If 80s defense was so tough, why was the average PPG so high?

[ScrantonBulls]

The average PPG was between 108.1 and 110.8 PPG from 80-81 to 88-89.
From 89-90 to 92-93 it was between 105.3 and 107.9.
From 93-94 to 2014-2016, it was between 91.6 and 101.5 PPG.

We don't see a jump above the 80s scoring until 2018-18, which was 111.2 PPG. People always go on about how tough the defense was back then. If this is so, why did teams score so much without even shooting 3s? I understand the pace was up. Is the tough 80s defense a myth? Or were there just more "flagrant" type fouls? Also, if you're going to use the "I watched it with my eyes", you better have been at least 16-18 years old at the time. I often see people using the eye test or ripping people for not being old enough to watch, when the person saying this was like 13 at the time. If you're a younger teen, you probably weren't smart enough to do a quality breakdown of what the hell you were watching.

[tsherkin]

The average PPG was between 108.1 and 110.8 PPG from 80-81 to 88-89.
From 89-90 to 92-93 it was between 105.3 and 107.9.
From 93-94 to 2014-2016, it was between 91.6 and 101.5 PPG.

We don't see a jump above the 80s scoring until 2018-18, which was 111.2 PPG. People always go on about how tough the defense was back then. If this is so, why did teams score so much without even shooting 3s? I understand the pace was up. Is the tough 80s defense a myth? Or were there just more "flagrant" type fouls? Also, if you're going to use the "I watched it with my eyes", you better have been at least 16-18 years old at the time. I often see people using the eye test or ripping people for not being old enough to watch, when the person saying this was like 13 at the time. If you're a younger teen, you probably weren't smart enough to do a quality breakdown of what the hell you were watching.

Track that average PPG against average pace.

[Calvin Klein]

I think the 90s are more talked about when it comes to defense, not so much the 80s.

[EmpireFalls]

Defense has never been able to be that tough since the introduction of the 3point line.

[cupcakesnake]

Try not using ppg to determine if offense was good. Pace can be high, which leads to more possessions, which leads to more points, even if teams are struggling to score on a possession by possession basis.

Use offensive rating. It's how many points are scored per 100 possessions, which erases pace from the equation for you.

Also... 80s defenses weren't "so" tough. What makes you think they were tough?
You had the Bucks and Celtics, the Jazz coming in the second half of the decade with Mark Eaton. Then the Bad Boy Pistons emerge and pseudo-revolutionize defense at the very very end of the 80s but their best defensive team was 1990.

In the 90s really big defenses start ramping things up with frontcourts around Ewing, Hakeem, and Robinson... but if you're looking for the best era of defensive basketball, it's the early 2000s. Offensive rating is the lowest from 1998 to 2007.

[dhsilv2]

I think the 90s are more talked about when it comes to defense, not so much the 80s.

Tell that to the people who bring up the bad boy pistons...to be fair the 90 team only gave up 98 a game.

[dhsilv2]

Try not using ppg to determine if offense was good. Pace can be high, which leads to more possessions, which leads to more points, even if teams are struggling to score on a possession by possession basis.

Use offensive rating. It's how many points are scored per 100 possessions, which erases pace from the equation for you.

Also... 80s defenses weren't "so" tough. What makes you think they were tough?
You had the Bucks and Celtics, the Jazz coming in the second half of the decade with Mark Eaton. Then the Bad Boy Pistons emerge and pseudo-revolutionize defense at the very very end of the 80s but their best defensive team was 1990.

In the 90s really big defenses start ramping things up with frontcourts around Ewing, Hakeem, and Robinson... but if you're looking for the best era of defensive basketball, it's the early 2000s. Offensive rating is the lowest from 1998 to 2007.

Defense only matters if Jordan is in the league. The 00's were just watered down because all the greats from the 80's were retired.

[og15]

Who said the 80's defense was so tough?

If you make the Bad Boy Pistons represent the average 80's defense, then yea, you can make that conclusion, but that would be like saying defense today is so suffocating despite the pace and use of the 3PT shot and then showing highlights of Minnesota's defense as the standard of today's defense.

It would be like showing the 07-08 Celtics as the standard of defense in that span.

The 80's was not a defensive era, it was an open era, the fast break was still alive, teams played faster and scored more.

The Ortg in the 80's was mostly around 107-108 with no three's being used. League average Ortg stayed around 107-108 until 96-97, so even in the early 90's, despite slower pace, more move to iso, the increased usage of the three point shot, especially in the shorter line seasons helped to balance out the effects of lower pace, more iso and expansion on offense efficiency. From 97-98 to 03-04, ignoring the lockout dip, it was 103-105. Then 04-05 to 15-16, again ignoring the lockout dip, it was 106-108, defenses were better, than the 80's, but more three's balanced it out so that the Ortg was pretty similar. Then 16-17 to now,a wide range from 109-116 (the 116 is rounded as it is 115.7 so far this season )

Ortg has only deviated from that 107ish, +/- range recently where basketball has been played closer to the 80's in terms of pace and flow, but then adding a lot of three's. Basically if you played 80's basketball with three's being taken, this is what Ortg would look like.

I don't have time, but someone should calculate what this seasons average Ortg would be if teams took 2 3PA/G and replaced all the remaining three's with mid-range.

[jojo4341]

Add to what others were saying, the vast majority of shots taken in the 80s were 2 pointers while having a similar pace to today's game. Skimming through BBREF, the average FG (overall) was around 48-49% while today's clip is around 46-47%. The last 3 years, the league has shot an average of 35 3PA per game...comparted to less than 5 3PA for most of the 80s. That offset can also affect the scoring if looking at just PPG.

People bring up that basketball and all team sports "evolve." That's partly true. But a large part of the evolution is that players/coaches have to adjust to new rules. Given a few years, basketball is then "mastered" with those set of rules until the next big change.

In the 80s, physical play was more lenient, but only a handful of teams played that way (ie Bad Boy Pistons). After the Pistons won, teams such as the NY Knicks saw their success and tried to emulate their style. This is why we saw the Knicks, Heat, Pacers, Bulls, etc. slow the game down and played more physical. Scores like 73-77 weren't uncommon. Defense was being "mastered" in the 90s the same way offense is being "mastered" today (with today's rules of course). But the league can't have that moving forward especially with MJ being the face of the league. Throughout the 90 until the early 2000s, Stern and co. implemented more rules to protect players like MJ and make the game more scoring friendly. Now offense is the one evolving while defense is trying to catch up. Guys like Steph Curry and Nikola Jokic pretty much embody what mastering today's offense looks like. That's where we are now.

[jbk1234]

Regular season effort was notoriously inconsistent in the 80s.

[Lalouie]

tough or physical?

tough implies better to me
physical is just getting physically beat up

[Lalouie]

Add to what others were saying, the vast majority of shots taken in the 80s were 2 pointers while having a similar pace to today's game. Skimming through BBREF, the average FG (overall) was around 48-49% while today's clip is around 46-47%. The last 3 years, the league has shot an average of 35 3PA per game...comparted to less than 5 3PA for most of the 80s. That offset can also affect the scoring if looking at just PPG.

People bring up that basketball and all team sports "evolve." That's partly true. But a large part of the evolution is that players/coaches have to adjust to new rules. Given a few years, basketball is then "mastered" with those set of rules until the next big change.

In the 80s, physical play was more lenient, but only a handful of teams played that way (ie Bad Boy Pistons). After the Pistons won, teams such as the NY Knicks saw their success and tried to emulate their style. This is why we saw the Knicks, Heat, Pacers, Bulls, etc. slow the game down and played more physical. Scores like 73-77 weren't uncommon. Defense was being "mastered" in the 90s the same way offense is being "mastered" today (with today's rules of course). But the league can't have that moving forward especially with MJ being the face of the league. Throughout the 90 until the early 2000s, Stern and co. implemented more rules to protect players like MJ and make the game more scoring friendly. Now offense is the one evolving while defense is trying to catch up. Guys like Steph Curry and Nikola Jokic pretty much embody what mastering today's offense looks like. That's where we are now.

physical doesnt have to be "east coast physical" or "bad boy physical"
physical is also plain ole hand checking.
it's also just "play on"

the pac12 is KNOWN for ticky tacks, and it's teams don't survive in march

[kodo]

This is the first time I've heard the 80s being associated with defense.
80s was the opposite, mostly up & down, run & gun basketball. In 82 the average pace was 100.9.
This season the average pace is 99.3.

[CoP]

80s defense was tuff but 80s offense was even tuffer

[OhMyGodBecky]

tough or physical?

tough implies better to me
physical is just getting physically beat up

Pretty much this. The point totals don't matter as much when defenders can position themselves differently. Little elbow here, arm resting there, small little hip check, tugging at you around a screen - these little nuances can make a considerable difference.

[DOT]

I think the 90s are more talked about when it comes to defense, not so much the 80s.

Tell that to the people who bring up the bad boy pistons...to be fair the 90 team only gave up 98 a game.

It's usually Jordan stans trying to act like he played every game of his career against the Bad Boy Pistons

ORTG (using BBall-ref) in the 80s averaged out to 106.9

106.8 in the 90s

105.3 in the 00s

The lowest year for Ortg in the 80s was 105.3 in the 1980 season, lowest in the 90s was 102.2 in 1999 (2nd lowest was 105.0 in 1998)

Between the 99 season and the 2004 season, the highest was 104.5. If you want to talk about when the league was at its toughest defensively, it's those 6 years

Even in the 2010s, the average Ortg was 107.2, barely above the average for the 80s and 90s. It's only recently, since 2019, that offenses have really spiked, as that was the first year for the average Ortg to be above 110, and since then, the average Ortg is 112.6, with last season being the most over a whole season at 114.8, though this year is on pace to break that, at 115.7

So there was a 6-year period in the early 00s where scoring was down, and in the past 6 years scoring has been way up.

[HeartBreakKid]

80s defense is literally people who know nothing about the 80s other than Jordan lore. Bad Boy Pistons (....who came at the end of the 80s, literally one of their title is in the 90s).

80s was the highest scoring era up until this current one. Not much defense in those days at all.


And no, the 80s was not "physical". The pre-3 point era was much tougher on the body. A lot more dirty plays and fighting with little penalties were common in the 60s and 70s. The 80s was when the NBA was becoming commercialized. Some fans lack perspective and need to romanticize eras they identify with though.

[spanishninja]

lol, don't associate something with an entire era just because it was characterized by like 1 or 2 teams. the bad boy pistons were for like half a decade and they are easily countered by the Showtime Lakers and Doug Moe Nuggets.

the highest scoring game in NBA history was in 1983, between said Nuggets and the pre-Bad Boy Pistons.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

who said that 80s defense was so tough?

[JonFromVA]

Here's how 1980's defense worked against one of the more modern style players: Mark Price

Watch on YouTube