A bit of a long article, but pretty much addresses what everyone is thinking. I'm curious how extensive potential rule changes will be.
THE NBA IS in the middle of an offensive explosion.
Scoring averages this season are the highest since 1969-70, and the league has set a record for offensive efficiency six times in the past eight seasons.
Stars are churning out eye-popping performances at rates not seen since Wilt Chamberlain's prime. In January, four players scored 60-plus points in the span of four days: Joel Embiid (70) and Karl-Anthony Towns (62) on Jan. 22, Luka Doncic (73) and Devin Booker (62) on Jan. 26.
The question of whether offenses have become too overpowering has been driving years of discussion.
Now, the NBA's leadership is having those discussions too.
Joe Dumars, the league's executive vice president and head of basketball operations who was a pillar of the defensively elite "Bad Boys" Detroit Pistons of the 1980s, told ESPN the league's competition committee has officially begun reviewing whether the game has tilted too far toward offense and whether changes need to be implemented to achieve better balance.
"It is a topic that we're monitoring," Dumars told ESPN earlier this month. "We're diving in right now to make sure that we're on the right side of this."
RISING POINT TOTALS are a relatively recent NBA phenomenon. After the 1984-85 season, which set a then-NBA record at 110.8 points per game, scoring began to decline. It eventually bottomed out at 93.4 points per game in 2003-04, the fewest in a non-lockout season since the introduction of the shot clock.
"When defense was prioritized like that, the game wasn't as popular," Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, the star guard of the 2004 NBA champion Pistons, said before a game in Brooklyn last month. "It's not fun to watch that."
