Team Inconsistent takes to the hardwood a-gayne tonight. Indy visits. "Pacers" are 7-5, losers of last two, fifth in the Least. "Heat," 5-5, 2W, seventh.

The way I'm a thinkin' now the best one metric to tell at a glance the difference between mediocre and good, good and great is Consistency. The players at the NBA level are all elite, the best of the best, cream of the crop. If you look at just one player, Josh Richardson, and his season average PPG you see 20.7. That's very good. But you gotta bring it every night, man. You have to be consistent. And Josh has not been consistent this season. Points per game through ten:

-21
-28
-7
-21
-11
-31
-15
-32
-27
-14

Watafa, JRich?

Now by contrast, and I am going to cherry-pick stats here, I am going to use rebounds, not points, as the telling stat for Hassan Whiteside:

-18
-10
-15
-14
-16
-24
-12
-8
-20

An average of 15.2/game. There is noticeably less deviation from the season average in Hassan's rebounds per game. He has been more CONSISTENT.

JRich may get there, he is still so young, but Whiteside is already there. You plug Richardson into the lineup every night and you never know what your're going to get. You plug Hassan into your lineup every night you can take it to the bank, he's gonna give you 15 boards, comme ci, comme ça.

The "Heat" have got an entire team that is inconsistent. As Pat Riley said he's got a lot of good-to-great players. That's why they're 5-5.