Post#31 » by dougthonus » Wed Feb 28, 2024 2:13 pm
I think people pretty grossly misunderstand why offenses are better and are mostly locked into preconceived notions and also a lot of things old vet players say on TV but aren't really backed up by any of the data.
What hasn't happened:
Officials give more calls to the offensive players / rule changes benefit offensive players
Free throw rate has declined really significantly. League wide free throws are 20% per possession than they were before. Now to be fair to the people who think calls are tighter, the entire drop can be explained by the shift to more three point shots, it may even be that there is a slight bump on free throw draw rate per attempt at the rim, but it isn't the driving factor here of offensive improvement as overall points from foul calls are way on the decline.
The game has gotten soft and guys aren't allowed to be physical, it may be true, but given that guys aren't living at the line or scoring on the inside in droves, hard fouls at the rim are basically an irrelevancy here. Guys are scoring on the perimeter where you were never allowed to beat people up. The value of being physical is just less too.
Players just stopped trying on defense. It's just a ridiculous assumption that players don't care anymore but used to care. Teams more than ever are looking at how to defend better and searching for defenders rather than offensive players in the trade market.
What has happened:
The league has got a gazillion times smarter with the advent of analytics and they drastically reduced really dumb shots (vast majority of post play / isolations / mid range shots) and switched to much higher value shots. From a quick glance, we're shooting almost 2x as many 3s (40% of the shots vs 20% of the shots) as in the past, and also shooting them at a higher rate (36% vs 34%). The vast majority of those 3s are assisted and generally this is all about improvement of the skill level / specialization in shooting of the NBA player. This explains, from a quick glance, 90% or so of the gap of improved offense over the last decade.
The league has developed a meta of a couple star players surrounded by guys who can shoot and defend, and players have adapted by becoming unprecedently better at shooting than in the past. The league has basically doubled its 3 point attempts in the past decade AND increased it's league wide average shooting percentage at the same time.
Team defense has become dramatically more difficult to play due to the above, because the space to defend is dramatically larger when most teams have at least four guys who can shoot threes on the floor at any given time.
Team's have realized that the earlier you get the ball into attack mode, the better shot you get. Pace is dramatically up. There are way more early offense opportunities as most teams push the ball, and half court opportunities yield better shots with an additional 4 seconds to work with because the ball got pushed faster. This increases overall shot profile efficiency (more early offense shots which are incredibly high efficiency) and better efficiency in the half court with fewer end of shot clock shots.
Things that probably won't work:
Allowing more physical defense at the rim - this isn't where the increased scoring is coming from, I'm not saying the line is drawn perfectly here, I'd love to let a lot of body contact go too, but it isn't really what's causing the problem
Allowing more hand checking - maybe it helps stop some penetration but the efficiency is largely from open shooters not on ball guys doing crazy stuff. Like the above, it might help some, but it isn't addressing any of the root causes
Things that probably will help:
Remove defensive 3 seconds rule to allow defenders to go anywhere they want. This fundamentally feels fair and probably also opens up zone defenses to work dramatically more effectively.
Lessening the value of a 3 or increasing the difficulty:
We'd never do it, but make the 3 worth 2.5
Widen the court and remove the shorter corner 3
Extend out the 3 point line by 3 feet and don't have corner 3s at all so they're only above the break 3s.
All those ideas probably around changing the value prop of a 3 point shot feel too jarring to get fan approval, but they are what is needed if you just want to make the value prop of a 3 worse.
Simplest solution in my mind is just remove defensive three second rule and see where that goes, feels fundamentally fair, wouldn't immediately create a massive visual change for fans or feel wrong and probably goes a long way to allow the creation of modern defenses to combat the 4 out / 5 out offense. The value prop of a 3 is probably the same, but it's harder to get one, and mid rangers probably become easier to get as teams will prioritize close outs to knock you off the 3 point line, and there's always a good shot blocker just sitting in the paint, so the best shot likely often becomes avoid the close out and dribble into a mid ranger.
Also, the next thing is just to realize this isn't actually a problem. Generally speaking, offenses are just more efficient because they are better and making smarter decisions. Just sit back and enjoy it. It's really a lot of old school players that are analysts that are heavily invested in "back in my day" type of BS that is pushing a lot of this narrative anyway.