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

[dhsilv2]

Probably related, but the free throws are out of control. 12-16 free throws seem regular for star players now. Shai had a 26 free throw game. I can't believe the league made it even easier to be sent to the foul line when there were already concerns about the league being soft and games being slowed down. You think people are sick of how many 3s are shot in games? This free throw thing is going to be a bigger issue eventually. It seems the league wants to draw people in with stats, but they will be turned away by the whistles and stoppage in play for free throws. I have never understood why the league thinks 100 and less points in a game is a problem when people are fully willing to watch sports like soccer and hockey that end with scores like 3-1.

I mean 90% of NBA history had teams averaging over 100. But that aside, free throws? 1992 teams averaged 26.7. They're at 28.2 this year. Teams scored 105.3 in 1992 vs 118.5.

Free throws are adding 1.5 points a game from 1992 while scoring is up 13.2. it isn't the line where in general free throw rates have been declining.

Maybe it is more disproportional to the stars though. 26 from Shai the other night is insane. I’m admittedly going mostly by feel, but the fouls called are soft. The light touch of an arm after the shot being a foul this year when not in the past feels especially weak, and it is sending players to the line for 3 free throws when it didn’t directly effect the shot. That should be play on.

I do think stars seem to get a bit more of the foul shots. But we used to have so many soft fouls on guys doing fade aways and mid range jumpers too. Watching 90's vs today the biggest difference is guys posting up where I guess there's more "contact" but it's contact the offensive player wanted. Otherwise I think there's more contact today just from how fast the ball moves.

But without a doubt we've been seeing less and less time watching free throws in recent years. Though we're starting the year high on free throws.

[f4p]

Pace and space matter. As does usage, but are these players scoring that much against good defensive teams? Off the top of my head, the Celtics, Pacers, Hornets, Suns, Lakers, and Pelicans are starting centers who shouldn'tbe starting. Like Ben Simmons on a vet minimum would likely be an upgrade. Poeltl looks like he's playing injured and Embiid is unlikely to be right again. The sample size is pretty small here.

I mean there are bad defensive teams every year. That's always true. And yes, they probably give up more of the 40 and 50 point games than the good defenses.

[jbk1234]

Pace and space matter. As does usage, but are these players scoring that much against good defensive teams? Off the top of my head, the Celtics, Pacers, Hornets, Suns, Lakers, and Pelicans are starting centers who shouldn'tbe starting. Like Ben Simmons on a vet minimum would likely be an upgrade. Poeltl looks like he's playing injured and Embiid is unlikely to be right again. The sample size is pretty small here.

I mean there are bad defensive teams every year. That's always true. And yes, they provably give up more of the 40 and 50 point games than the good defenses.

The point is that with three game sample sizes, you don't really have a good idea whether it's a trend, or just the result of an early schedule.

[jbk1234]

Pace and space matter. As does usage, but are these players scoring that much against good defensive teams? Off the top of my head, the Celtics, Pacers, Hornets, Suns, Lakers, and Pelicans are starting centers who shouldn'tbe starting. Like Ben Simmons on a vet minimum would likely be an upgrade. Poeltl looks like he's playing injured and Embiid is unlikely to be right again. The sample size is pretty small here.

I mean there are bad defensive teams every year. That's always true. And yes, they provably give up more of the 40 and 50 point games than the good defenses.

The point is that with three game sample sizes, you don't really have a good idea whether it's a trend, or just the result of an early schedule.

[dhsilv2]

Silver & Co. have changed the rules so much that it's like watching NBA2K in real life. I also believe that player effort on the defensive end is at an all time low. Defense just isn't "fun" for the majority of players.

How can people watch the game and think there's less effort today than in the past? if the effort was the same as in the 90's teams would average 150 a game...

Defensive effort in the 90's was a few hits shy of football. Teams like the Pistons and Knicks didn't just try to shut you down, they tried to hurt you. That EFFORT does not exist today.

1. That isn't effort. Effort is how much effort you're putting in. Most of the defense in the 90's was standing around near your man who rarely moved. Defenses are tasked to move and stay involved on a night and day different level. You weren't dealing with a motion offense, they really didnt exist. You weren't sprinting out to the 3 point line. There was far more iso which made the effort for 4 of the 5 defenders nearly zero. Even when teams hedged with a "fake zone", it was still far less energy expended.

2. That's just nonsense. The game was nothing like football. There wasn't more physicality outside of the rare obvious flagrant fouls that keep getting talked about. But on a day to day and play to play aspect. There is less contact initiated by the defenders today. You could argue there was more physicality initiated by offensive players in the past due to the post being physical contact started by the offensive player.

3. It's way less effort to drop someone on their head than play actual defense. Flagrant fouls almost always go up when players get tired because that's just easier to do. It's why we had so many free throws in the past which was as we all know. Bad defense.

[f4p]

In 2015, we had offensive hacks like LeBron, KD, Steph, and Harden winning MVPs and running offenses. And that's why league-wide scoring only averaged 100 ppg (exactly 100.0 ppg). Now guys like banchero and Cunningham are leading offenses averaging over 110 ppg. I'm sure nothing changed.

[zzaj]

Like everything since the computer generation...players are more technically skilled. Truly, we see that in pretty much every sport. Kids are starting younger and there are higher and higher benchmarks. I always think of skateboarding or music as examples. You can see a 12 year old do things on a skateboard or behind a set of drums, that in past generations only veterans could accomplish...

That being said. I've heard multiple 80s-2000ish players talk about how defense during that time was really only about 20 feet and in. So you can imagine that without as much 3pt shooting and different foul calling standards it was harder to get to 50.

It may be my own bias or mis-memory, but I think teams are more single-star-centric than they were in past generations. There were isolated stars on teams of course, but typically it was 2-3 players doing the scoring damage.

[Warspite]

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.

IMHO: You and I are the problem in that we want a better product to watch. 90% of NBA fans don't want to watch the game. They just want the youtube/SC highlights. Silver doesn't care about us old timers who want to sit down and watch a 2-hour game. He just wants highlight reels and stat evidence for gambling wagers.

We have gone from gambling to enhance viewership to viewership to enhance gambling.

[Lalouie]

take a look at WHO are getting 30

and look at how often 30s are getting posted

[DavidSterned]

The "players are more skilled" argument really only applies to one skill: 3 point shooting. I reject the ball handling arguments since the rules are applied so differently now for them that it might as well be a different sport compared to pre-2000.

The homogenization of skill sets and playing styles really hasn't made the game more appealing. The league basically has just emphasized one skill over all others to the point where they are verging on being obsolete.

How fun would the NFL be if they made an even further gigantic reduction in the amount of defensive physicality allowed and the rules were also changed to allow teams to have as many eligible receivers as they wanted? So now it's essentially just one QB with 10 wide receivers going against some glorified traffic cones on defense. Positionless football with every team strategy feeling the exact same and the personnel feeling weirdly redundant? Would make for a super crappy product.

That kind of feels like where the NBA has been headed.

First off, let me point out the NFL did change the rules to really open things up for the offense. It forced defenses to adapt and what we ended up with is a decent mix of wide open offensive games as well as defense dominated games. Strategies and schemes have never been more important.

What I hope some of you who want to reject that anything has changed might understand are two very important concepts:

1) Yes, players build on the past - always have - always will, but the talent pool has expanded many times over while the number of teams has remained basically the same. In addition the money is insane - even a bench warmer is going to be set for life if they can manage their money.

2) The second thing I wish people would consider is what affect the level of play has on the sport. When offensive players get taller, faster, stronger, and more skilled so do the defensive players. So consider a 5 on 5 of prime Michael Jordan clones might not actually end up looking like idealized perfect basketball, it might actually turn in to a defensive slugfest because every clone knows exactly what the other clones want to do and how to counter it.

Oh and fwiw, the step back jumper can be traced back to the 80's. Want to know why it didn't become crazy popular 40 years ago? Simple... there were easier higher percentage shots available most of the time. Heck, at 7ft tall how often was Dirk Nowitzki going to get his jump shot blocked if he didn't bother with his patented move?

You're not pointing that out- I already heavily implied there in my first post that the NFL had made reductions in physicality. Note that I wrote "an even further gigantic reduction in physicality" for the NFL, as the NBA essentially did once in the mid 2000s with handchecking and then once yet again in the late 2010s with freedom of movement.

And of course there is still some semblance of balance in the NFL between offense and defense. Even with the rule changes, there has been absolutely nowhere near the same level of scoring inflation in the last decade in the NFL as there has been in the NBA. No other pro league has.

NFL points per game 2010-15: 22.68
NFL points per game 2020-25: 22.95

That's a 1.2% increase. More or less the same product as 10-15 years ago.

NBA points per game 2010-15: 99.23
NBA points per game 2020-25: 112.87

That's a 13.75% increase over the same time. A dramatic difference, with scoring up so far yet again in this very young season. The product has gotten almost unrecognizable in a very short period of time.

The lack of balance and the statistical inflation has never been more apparent. This isn't about some amazing athletic/skill evolution either or a way bigger talent pool, since we're talking about less than a generation and many guys who are still active from the former period have been thriving in the latter. This is really simply just about defense being legislated out of the game and officiating that is ridiculously lopsided in favor of the offense.

Those same rules are also mandating a very homogenous playing style that has made coaching feel increasingly obsolete, as the high PR, pace + space, layups, flops, and threes offense has become completely ubiquitous.

[Mephariel]

The other day I turned on to watch Dallas vs San Antonio on my ILP but switched off somewhere in the middle of the 1st quarter because the game was unwatchable. I switched to a classic game and picked Houston vs Atlanta from the 2003-2004 season and it was way more entertaining even though the game was 20+ years ago. And I am talking about Ming, Francis and Mobley vs Przybilla, Sura and Rebraca. The Hawks were one of the worst teams that season and probably the worst after the trade deadline. I bet some of you don't even remember those guys playing for them anymore but it was still more watchable than the live game of two up coming teams (Wemby vs Flagg).

My point is that today's NBA is a bad product. It looks like a pickup game during offseason. IMO long distance high volume shooting killed the NBA. 20 years ago, in the 05/06 season, teams averaged 16.0 3PA per game (0.358%) while this season teams are averaging 36.6 3PA per game (0.355%). The percentages didn't change at all while the attempts went up by 20 per game.

I wouldn't agree that the league got more talented. Yes, Players became better at shooting, especially the big men made a huge jump. But overall the game regressed IMO. The low post game ain't better at all (even though we had a massive big men problem 20 years ago), the mid range game is non existent and let's not even start about defenses. I mean come on, a guy like Adam Morrison would be a star in todays game.
Refs are playing a big part in the decline of the NBA as well. It seems like any college player that can hit a 3 could give you minutes in the NBA nowadays. 20 years ago only the best of best made it to the league.

The Dallas vs Mavericks game was awesome. You missed out.

Adam Morrison would not be a star in today's game. He wouldn't even play due to his terrible defense.

[Asianiac_24]

We need some rule changes like allowing bigs to camp in the lane, equilateral distance from 3, and more moving screen calls

[Joao Saraiva]

Players are too talented. Now some starter can just go off and shoot at elite level for a game, and that can turn quickly into a 30 or 40 point performance.

Even role players nowadays shoot super well.

With that said the ground to cover has become immense so it might be easier to score because it's very hard for defenses to cover it all.

[Ritzo]

Every time I see people say teams don't play defense, I always show them this

Watch on YouTube

[pepe1991]

Tonight Giannis used very unique 7 steps "dribble" to go around KAT
And people wonder why stars average 35+ points