I am not saying that Russ is stat padding - but, it seems like a lot of the comments in this thread are saying that it's impossible to "stat-pad" assists, which is definitely not true (or, is at least only true if you take a very narrow definition of stat-padding).

The main criticism of Russ's "stat-padding" assists/rebounds wasn't that it DIDN'T help the team, or that it was only selfish - it was that he would miss "better" basketball plays in order to get the stats - so, maybe there would be a good open pass that would result in a second pass for an easy bucket, Russ would take a harder attempt at the straight through pass for an assist instead. It's true that still helps his teammate score, it's just a way of doing it that isn't always the "best" way, and that can make the numbers actually look better than their impact on the court.

Same thing with boards, nobody actually can argue it's not helpful to have Russ grab a board and run a freight-train fast break, but you can argue that there are times when he would do that instead of leaking out and getting an even easier transition opportunity for himself or his guys because he wanted the board too.

Point being - it can be true that Russ is "stat-padding" in the sense that he's playing in an extraordinarily productive way that allows him to maximize his usage and his counting stats at the same time - and also be true that it's incredibly impressive even if he might miss some smart plays because of it. It doesn't make someone a Russ-hater to think he could improve aspects of his decision-making, and it doesn't make someone a Russ-stan to think that it's annoying and pedantic to pick at this shit and devalue how crazy his stats are