile at the end of a regular-season game.