Are NBA Players Getting Too Good At Basketball?

Are NBA Players Getting Too Good At Basketball?

In 1998 Michael Jordan finished his last season with the bulls on top as inarguably the best player in the world with another NBA championship to back it up and in that season 26 years ago Jordan averaged 28.7 points per game on 46% shooting from the field now Not only

Was his scoring average a league High That season his shooting efficiency was considered excellent at the time in fact outside of a couple big men who played 5T out from the basket there wasn’t a single player who could compete with him as a scorer but times have changed

Because this season there are seven players across the NBA who are averaging at least the numbers Jordan did in his final MVP season but there are not seven players as good as Michael Jordan was in the NBA right now is there are the stats of today’s NBA inflated not a true

Reflection of the skills and abilities of its players or have NBA players gotten too good good at basketball today’s video is sponsored by Draft Kings the weather might be cooling down but the action on the field is heating up and DraftKings an official partner of the NFL is here to get you in

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Roller and bet $5 will get $150 in bonus bets instantly that’s promo code Jimmy High Roller only at DraftKings sports book in basketball there is one main objective score more points than the other team sounds simple enough but it’s not and generally there are two ways you

Can go about this play stifling defense and keep your opponent’s points as low as possible or get Buckets NBA teams of today tend to lean towards option number two and uh they’ve gotten really good at it teams scoring 120 130 points on a regular basis even 140 point games often

Times occurring on the same night but for many NBA fans who grew up on an NBA where Point totals looked like this they are not a big fan of all the scoring they don’t like it there’s too many points or maybe not enough defense stat lines like this used to have the NBA

World on fire for a day or two but now they’re literally a dime a dozen there’s players around the league who are damn near averaging these numbers growing up I would would often go to Portland Trailblazers games and as much fun as it was to watch my home team play the most

Violent version of basketball possible without any real Consequence the real prize in my 8-year-old brain was this a free Chalupa from Taco Bell all the Blazers had to do was score 100 points win or lose 100 points and the chalupa was ours it doesn’t look like much but

Winning one of these felt like winning the lottery we would get so riled up over the prosp ECT of a free chalupa that many nights the crowd would just lose sight of the game altogether and start chanting chalupa as the score approached 100 but tragically after 14 Seasons the Blazers discontinued this

Delicious promotion in 2013 and I think it’s safe to say it’s never coming back when Taco Bell first began running this promotion the Blazers were scoring over 100 points at home about 11 times a season or about one in every four home games attainable but still rare enough

To keep the thrill of it all alive but by 2020 the Blazers scored 100 points or more in 39 out of 41 home games enough to put every local Taco Bell out of business is this entire monologue really about chalupas kind of but I say all of

This to emphasize just how much scoring in the NBA has exploded and shows no signs of slowing down NBA offenses in today’s League are really really good back in 2015 the Golden State Warriors reshaped what a potent efficient offense looks like and led the league That season with an offensive rating of

111.6 this season that same offense would rank 26th in the league only ahead of four atrociously bad teams a decade ago in 2014 the league saw a combined 24 occurrences of teams scoring at least 130 points in a single game this season there have already been 85 occurrences

Of teams scoring at least 130 points and the league as a whole is on Pace to have about 265 of these games by the end of the season that’s more than 10 times more than the league had back in 2014 now a lot of fans assume that the insane Point

Totals we’re seeing around the league today are simply a byproduct of stat inflation the game is faster no one cares about defense every other shot as a three-pointer but it’s not just inflation inflation would assume that it’s just the volume that’s changing that there are more things happening

Within every game and that’s what’s leading to the influx in numbers but it’s not that other than the dead ball era right now is a pretty average time in the league in terms of pace and shots it is the efficiency and simply how good players have gotten that has really

Skyrocketed the dead ball era of the NBA as the name not so subtly suggests was an era of slow physical grinded out basketball where games would finish with a final score that without exaggeration resemble a halftime score in today’s NBA if we look at the timeline of the NBA

And the amount of points teams have scored on average over the last 65 Seasons it’s not hard to pinpoint where the league came to a grinding halt offensively this Valley right here from about 1997 to 2006 is a visual representation of just how slow and drawn out offenses became throughout the

Dead ball era and thanks to new rules such as a shortened shot clock on offensive rebounds and Innovations in offensive schemes and of course the evolution of the three-pointer offenses are now alive and well again but contrary to popular belief it wasn’t just a change in the rules that favor

Offense that spurred this explosion in production players also just got better at scoring the ball because here is the league average effective field goal percentage throughout that same time span for decades the league as a whole floated somewhere between 45 and 48 effective field goal percentage and with

Little change in efficiency it was the pace that more or less dictated how productive offenses would be but over the last decade the league has gradually become better and more efficient at scoring the ball reaching a league-wide average effective field goal percentage of nearly 55% over the last few seasons now of

Course with more threes of efficiency inevitably increases almost at a linear rate but today’s players also turn the ball over less than ever before they shoot free throws better than ever before while shooting less free throws than ever before across the board players are simply better now than they

Were in past eras and this becomes clear when we look at the league average offensive rating over the last 50 years even when we level the playing field and look at offensive production per 100 possessions today’s teams are vastly superior than their predecessors just 20 years ago teams were averaging just 102

Points per 100 possessions today that number has jumped all the way to 115 points same exact Pace same number of possessions far more points now more points from more proficient offenses is not exactly what I would call a problem in fact I think this brand of basketball

Whether you like it or not is the highest form of the game that we’ve ever seen But as we continue to see the game evolve it is becoming more and more difficult to keep the context of what we’re seeing intact Luca donic is a generational Talent one of the best

Players in the world and 20 years ago Tracy McGrady was one of the best players in the world with a similar status among his peers except in his prime McGrady’s numbers looked like this and over the past five seasons Luca’s numbers look like this is Luca really

This much better than a prime Tracy McGrady was or has the game and its players evolved to the point where stats have almost become some arbitrary measure of a player’s ability where without context they are almost meaningless now some of you may be saying well this isn’t a fair comparison

Tracy hit his Prime in the dead ball era teams and players in general put up less numbers well here are their stats when we adjust them to be the same exact pace and the same number of possessions and still it’s only when we factor in the rule changes the spacing the schemes the

DraStic change in overall league play style that we can even begin to get the full picture which kind of defeats the Simplicity of a box score altogether or what about dear and fox fox is a great player but the 30 points five rebounds and six assists he’s averaging right now

On 58% true shooting is a historically great statline in fact it’s so great that if we exclude the last five seasons the only guards in the history of the league to average these numbers in a season were James Harden Michael Jordan and Stephen Curry are the numbers simply

Deceiving us or is dear and fox really this special 10 years ago in 2014 guess what LeBron James and Kevin Durant had in common they were the only two players in the league to average at least 25 and five a game that season 20 points five rebounds and five assists used to be

Sort of a standard for a fantastic all-around player in today’s League There are 16 players around the league averaging at least 25 in five how exactly do we reconcile the fact that what used to be a threshold reserved for Mega offensive Talent is now just another statline and this is happening

All around the league right now Tyrese Halton is aver averaging 26 and 12 on 66% true shooting this season a statline that has never been achieved in the history of the league are there really this many generational talents in the NBA today or has offense just become diluted well I actually think these

Massive numbers are a product of both of these factors one stemming from the other there is so much talent and Firepower in the NBA today that getting good looks and getting them quickly has actually become fairly easy sure there’s essentially eight more possessions a game in today’s League compared to the

Previous era and those extra possessions are driving numbers up a bit but does anyone stop to consider why there are more possessions games have been sped up because no longer are teams running 202 offensive sets and eating up the clock to find a good open look this drives up

The number of possessions each game and those possessions just feed the loop even further great offense leading to Quick possessions leading to faster games leading to more points defense today isn’t terrible players have just become too good at offense offense has been the driving force and the primary

Emphasis on the league for a decade now and over that decade the game has evolved and so has its players with play Styles tailor made to wreck havoc on defenses over the years great offensive players have proven that once your offensive game gets to a certain point

There’s only so much a defense can do to slow it down and instead of there being a handful of these Unstoppable offensive players in the league at any given time like we saw in previous eras there are now dozens of players of this caliber all around the league in the 9s it was

Jordan Malone Hakeem Dr not just good offensive weapons but truly Elite in the 2000s it was Kobe Tac sha Iverson the 2010s had LeBron Durant Harden Curry but now in the current era of the NBA these Elite offensive weapons are everywhere embiid Luca Giannis Shay Durant Fox Curry Booker Mitchell Tatum joic Trey

Halbert Maxi LeBron Dame ad Edwards Kawaii PG lamelo Brunson Kyrie sabonis all of them legitimately Unstoppable offensive talents from night to night and that’s just the highest tier it doesn’t even include guys like Morant Zion Bane marinan Ingram cam Thomas Randle Jaylen brown cat sangon Scotty Garland Paulo SE yakum Butler Mel

Bridges the league is more talented now than ever before so how do you stop all that Talent you don’t you just try to keep up between a massive change in the way young players are being taught to play the game to new Advanced analytics that have opened the doors to the best

Statistical options for teams around the league to advancements and health and training regimens that have allowed older players to be at the top of their game longer than ever before all factors building up to what has become the most loaded pool of talent in NBA history but

How do we know when it’s gone too far look up just how much teams are scoring these days and you’ll also be met with a slew of angry fans mourning the loss of the game they once loved after the dead ball era the league has taken so many

Steps to boost offense that maybe they’ve overcooked the recipe maybe there’s too much offense in today’s league but is all this offense artificial a product of rules that simply push for more offense or have the skills and small nuances used by offensive greats in the past been optimized and perfected in players of

Today were defenses bad for letting Michael Jordan averaged 30 a game in a league where entire teams only average 90 in arguably the toughest time to score a bucket Kobe scored 81 points on the Raptors was that team simply the worst offensive team team of all time or was Kobe just that Unstoppable

Offensively on that night good offense will almost always beat good defense and right now there’s a whole lot of good offense in the NBA and it’s not a bad thing in fact it is a reflection of just how much better players have become and how the game has evolved the only real

Downside to all of this no more free chalupas

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