Career Stats

In reaching the big, round hits’ threshold that historically conveys Hall of Fame status on all who cross it (except, y’know, Pete Rose), Jeter — like the 27 men who preceded him — actually amassed 3,000 hits in regular-season games. Nothing else counted. Not spring training or minor league games, naturally, and not MLB postseason games either.

Which prompted more than a few folks to ask: Why? Why shouldn’t hits that Jeter stroked in Yankees’ postseason games — in the various levels of American League playoffs and in the World Series — count toward his lifetime total?

The standard objection to counting postseason stats with those compiled in the regular season is, hey, those playoff and World Series games are bonus opportunities that other players do not get. To which a legitimate response would seem to be: Whose fault is that? Players, working together on a team, earn those postseason games. Some might argue that players on playoff-bound teams sacrifice more, and actually get fewer opportunities to attend to individual achievements, than somebody playing out the final 70 games each season in the second division.

Mix in all the other differences among players — date of career debut, time stuck backing up a star teammate, total seasons played, injuries — and it seems arbitrary to make postseason accomplishments off-limits from career totals (or to relegate them to a separate category).

It might be helpful or at least interesting for people to know that Michael Jordan didn’t just outscore Wilt Chamberlain by 873 points — he outscored The Dipper by 3,253 points because Jordan, with 5,987 postseason points, ranked No. 1 in that category to Wilt’s No. 15 (3,607).

Or that Boston’s John Havlicek jumps four spots, from No. 15 in regular-season points (26,395) to No. 11 in combined points (30,171), if he’s given credit for his playoff production for the Celtics. Oh, but he got way more chances than players stuck in Detroit or Cincinnati. OK, but Havlicek — or somebody else on his team — might not have had the green lights that Dave Bing or Oscar Robertson had.

If we kept and ranked according to total points, nothing would change at the top except the enormous numbers: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 5,762 playoff points would push his lifetime total from 38,387 to 44,149. Karl Malone (41,689) would join him as the only two members of the NBA’s 40K Club.

But Shaquille O’Neal (33,846) and Kobe Bryant (33,148) both would leapfrog over Moses Malone (31,793) into the sixth and seventh spots — and Malone gets credit for his points scored in the ABA. Hakeem Olajuwon would pass both Elvin Hayes and Dan Issel. And Jerry West would leap from No. 19 on the scoring list, regular-season points, to No. 12 (25,192 plus 4,457).