Is it easy to score 40 or 50 points in today's NBA or are the players incredibly talented?

[UcanUwill]

When Silver took over, he obviously tried to make scoring driven NBA, but since he started doing that, we also had 3 point shooting revolution, so we got two fronts pushing same direction and it created inbalance in my opinion.
Thing is, with this type of talent, teams will score tons no matter the rules, we saw how dominant Germany was this year offensively, where all 5 guys can shoot, run and drible, and it was under FIBA rules. But NBA has athletes that at least should be able to put more of a challenge defensively.

[rand]

also some OT games occurred
which made some players reach 40+
like the warriors OT game where old man curry dropped 40

You are right, Curry did break 40 because of OT, but I think none of the other OT games resulted in a player getting over 40. And last year in the first six days, Maxey got over 40 because of OT so if you subtract Curry and Maxey from the totals it becomes 11 games of 40+ this season after 6 days vs two games over 40 last season in the first six days.

[JinKaz69]

Rules make definitively easier to score 40+ or 50+ points in today's game.

Are the players more talented ? I don't know.

Current players are better shooters on open spots but I feel their game has less variety than past players (low-post, mid-range, iso's, ability to play on tight spaces are missing).

[Archx]

Heliocentric 4-out and 5-out style is taking over.
Giannis is moving into heliocentric role and he no longer has Dame/Jrue/KMidd to off load to, SGA is playing w/o JDubb, Luka w/o LBJ, Reaves w/o Luka/LBJ, the probability of occurrence is higher than before.
FTs play a smaller role IMO, Reaves and SGA have been FT merchants since they rose to fame, it's not new.

Luka shooting more FTs per minute than Shai this season. The OG merchant.

If you remove FT's Shai almost falls to 4th place, otherwise he's in firm 2nd place lol...

[MoneyTalks41890]

Heliocentric 4-out and 5-out style is taking over.
Giannis is moving into heliocentric role and he no longer has Dame/Jrue/KMidd to off load to, SGA is playing w/o JDubb, Luka w/o LBJ, Reaves w/o Luka/LBJ, the probability of occurrence is higher than before.
FTs play a smaller role IMO, Reaves and SGA have been FT merchants since they rose to fame, it's not new.

Luka shooting more FTs per minute than Shai this season. The OG merchant.

If you remove FT's Shai almost falls to 4th place, otherwise he's in firm 2nd place lol...

Luka still attempts more free throws per minute this season not sure what your point is.

[Bornstellar]

Aaron Gordon hitting 50 was just the result of him being absolutely on fire from three

Shai and Reaves, well, just look at their FT attempts.

In today's NBA, 40 points is the new 30. Not that hard to achieve anymore it seems. Some of these guys hit 40/50 in OT games though, which is another factor

[Bob8]

Luka shooting more FTs per minute than Shai this season. The OG merchant.

If you remove FT's Shai almost falls to 4th place, otherwise he's in firm 2nd place lol...

Luka still attempts more free throws per minute this season not sure what your point is.

And his usage is near 40. He's doing everything much better per minute and more efficiently. I know, I know, Shai will win MVP, because he has better team.

[Mirotic12]

NBA defense in the regular season has been a total joke for years and years.

[MoneyTalks41890]

If you remove FT's Shai almost falls to 4th place, otherwise he's in firm 2nd place lol...

Luka still attempts more free throws per minute this season not sure what your point is.

And his usage is near 40. He's doing everything much better per minute and more efficiently. I know, I know, Shai will win MVP, because he has better team.

Well, better player, better team. But he has his hardware already. Shai and the Thunder have literally nothing left to prove. It’s all gravy from here.

[Bloodbather]

It's pretty simple. Most role players learned how to shoot threes which led to a lot more space on the floor for the best scorers. Pace has gone up, also. Rules haven't been adjusted in light of this development, so high scoring performances have become more common place.

Yeah agreed, but why would the rules be adjusted. Who's to say a good average for a player is 25 ppg and we should only have 1 or 2 players average above 30 and max 25 players average above 20. We just need to accept the new reality.

I didn't say the rules should be adjusted, just pointing out the fact that they haven't been.

That being said, I do think there should be some rule changes that favor defenses, but it's not because I want the scoring averages to go down. I think it'd be a better product to watch.

[Bob8]

Luka still attempts more free throws per minute this season not sure what your point is.

And his usage is near 40. He's doing everything much better per minute and more efficiently. I know, I know, Shai will win MVP, because he has better team.

Well, better player, better team. But he has his hardware already. Shai and the Thunder have literally nothing left to prove. It’s all gravy from here.

I'm sure that's their state of mind.

[Patches Perry]

Is SGA the new LeBron where every thread redirects back to him?

[JonFromVA]

It's the opposite, in the80s early 90s anything resembling double teaming, like they do with Jokic for instance, was forbidden until the player had the ball.

Thats what I am saying, it was made ilegal because it would have been too easy to do. Now they do not have ro ban those defenses because it comes at a real cost.

Double teaming has always been legal, it's just that before zones were legalized you had to commit to the double team. You couldn't hedge or flit between two offensive players without risking being called for illegal defense. Except that's exactly what the best defenses did anyway.

Anyway, physical play seems to be pretty high from what I've seen as the refs seem to ignore a lot of things until the shot attempt is made. There's a lot of handsy stuff going on that would had been whistled back in 2004 for instance when the league changed how hand checking was being called.

On offense, a physical player can throw a shoulder in to a defender's chest and lay the ball in. It used to be in the past defenders would flop when this happened and get the call, but I often seen offensive players being allowed to extend the elbow and even chicken wing defenders.

So how do you stop a player like Giannis?

Answer: you can't, at best you can try to pack the paint and bring help a help defender to contest his shot while his primary defender is staggered.

And then on the perimeter it's gotten ridiculous. Every team has players who can cross you over, every team has players who can create their own step back 3pter, every team has players who move and shoot like Miller or Korver. The skill level is sky high.

You can't play trash defense and just wave a hand in a shooters face after the shot, even a hand in the face during the shot isn't going to do much against the great shooters. You almost have to risk fouling a 3pt shooter to truly contest their shot and then you've made it a lot easier for them to drive around you and then your defense goes in to rotation.

[babyjax13]

I think this stupid high five rule is probably affecting things a bit, too. Once you start adding up all the marginal ways freethrow merchants can get to the line it places a lot of limitations on how defenses can play. The league said it was going to move in the opposite direction and then did this, which is frustrating.

[HotelVitale]

I searched and in October 7 such games. While a bit of outlier I don't think it's anything we haven't seen for a while.

Yeah, so in the entire month of October last season there were almost half as many 40+ point games as in the first six days of this season.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was by far the most 40+ and 50+ point games in the first six days of any season ever.

And if you stretch it to end of November and lower the qualification to 38 (is that really that much different than 40) you get basically 30 such games from different players and wasn't last season supposed to be more tightly refereed game... This seems to be nightly occurring thing these days to score that 40 range. But I don't know why anyone is surprised after decade of stripping away defences from this league and as a result defenders do not care or take pride on defending their man. Just focus on scoring themselves.

Can you spell out your theory of why officiating is to blame here? It seems wildly out of touch with the basics of recent NBA history but I don't want to judge you without hearing more.

My very very quick counter is that with today's spacing (and drive and kick strategies) getting even more extreme, players can get off shots much more easily than in the past--and if a guy happens to be red hot one game it's a lot easier for him to get up a big volume of shots. Like Aaron Gordon is not a great shooter but these days any decent team can fairly easily get double digit 3s in any game, and if you're scorching that's gonna get you close to 40 ppg.

I feel like the complaint people should have about today's game is how much it comes down to random shooting streaks and luck, not anything about officiating. E.g. looks like a majority of 35+ pt game this season have been with guys getting less than 10 pts va FTs, meaning they're scoring like 75% of their pts from the field.

[CIN-C-STAR]

The league, especially in the regular season, has moved toward becoming a skill exhibition.
Every year it seems they come up with a new rule to legislate the intensity and competitiveness out of the game. This year, it's if you touch a guy's finger after he shoots he gets 3 FTs.
I understand they want to get rid of the contact so they can try to keep players healthy for more games so they can make more money, but it definitely makes it easier to score just based on skill (they even claim flopping for cheap FTs is a skill now) and encourages a faster pace because defenders can't do anything to slow down the guy with the ball.
Unfortunately, it also makes watching a game way less entertaining, but I guess it's good for producing highlights and the league is fine with people consuming their content that way instead anyway.

[MrGoat]

If we're talking about the very recent surge, Shai the other day 26 FT attempts. Reaves 22 FT attempts.

[Flash4thewin]

If the talking about the very recent surge, Shai the other day 26 FT attempts. Reaves 22 FT attempts.

It is equally important to remember the teams they faced and how take the Kings for instance, play little to no defense at all. That kinda explains a lot of it.

[sp6r=underrated]

Both arguments are correct. They aren't in tension even if people incorrectly assume they are.

But players being more skilled relative to the past is the primary reason offense is so dominant nowadays. Today's players are far better at shooting, more willing to pass to the open man, and better at ball handling than the players I grew up with. Teams also are smarter. They know which areas of the court they should from and which areas to avoid.

Consequently the players being more skilled makes it easier to score 40 or 50 because it is much harder to rotate defensively when you have to cover as much ground as today's defenses.

[prophet_of_rage]

I wonder why only ONE scoring champion since Kobe Bryant has scored 35ppg... and it was James Harden 36.1ppg

And last season only TWO players averaged 30ppg, Giannis 30.4 and Shai 32.7

Why is nobody equaling Jordan's 37.1ppg and 63 point playoff game and 41.0ppg in the NBA Finals?
And last season the average 3pt% was .360, and only .354 in the playoffs, and 3-pointers are supposed to make you talented

No more iso ball.

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