MOB's Gage Smith posts first triple-double in Slamball history

Gage Smith turned a 57-23 MOB win over Buzzsaw into a line SlamBall had never seen before, finishing with 10 points, 11 stops and 16 loose ball recoveries for the first triple-double in league history. The game came during a run in which MOB kept burying opponents under the same kind of scoreline, and it gave the league its clearest answer yet to a simple question: what does a team have to survive to beat MOB?

The answer was more than one hot shooter or one lucky stretch. MOB was beating teams by margins that kept stacking up, including 72-44 over the Slashers, 49-36 over Lava, 62-32 over Gryphons, 75-35 over Rumble, 57-23 over Buzzsaw, 66-33 over Gryphons and 88-50 over Rumble. Those numbers were not isolated blowouts. They were the pattern of a team that could force pace, absorb momentum swings and still finish every possession with fresh legs and fresh options.

That depth showed up in the lineup as much as the scoreboard. Cameron Horton handled, Darius Clark and Brandon Simpson worked as gunners, Smith and Dionte Byrd anchored the stopper spots, Justin Holloway and Cam Hollins added more scoring options, and Jordan Jones gave the group extra size and versatility. Against that kind of rotation, opponents did not just have to score. They had to last long enough to keep the floor from tilting.

Smith sat at the center of it all. The league listed the Elizabeth, Colorado native as MOB’s stopper and team captain, then later named him Series 6 MVP and Defensive Player of the Year on Aug. 15, 2023. In a league preview, he was already second in stops per game at 9.0, trailing Lava’s Faysal “Fessy” Shafaat at 9.6. The triple-double only hardened that case, coming in the middle of a stretch when MOB was still perfect and Smith was piling up one defensive event after another.

SlamBall’s 2023 return season, known as Series 6, ended with MOB as the only undefeated team and then an 18-0 champion after a 61-32 win over the Slashers at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas. That run produced the league’s first triple-double, an undefeated champion and a standard everyone else spent the rest of the season chasing.