Man, this whole Buddy Hield 84-game thing had me scratching my head big time. You see folks throwing this number around like confetti – Buddy broke some record playing 84 games in a season? Seriously? Everyone knows an NBA season is 82 games max! Smelled fishy right away, so I grabbed my laptop.

First step? Hit the NBA’s official stats page. Straight to the source, always. Pulled up Hield’s game logs for the season everyone’s buzzing about. Started scrolling… and scrolling. Regular season games piled up, but sure enough, 82 showed up. Okay, expected. But then… click next page. Boom. There they were. More games listed. Wait, what?
That’s when the lightbulb went off. Playoffs! Duh. Buddy made the playoffs that year, right? Those extra games count in his total appearances for the league season! My initial “impossible!” got slammed by cold, hard data. Felt kinda dumb, honestly. Had to meticulously add ’em up, game by game:
- Regular season tally: 82 games. Check.
- First round playoff games: a few more
- Next round? Added a couple more…
Added the playoff games onto the regular season ones. Kept punching numbers into my calculator app like a man possessed. And yep, when the dust settled, the total drumroll please… landed right on 84 games. The official logs backed it up. He played every single regular season game (ironman stuff!), and then his team played enough playoff games to hit that 84 total for him that year. The “record” wasn’t about a single season length; it was about individual game appearances spanning both parts of the campaign. Totally legit.
Felt like I cracked some weird sports code. Spent way too long cross-checking forums later. Fans arguing, saying it’s impossible, others confirming it. My own initial doubt mirrored the online chaos. Why bother? Because nonsense stats drive me nuts! Gotta dig. Seeing that “84” float around without context was like an itch I had to scratch. Finally understanding it – how the regular season grind plus the high-pressure playoff battles combined for that personal milestone – felt pretty damn satisfying. Proof that sometimes you gotta ignore the chatter and just look at the raw numbers yourself.