The Quadruple-Doubles in the NBA?

Basketball loves numbers. While there are more complex stats available, the five basic stats used are simple indicators of performance. These are points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocked shots. Players can do all of these things in the course of a game. If they do double digits’ worth of any of the five major stats, then it’s called a ‘double’. If you hear a commentator talking about a player getting a ‘double double’, it therefore means that that player has managed 10 or more of two of the stats.


So a solid defender might win 11 defensive rebounds, and make 14 blocks, or a good point guard might register 15 assists while also scoring 20 points; both would be counted as ‘double doubles’. Wilt Chamberlain, who played for the Philadelphia then San Fransisco Warriors (now known as the Golden State Warriors), and then the Philadelphia 76ers and the Los Angeles Lakers, holds the record for consecutive games with ‘double doubles’, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Between 1964 and 1967, Chamberlain played 227 games in a row and recorded ‘double doubles’ in each.


The quadruple double is therefore when a player gets double digits of four of the basic stats in one game. To give you a sense of just how hard that is, only four players in the history of the NBA have managed it. It was first done in 1974 by Nate Thurmond and last by David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs in 1994. It’s important to note that, as the NBA only started recording blocks and steals from the 1973/74 season onwards, before then it was not possible to get a ‘quadruple double’. It is possible that earlier players could have achieved this, but there is no way of verifying it.


Players who did a quadruple double It’s also worth pointing out that only eight times in NBA history has a player nearly done it, by getting a ‘triple double’ and registering nine in another category; Clyde Drexler did that twice, and 10 years apart, in 1986 with the Portland Trail Blazers and in 1996 with the Houston Rockets. Drexler dipped to a nine in rebounds in ’86, and a nine for assists in ’96. Hakeem Olajuwon, 26 days before recording an official quadruple double in 1990, nearly got one while playing for the Rockets against the Golden State Warriors.


He registered nine assists (as well as 29 points, 18 rebounds, and 11 blocks), and the Rockets video analysts then thought they’d found him assisting one more time, unnoticed by the official record keepers, which would have given him the ‘quadruple double’. This was checked by the NBA, but they decided they’d got it right first time, and Olajuwon was only credited with a ‘triple double’. He made up for that less than a month later against the Bucks.


The ‘quadruple double’s’ range is its difficulty: it requires excellence across both defensive and offensive aspects of the game and a willingness to do both. A player must score, selflessly contribute to his team’s attacking play with assists, win possession back without fouling, and work as hard in defence as in attack. Indeed, it’s steals and blocks that are the hardest to come by for a player who is otherwise more attacking; they require skill, to avoid fouls, and tenacity and application to achieve. Only the truly great all-rounders even get close to a ‘quadruple double’, let alone achieve it. It’s basketball’s purest measure of all-round excellence.