Jazz Triple-Double Drought Reaches Fourteen Years (And Counting)

Carlos Boozer’s triple-double against the Sonics — yes, the Sonics — happened 14 years ago Sunday. (Trent Nelson, The Salt Lake Tribune)

By halftime of Wednesday’s Jazz-Warriors game, it looked like either of Donovan Mitchell or Hassan Whiteside might do it: both Jazzmen had a chance to break what is now a 14-year Utah Jazz triple-double drought.

Mitchell went to the break with 9 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists. He’d get to double digits in points and rebounds but fell shy with just one assist after halftime. Whiteside had 5 points, 6 rebounds and 6 blocks at halftime; he would get to 9 points, 17 rebounds and 7 blocks. As with the 1,113 games before it, it was not meant to be. The drought continues. On Sunday — the Jazz were idle after winning their fifth straight game on Friday night — the drought officially reached 14 years.

Triple-doubles have become somewhat commonplace in the NBA. It wasn’t all that long ago that it was unthinkable for anybody to replicate Oscar Robertson’s feat of averaging a triple-double for an entire season. Then Russell Westbrook changed that beginning with his MVP season in 2016-17 and has repeated the feat in 4 of the last 5 seasons before his recent struggles with the Lakers. Even outside of Westbrook’s impressive numbers, there has been a league-wide increase in triple doubles, with 103 already in the 119 days of the 2021-22 season. That’s a triple double roughly every 1.2 days. In the 2020-21 season there were 142 triple-doubles recorded in the shortened 145 day season, nearly one triple-double per day.

Despite so many triple-doubles being recorded, the Jazz have now gone 14 full years since the last regular season triple-double. Carlos Boozer recorded a triple-double on February 13, 2008 against the Seattle SuperSonics. It has been more than 13 years since a men’s professional basketball team was even located in Seattle. 

Ricky Rubio recorded a postseason triple-double against the Oklahoma City Thunder, the SuperSonics’ successor franchise, on April 21, 2018, just over a decade after Carlos Boozer’s 22 point, 11 rebound, 10 assist showing.

Even if we count from Rubio’s playoff triple-double there have been 616 triple-doubles recorded in the NBA in the regular and post-season, an average of over 20 per NBA team — and none of them with the Utah Jazz.  All 29 non-Jazz teams have had at least one player record a triple-double between April 21, 2018 and today. Since Boozer’s triple-double, there have been 1,023 regular season triple-doubles, 34.1 per NBA team and none of them with the Utah Jazz (although 30 of them were by players playing against the Jazz).

The current Jazz triple-double drought is literally unprecedented in NBA history. Only one other team has ever gone more than a decade without a triple-double when the Toronto Raptors had an 11 year gap between Alvin Williams’s triple-double on March 23, 2001 to Ben Uzoh’s triple-double on April 26, 2012. Only five teams have ever gone more than 9 years without a triple-double, the Raptors, Pacers, Rockets, Heat and Jazz. Only the Jazz have done it twice, having also had a 9 year, 3 month drought between Mark Eaton’s November 1, 1986 triple-double and Karl Malone’s February 2, 1996 triple-double. 

10 Longest Triple-Double Droughts

Since February 13, 2008, 120 players have appeared in at least one Jazz game, and only Ricky Rubio was able to record a triple-double while in a Jazz uniform. Nobody has managed the feat in the regular season. That’s 1,115 regular season games so far. Insane. Amazingly, of the 120 players to wear a Jazz uniform in that time, only six have even recorded a triple-double at any point in their careers, let alone with the Jazz. Of those six, only Paul Millsap (once) and Rubio (twice) have  recorded triple-doubles at any point after playing for the Jazz. It’s as though wearing a Jazz uniform is anathema to recording triple-doubles.

In Jazz history, there have only been a total of 27 triple-doubles ever recorded if you count both the playoffs and regular season. Twenty-four of those came in the regular season and nine of those were recorded by players in New Orleans before the team moved to Utah. Eaton is responsible for a full third of the eighteen Utah Jazz triple-doubles, having six times recorded a points-rebounds-block triple double in his career. The only still-existing team with fewer triple-doubles in the history of the NBA is the Grizzlies with 22, but the franchise didn’t exist until 1995-96. Even with a 21-year head start and with Pete Maravich recording 7 triple-doubles in the five New Orleans years, the Jazz franchise is barely ahead of the Grizzlies. With Ja Morant already having four career triple-doubles, it is a foregone conclusion that the Grizzlies will pass the Jazz soon.

All this leads to a natural question, why are the Jazz the least triple-double friendly franchise in NBA history? In my opinion it comes down to a simple answer: coaching. As I noted above, the New Orleans Jazz weren’t an anomaly when it came to triple-doubles, the phenomenon didn’t really start until the team moved to Utah. 

Since the move to Utah, the Jazz have been one of the most stable teams from a coaching perspective ever. There have only been five head coaches of the Utah Jazz. Tom Nissalke coached the team for just over two seasons in an era when triple-doubles were less common and the Jazz were bad without any players especially capable of triple-doubles. Frank Layden coached the team for the next seven years before Jerry Sloan took over the bench for the next 23 years and neither had a style especially friendly to triple-doubles. (I think this is best evidenced by Eaton holding the record for triple-doubles with the Jazz in Utah – guys just weren’t getting double digit rebounds and assists very often in the same night on a Sloan coached team. Double digit blocks, however, were more common.)

After Sloan, the Jazz had a few brief years with Ty Corbin, a Sloan protege, at a time when they just weren’t very good. Finally, the last eight and a half years of Quin Snyder and his movement offense where assists are more evenly distributed have not lent themselves to recording triple-doubles.

So here we are: as of Sunday, one of the weirdest streaks in basketball turns 14 years old.

It’s not like Jazz players haven’t gotten close. Rudy Gobert came really close last season with a 21 point, 10 rebound, 9 block night against the Bulls, and another time registered eight assists. Mitchell almost did it on Wednesday. Mike Conley had a game where he finished one assist shy, and Joe Ingles once fell short by a rebound.

All told, there have been 17 games in the Quin Snyder era where a Jazz player has reached at least eight in three stat categories, and three times when a player missed by just one of three categories. But nobody has gotten all the way there.

Who will be next?

So, do you think you know who will get the Jazz’s next triple-double AND when it will happen?

Add a comment below with your guess as to the player who will end Utah’s 14-year triple-double drought and the 2021-22 game in which you think it will happen. If it indeed happens this season and if your first guess is the first one that gets both aspects correct, you’ll earn ultimate bragging rights plus win a small prize, your choice of:

• A pair of Jazz-theme Stance socks of your choosing from the Jazz Team Store.
• OR a Jazz book or Kindle e-book, such as John Stockton’s Assisted; Larry Miller’s Driven or its follow-up Behind the Drive, a collection of stories about Miller curated by his son Bryan; or 100 Things Jazz Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, by former Jazz beat writer Jody Genessy.
• (Shipping in the U.S. only.)

Guesses only count if they’re in before the start of the game in question. 

Hopefully this inexplicably long drought is over soon — and hopefully one of our readers gets to be able to say they called it!