Triple Doubles

Clever, thanks!

The meta answer is SHAQUILLE (Hint: Find a famous first name.)

The puzzle's title is "Triple Doubles." A triple double is when a player has double-digit stats (at least 10) in any three of five major statistical categories in basketball (for example, 10 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists). But guess what? You didn't need to know any of that! (If you did, great, but it won't help you here.)

In this puzzle, there's a different kind of "triple double" happening. In the three longest Across answers--SHARES HALF OF, QUIET QUITTING, and VOLLEYBALLER, there are pairs of repeated 3-letter strings (or trigrams, as they're called):

[SHA]RE[SHA]LFOF

[QUI]ET[QUI]TTING

VO[LLE]YBA[LLE]R

The repeated trigrams are SHA, QUI, and LLE--which, when put together, spell SHAQUILLE. As in, of course, Shaquille O'Neal, former NBA great (who has multiple triple doubles in his career!) and is a famous first name that satisfies the puzzle's hint.

this was a fun puzzle, and also, the first time i correctly solved a meta, so i got that going for me, which is nice.

Good one!

Fun! Though I was in the mindset of parsing triple doubles differently and got 3 pairs of E’s, L’s, and I’s. I submitted ELI, ya know, Eli Whitney every BIT as famous as SHAQ

Good puzzle, thanks for explaining the meta. I liked 23A