In sports, stat padding is an action that improves a player's
statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
despite being of little benefit to his or her team or its chance of winning. An example would be a
player throwing long passes with an empty backfield on first down in the fourth quarter of a game in which his team was already leading by a large margin.
Stat padding is also noticeable in
online computer games. A group of players might perform a series of actions which generally require little skill in order to raise a player's statistics. For example, in
first-person shooter
First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...
s, two or more players might join different teams and constantly kill one another, usually followed by a heal, revive, or
respawn
In video games, spawning is the live creation of a character, item or NPC. Respawning is the recreation of an entity after its death or destruction, perhaps after losing one of its lives. Despawning is the deletion of an entity from the game w ...
. Actions such as these are usually done on password-protected or empty
game server
A game server (also sometimes referred to as a host) is a server (computing), server which is the authoritative source of events in a multiplayer video game. The server transmits enough data about its internal state to allow its connected Client ...
s. An example of this in the popular online computer game ''
Battlefield 2
''Battlefield 2'' is a first-person shooter video game, developed by DICE (company), DICE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows in June 2005 as the third game in the Battlefield (video game series), ''Battlefield'' franchise.
P ...
'' would be when three players collude, one as a medic, another from the other team as a killer, and another person from the medic's team, called the "dummy", to be the victim. The killer shoots the dummy, and the medic then heals or revives his teammate. The killer shoots the dummy again and the process continues.
It is also possible to stat pad by completing objectives or performing actions in an empty server, or by co-operating with a player on another team. While co-operating with players on another team may pad stats, this is widely considered a form of
cheating
Cheating generally describes various actions designed to subvert rules in order to obtain unfair advantages. This includes acts of bribery, cronyism and nepotism in any situation where individuals are given preference using inappropriate cr ...
.
Notable players accused of 'stat padding'
Basketball
Russell Westbrook
Russell Westbrook III (born November 12, 1988) is an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, he is a nine-time NBA All-Star and ...
holds the record for most career
triple-double
In basketball, a double-double is a single-game performance in which a player accumulates ten or more in two of the following five statistical categories: points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocked shots. The first "double" in the term ...
s in the NBA, most of which involved heavy stat padding, many theorise.
Rajon Rondo
Rajon Pierre Rondo (, born February 22, 1986) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Cleveland Cavaliers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). A point guard, Rondo played two years of college basketball for ...
is 14th all-time in career
assists, and 16th in assists per game
in the NBA, but it involved stat padding, such as passing up a wide open layup to increase his assists.
See also
*
Running up the score
Running up the score occurs when a competitor continues to play in such a way as to score additional points after the outcome of the game is no longer in significant question and the team is all but assured of winning. Sporting alternatives inc ...
References
{{Reflist
Sports records and statistics
Sports terminology