The 5 Best NBA Performances From Last Week: Getting Hot Up North
If you still haven't checked out numberFire Live, you need to.
You can follow games from the tip to the final buzzer with live win probabilities at your disposal. You can also dive a little deeper into each play as well as each player's impact on the game.
That's where the numberFire Live Leaders tab comes in.
This lists each night's top performers and performances on a scale of 1 to 100, according to production and efficiency.
Each of these five performers earned a rating of 100, a perfect score, for their respective performances. They are listed in order of their nERD (a measure of a player's total contribution, based on efficiency) from that particular game.
Victor Oladipo, Orlando Magic
Of these five performances, Victor Oladipo's was by far the best and most efficient. In a matchup with LeBron James and the Cavaliers, Oladipo tallied a game-high 45 points, making up 43.7% of his team's points in a six-point defeat. To do so with great shooting precision -- hitting 16 out of his 22 field goal attempts, with 6 out of 7 from deep not to mention seven of eight from the charity stripe -- while shouldering such a large load (33.3% Usage Rate) is the reason why Oladipo ended this week with the highest nERD in an individual performance.
Doug McDermott, Chicago Bulls
Last month, Chicago's injury woes caused us to wonder whether Doug McDermott was finally breaking out. At the time it appeared so, but after the returns of both Mike Dunleavy and Jimmy Butler his opportunity and production fell off again. This past week, McDermott picked his production up once more, with his most notable performance coming against the Raptors Monday night. In the the come-from-behind victory, McDermott scored 29 points on 9 of 11 from the floor, 4 of 5 from three and 7 of 8 from the free throw line. I'd say scoring nearly 30 all the while missing a total of three shots on the night makes for a very efficient performance.
Kyle Lowry, Toronto Raptors
Oladipo may own this past week's best single performance, but no one had a better week than Lowry. He totaled two games in which he scored a perfect 100 rating and a nERD of at least 52. The first of his two outstanding performances came against the Bucks on Tuesday, as the Toronto point man accounted for 25 points, 11 assists and 4 rebounds in a mere 28 minutes of play.
The other took place at home against a more worthy Eastern Conference opponent, the Boston Celtics, in what ended as a 105-91 victory for the Raptors. Lowry was once again our MVP of the game as he tallied the highest nERD score of the game with across-the-board contributions -- 5 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals and one block -- to go with 32 points on 14 shots.
Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors
It's weird to say this, but Stephen Curry is last on our list of great performances over the last week of play in the NBA. That isn't anything for the reigning MVP to be ashamed of though. In a blowout victory against the Knicks, Curry played just 28 minutes, but he made use of each and every second of that, amassing 34 points with a True Shooting Percentage of 81.4% and a Usage Rate of 35.8%. Another day in the kitchen for the Chef.
