Has Offense Gone Too Far In The NBA?

Has Offense Gone Too Far In The NBA?

Are not going to be able to catch him and the ball game is over heel lays it in it’s 157 to 152 and Indiana has clinched this group scoring in the NBA this season is at an alltime high that’s something you’ve probably heard plenty in recent years so much so that you

Might actually be tired of hearing it however it’s talked about a lot for a reason because every single year offenses are getting better and better and consequently teams are scoring more and more points if we take a look at every NBA offense since the three-point line was introduced of the top 10

Scoring teams five of them are from this season plus one from last season and if we measure alltime efficiency and remove Pace from the equation nine of the top 10 offenses the NBA has ever seen are from 2024 and if we zoom out even further we need to go all the way back

To the 38th best offense of all time to find a team that isn’t from the past few years you can be ranked seventh in offense this season and still have a better offense than literally any other NBA team that came before you while we’ve been told offense is what sells

Tickets lately the NBA has seen a decline in viewership all while complaints about the game becoming too one-sided are at an all-time high so in today’s video I want to answer a few questions how did we get here why are offenses the way that they are now has

Offense gone too far and if so what can be done about It before I again today’s video I want to talk about our sponsor Factor if you’re like me AKA a 20s something who has no idea what they’re doing with your life well odds are you probably have a pretty erratic meal plan generally speaking for me eating healthy and especially eating consistently can be

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Buckets 50 for 50% % off of your first box thank you to factor for sponsoring this video see offense in the NBA has experienced a handful of Peaks and valleys throughout its history and if you zoom out a bit past the ’90s you’ll see that the slower grind it out era of

The NBA is really more of the anomaly but before we get to ahead of ourselves let’s do a quick rundown down of the NBA’s history of offense in the beginning naturally the game was in its more primitive era positions and their job descriptions were extremely rigid there wasn’t very much Flash and the

Game was played very fundamentally but there was a pretty high pace of play this resulted in players putting up insane individual numbers such as Wilt 50 point per game season and multiple bigs averaging 20 plus rebounds for whole seasons and it was these goliaths on the court who conquered the paint and

The NBA at large basketball was undeniably a big man’s game Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain were the premier figures of the 60s facing off in the playoffs eight out of the 10 years of the decade but there was also smaller players who operated from the perimeter like Oscar Robertson Jerry West elen

Baylor going into the 70s John hav and Rick Barry being a big wasn’t the only way to impact the game but it was believed to be the most likely to result in winning this was especially hard to dispute considering the undeniable Dynasty that was the Bill Russell Celtics who won nine championships in

The 60s you’ll notice I’m using star players names to frame the conversation here but that’s because that’s just kind of how it is in the NBA in general NBA offenses have evolved D around the dominance of individuals so in the era of big men offensive plays would usually

Start in the post while guards and wings would attempt to get open for jumpers and back door Cuts doing so off of this post action while avoiding dribbling the ball entirely shots closer to the basket typically go in at a higher rate so scoring through your tallest player is

Close to the basket as possible was an intuitive approach having a generational defensive play player like Bill Russell was one of the only ways to slow down the offense because generally shots would go up quick 115 points per game was the average amount scored by teams

In the 60s this was primarily due to the PACE as teams shot in the low 40s from the field this is the pace of the 60s and then here’s the rest of it they were running this wasn’t efficient offense but it was high enough volume to result in super high scoring numbers

The game would not radically change in the’ 70s but its face did as Bill and Wilt exited their primes as players the next Center to become an icon in the NBA was drafted number one overall in 1969 as Ferdinand Lewis alender Jr and he would retire known as Kareem Abdul

Jabar the greatest of all time Kareem 7s were much like the 60s except with less chaotic offense and more deliberate pace the speed of the game dialed down while the efficiency on offense turned up this was the opposite style of basketball of the new competitor League the ABA which

Featured more free flowing offense star talent and entertainment value before it merged with the NBA in 1976 By 1979 scoring was down to 110 points per game but team field goal percentage was much improved 79 was also the year that mag Johnson and Larry Bird broke onto

The scene two kind of big players at 6’9 who also had the skills to be elite ball handlers passers and shot creators their presence in the NBA through the 80s defined the decade along with other wings like Michael Jordan Alex English Adrien Dantley James Worthy and Dr J big

Men still had their place in the league but building around them was not perceived as the only way to win anymore the80s had a historic seven MVPs who were not big men and only one arguably two championship teams led by a center this refreshing upward trend from Wing

Players along with some rule changes resulted in an offensive boom in the NBA the first of these rule changes was in 1979 the beginning of the end of hand checking which is when the defender puts their hand or arm on the offensive player while defending them it had take

More than 20 years for the NBA to basically eliminated from the game but the way defensive contact was allowed became more specified here dribbling had also become less strictly officiated through the 70s and 80s and zone defense was also outlawed in 1982 with the most consequential rule change in basketball

History was in 1980 when three-pointers originally part of the ABA were finally brought to the NBA however through the80s threes were taken so in frequently that they were considered more of a novelty than a weapon and yet teams were scoring 109 points per game on average for the decade which is even

More than the 2010s all while being even more efficient than any era that that’s right the80s were not as defensively oriented as you may have been led to believe the80s were more or less the birthplace of the offense first approach that we see in its most mature State today

Defense still had its place but the game became defined by buckets obviously teams were scoring even more in the 60s but doing so in an almost artificial way given how much the pace inflated everything 80s offenses were far more versatile in their approach and efficient all while maintaining high

Scoring averages and this was not perceived as a problem like it is today if anything this is what the NBA and its fans wanted the AB had created very real competition for the NBA in the 70s with its offensive Focus style of play that resembled playground hoops at the

Highest level and by the end of the post merger 80s the NBA had learned the lesson that offenses with more Dynamic play Styles made for better basketball and had fully implemented its plan to shape the game to be this way but this offensive explosion came to an end as

Scoring came to a ground grinding halt in the 9s so how did scoring disappear well it took a team coming out of nowhere with a style that was like neither the flash of magic Showtime Lakers nor the fundamental offense of bird Celtics one where offense wasn’t even its identity instead it was defense

First that team was the bad boy Pistons Michael Jordan with Pippen I ain’t no J I used to let the Moke [Applause] watch people think about understand just ad addicted to mus maybe it’s AIT I got to use it even if it’s jazz or the quiet storm uped in hipop all the way

Up there the shot and the game’s over and the Pistons have won the World Championship back to back the Detroit Pistons are in many ways the antithesis of modern basketball and were a direct response to what had been the winning style of the80s on defense they embodied what it meant to be

Intimidating they were called the bad boys for a reason bill ambir was a [ __ ] violent oath of a center Dennis Rodman won DPO in 1990 and is one of the most talented Defenders and rebounders of all time despite being 6′ 7 Joe Dumars is one of the more underrated

Two-way players in NBA history and on offense this team was led by Isaiah Thomas one of the greatest point guards of all time but in terms of play style while they had more offensive Grace than many gave them credit for especially in the revised version of History they were

Ultimately most known for their well violence they also made their opponents play at their pace which was much slower than your average offense was used to they zigged when the rest of basketball zagged and it got them backto back titles they managed to be a top three defense both times when they won

It all all while being just seventh and 11th on offense they embodied the phrase defense wins championships or I guess aggravated assault depending on what state you’re in this play style ended up being extremely influential more so than I think the NBA would have liked see

Through the 8S the image of the NBA was in the process of being molded from a low-level Sports league with rampant drug problems violent incidents on the coure and an overall bad reputation to a familyfriendly entertainment product built on the personalities of its Superstars and electrifying offensive

Highlights and the bad boys were [ __ ] that up Detroit sparked the beginning of the defense first era in the NBA since the shot clock was invented scoring has never gotten lower than it did in the 9s and 2000s and it almost certainly will not get that low again the physicality

That had been present before was now fundamental to the sport but nobody wants to play running back in basketball driving to the Lane too often meant dealing with serious physical punishment from Defenders so teams slowed down their offensive approach pounding The Rock and winning for an open opportunity

Rather than facing pain as much as possible scoring just 101 points per game on average in the 9s and that got even lower at just 96.9 points per game in the 200s the only decade where teams scored less than 100 points per game in the shot clock era however the NBA

Wasn’t going to let the game turned back into something resembling previous decades that had less success than the very popular 80s especially as it transitioned into making a young guard named Michael who just thre repated scoring titles the next face of basketball so rules were added and altered throughout the entirety of the

Defensive era to try and swing the pendulum back in favor of high octane offense this would have an undeniable domino effect for how offense has played today since the three-point line was an already available and under underutilized part of the game the NBA encouraged more long range shooting by

Shortening the three-point line from 23 9 in at its longest to a uniform 22 ft in 1994 before bringing it back to the original distance 3 Seasons later during that time three-point shot attempts nearly doubled in frequency and it didn’t hurt that fewer drives to the basket meant less chances for contact

Between players and thus less chances for brawls to break out something that had happened pretty often as a result of the physicality of the game increasing over time the 9s also saw the beginning of players and teams suffering serious penalties for fighting during games as even leaving the bench could get a

Player and the team fined and players getting too rough on the court would get ejected all defensive fouls were no longer created equally 2002 saw the total return of zone defense after some years of f raing it back into the game as well as the Inception of the 3 second

Violation making it much harder to clog the lane on defense and 2005 completely banned hand checking after trying and failing to R it in since 1979 this made attacking from the perimeter much easier so scoring guards became a lot more prominent and big bodying people down low became a lot

More challenging there was also a big change in terms of of what fouls you could get away with in general any level of contact became increasingly likely to be called a foul so defenses eased up this style of officiating was cemented in part thanks to the malice and the

Palace one of the ugliest events in NBA history where two of the toughest and most defensive-minded teams in the league ended up in a massive brawl that involved players coaches and even fans all nationally televised on ESPN through the NBA defense first era players were getting hit harder and harder than ever

Before especially for a sport originally designed based around avoiding contact naturally players would take exception to some of these hard fouls and it would cause altercations this is something that many NBA fans are now nostalgic for but once the malice and the palace happened the NBA wanted to completely

Eliminate these conflicts as it was not a good look for the league and since these altercation started with hard fowls that meant that hard fowls needed harder consequences these rule changes also shifted the Power Balance in the league in regard to its top players now guys who couldn’t dominate due to the

Physicality around them suddenly had the freedom to get to whatever spot on the floor they wanted without fear of being clotheslined and as the NBA transitioned from the defensive era into the LeBron and Kobe puppet commercial era scoring climbed higher and higher in the early 2010s we got offensive experimentation

From the likes of the beautiful game Spurs and the Miami heatles and then came the three-point Revolution decide not to use a curry way downt bang bang oh what a shot from Curry for NBA history 143 in the G Lillard long race three and it’s good two there’s two

Seconds there’s the knock got got got it [Applause] Seconds Stephan Curry and the Warriors exploded onto the scene in such a way that the shock waves of their success changed the game in a way that is entirely in a league of its own there’s not a single culture shift play style rule change or whatever else that’s

Impact can compare to that of the three-pointer from this moment on the game and more specifically offense would never be the same the rule changes through the 9s and 2000s shaped the game to be more perimeter oriented which enabled this revolution with that being said the spike in three-pointers was not

Something that the NBA exactly anticipated it just happened the most three any team would take in a game rarely exceeded 20 prior to the paradigm shift in shot selection far from what it is today where teams are taking 35 a game on average with some teams getting

To the 40s prior to 2013 the NBA only had 24 instances in its entire history where a team took 40 or more three-point shots in a game now it’s the norm because of the value of three-point shooting not only are long mid-range jumpers being replaced by threes in the

NBA shot diet and that results in more points on its own but also and more importantly than that it’s the space it gives offenses to operate with the likelihood of running into multiple Defenders at The Rim today is far less than in any other era of NBA history

Teams can’t crowd the paint quite like they used to due to the threat of the outside shot so scoring in the paint becomes easier as well hell even mid-range shots become easier and more likely to go in because defense is so difficult to play in the modern NBA that

Defenders have to regularly concede open shots and they’re most likely to concede a midi as it’s the least efficient shot in the game now the three-point Revolution ironically made scoring from everywhere on the floor significantly easier at all three levels there are more shots available than ever and with

More opportunity to to score than ever and with more opportunity to score than ever it’s been an arms race with every single NBA team to see how they can take advantage the outcome of the three-point Revolution is the state of the game we find ourselves in today the post

Three-point era where almost every team in the NBA statistically has one of the best offenses of all time even the best defenses in the league regularly have to accept allowing open shots now and as a result offense has become far more important than defense obviously the

Game has always been about who can score the most points but now it more or less feels like okay you watch me score and then I’ll watch you score and that’s just not the most satisfying viewing experience for a lot of people but that’s not to say that players aren’t

Trying on D they’re just damned if they do pretty often because of how much the game has opened up for the offense in the last 20ish years or so you can play Perfect Defense and the shots still go in and actually that’s something I want

To go ahead and clear up here if you have ever said the phrase players don’t try on defense anymore please shut the hell up forever full stop you are just incorrect don’t get me wrong there’s for sure a higher volume of guys who just don’t play defense than there once was

However the reason there is less of a defensive presence in this sport is entirely unrelated to whether or not players want to play defense the amount of [ __ ] mouth breathing knuckle dragging doofuses I see directly compare 90s defenses to today’s is astounding as if those are even remotely similar

Contexts not only can Defenders not be nearly as physical as they used to but more importantly than that they also have to cover so much more space teams are running just as much if not more than they ever have and they’re shooting from further while they’re at it it’s

Much easier to cover this amount of ground as a Defender than it is to cover this amount of ground this is why versatility is preached like the gospel in the modern NBA decisions on defense need to be made quickly and Defenders need to have the length and foot speed

To cover lots of ground to avoid giving up open looks Defenders have been getting shafted by the changes to this sport as the years go on so I’m [ __ ] tired of hearing people talk about it like it’s an effort thing like this generation of players is just soft do

You realize how simple-minded that perspective is if not well hopefully you do now anyways rant aside the point that I am trying to arrive at is that we need Justice for these defensive players not to scold them for things that are outside of their control the pendulum

Has swung so far on the side of offense that the game has lost a lot of the balance that it had previously at least that’s how I feel and a lot of other people do too the only question is what are rules and why do they exist

Why are rules made for sports the way that they are and how have these rules developed well and please stick with me here rules are technology to quote a philosophy podcast the essence of technology is revealing revealing the things in the world that already do exist and can potentially exist in the

Future technology is the art of bringing forth the potentiality of the wooden rolling pin latent within a tree or bringing forth the potentiality of the marble statue latent within the Giant giant piece of rock originally basketball was meant to be a safe low contact sport seeming to intrinsically have a favoritism towards offense

Because of it get a bucket is the goal on offense don’t [ __ ] with him too hard or he gets a free shot is the goal on defense the existence of the concept of a foul resulting in a trip to the freethrow line is inherently much more

Of a punishment for the defense than it is for the offense but that was just the beginning when some Canadian teacher was trying to get his students to stop being so rowdy accidentally inventing a major sport in the process fast forwarding beyond the Inception of basketball 2 today and our current cultural context

Rules attempt to shape the game by revealing the most profitable version of it the NBA is a collection of capitalist pigs All In Cahoots to make sure that they get even richer the profit motive shapes the rules of the game because there is almost no intermediate area

Between those who make the rules and those who own the league the rules established at the NBA’s Inception were more or less completely in the hands of the original team owners but as the league has grown so too has the level of empowerment its players have mostly through their unionization and the

Allure of the celebrity status that the League’s top players gained alongside the NBA’s popularity as a whole but it has never compared to the power the league has itself and for the owners making B bball as profitable as possible means it must be safe for Mass Appeal

Among the consuming class and the most appealing product to this demographic is entertainment the US media and entertainment industry accounts for 6.9% of the total US GDP over $700 billion so if you can entertain people you’ve got your Golden Goose in our last video we touched a bit on escapism as a

Reason that people seek Out Sports but this more generally applies to entertainment as well people often seek relief from the monotony of day-to-day life with movies television video games YouTube videos books if you’re a nerd and sports if you’re a different kind of nerd as long as people have had 9 to

Five jobs which is probably less time than you think they’ve been using their downtime to consume entertainment regardless of their motivation even before industrialization people have been drawn to stadiums filled with tens of thousands of people to watch athletes compete or get ripped apart by lions depending on what you’re into but

Especially since the dawn of industrial society the commodification of entertainment has changed the existence of the Entertainer from a person to a product the explosion and popularity of artists athletes and any other entertainers in between over the 20th century has resulted in a complex form of exploitation that’s unprecedented in

Human history one that elevates the premier entertainers of the world from relative obscurity to undeniable notoriety the popularity of our entertainers Now versus back then is essentially the difference between a local band and the Beatles for a lot of the industry it’s providing the opportunity for the consumer to have fun

To experience Joy many entertainment products cultivate experiences that wouldn’t necessarily be defined as fun but the most profitable entertainment products certainly would be look at the film industry there’s ample excellent critically acclaimed films that are hard to call fun without some roundabout explanation but the ones that make the

Most money are not those films it’s the Blockbusters the movies that while capable of exploring a wide scope of emotions and different artistic Expressions ultimately wind up being most easily described as fun at the end of the day all of this was a long- winded buildup to say when basketball

Fun basketball make money for the sake of maximizing profits the NBA is going to use the rules to shape the game to be as fun to consume as possible there’s multiple examples of this throughout the history of the sport some of which we discussed earlier but one of the most

Recent and significant examples of the NBA being in the business of fund management is James Harden the beard is a historically polarizing player while he’s put up historic numbers a distinct part of the way he actually got those numbers is a notably not fun method of offense known as foul baiting foul

Baiting is an offensive approach that emphasizes initiating contact to get free opportunities at the line rather than from the live action on the floor it’s essentially the offensive equivalent of flopping on defense while the concept of foul baiting existed before Harden he exploited it to a degree that made it impossible to ignore

Free throws are one of the least entertaining parts of this sport as it slows down the pace of play down to a halt literally stopping the Clock Plus the way Harden Drew these fouls was visually unappealing to say the least which is not worthy because Aesthetics actually play a huge part in fan

Enjoyment of the sport however that’s a conversation for another video regardless foul baiting is almost universally disliked so the NBA has tried and failed to legislate these tactics away it’s not something the NBA has addressed well but the attempt itself is indicative of the NBA’s goal

Of cultivating the sport to be what it wants it to be which is first and foremost entertaining now the question is is that the right thing to do ethically speaking should the game be cultivated towards being the best entertainment product it can possibly be or is there a purity in letting the game

Evolve however it does with minimal interference is there even a morality of governing sports like the three-point Revolution is something that happened mostly separate from the rules the incentive to shoot from three has existed as long as the three-point line was there but teams didn’t really go for

It until the NBA directly incentivized it when they briefly shortened the three-point line and even then teams still weren’t about it nearly to the degree that they are now The Guiding hand of the NBA’s rule book and those who write it no doubt have some responsibility for the state of the game

Today but the three-point Revolution was led by the game itself and not its Governors yet it also would have been impossible without Decades of tinkering and management from them either it’s complicated but why has foul baiting prevailed despite the NBA’s attempt to shape it out of the game the answer is

The the staying power of analytics something that very much supported the hardened foul baiting style the trouble is the unique obviousness of these analytics that show that it’s much more valuable to go for more free throws and shoot more three-pointers free throws are just plain and simple the best

Quality shot on offense you can get there is literally no defense plus the players get a breather while the clock is stopped and three-pointers are obviously worth one more point than the usual two so even if you are making your twoo shots 50% of the time getting one

Point per possession you can miss twice as often from three and still get the same results on an average basis making half of your twos is the equivalent of making one out of every three three-pointers plus there’s the benefit of creating space for your teammates inside when the defense has to guard you

Outside this is a kind of Pandora’s Box where the most efficient way way to play the game has been revealed and that can’t be undone but efficient basketball doesn’t necessarily mean fun basketball I.E James Harden’s foul baiting but efficiency does equal winning basketball so fun and winning can be at odds

There’s no way the NBA can legislate away the motivation to win from competition nor would they really want to there is a balance to be struck here one that is difficult but worthwhile for the good of the sport and the success of the NBA as a business the rolling pen

Exists inside the tree the marble statue exists within the stone the perfect balance of rules and play Styles exists inside the NBA as an organization but it’s up to us to shape it to be that rolling pin or that statue something important to acknowledge here is that

All of this is subjective fun is subjective there’s a lot of fans who find things in this sport to be fun that I’m not thrilled about and vice versa one of my favorite players of all time like literally ranked number three for me is Andre kolinko because I love

Defensive versatility and his super high block and steel numbers are just very exciting nothing like a shot blocking Wing man let me tell you some of you might think I’m crazy for that and your top 10 faves list doesn’t feature a single player scoring less than 25

Points a game point being what you perceive to be fun basketball isn’t necessarily fun basketball for someone else maybe the most fun version of the NBA is just the purest version Let the rules be the rules and leave it untouched forever but regardless of how

You feel about it the NBA is going to make changes and personally I think that’s exactly what they should do I understand a more purist perspective on the game just look at Baseball fans but to me I think we’re being dishonest if we’re going to act like the game is something

That exists separately from entertainment this is an entertainment product and if there’s a dip in the entertainment value of the sport well then that’s something that’s worth addressing just like the NBA attempted to do with foul baiting so does the Abundant offense of this new era of the

NBA demand an intervention has NBA offense gone too far One of my favorite teams in the League this year is the Indiana Pacers or at least they were one of my favorite teams in the league towards the start of the season their play style was exciting and mesmerizing to me but as the games kept piling up slowly but surely my smile

Turned into a frown as I felt the Boomer NBA fan in me start to boil up the breaking point for me was when the Pacers played the Hawks where I watched four quarter straight of bucket after bucket by the time it was over they had scored a combined 309 points they were

Scoring 76 points a quarter combined on average I watched this game and began to feel a pain in my chest what happened to the game I love okay in all seriousness what is it that bothers me so much about the Pacers how did they go from my go-to

League pass team to a team that makes me genuinely upset well as someone that likes defense that’s obviously missing but somehow even worse than that is the offense yeah I realize that might sound weird how is the offense worse surely more offense equals better offense right yeah no hard no higher scoring offenses

Do not necessarily equal a better viewing experience of offense to put it simp simply if there’s not a tangible defensive presence then the offense doesn’t feel earned and thus doesn’t feel entertaining to the degree that it would otherwise watching the Pacers is like watching an All-Star game if you

Were to describe the All-Star Game to someone who’s not a major NBA fan they’d likely think that Allstar Weekend is a pretty major event that fans really care about every year but it’s not is it all the Superstar play ERS all the fancy presentation the celebrities and the

Allure and the allstar game still really doesn’t mean [ __ ] to anyone and that’s largely because the All-Star game itself is boring because they don’t play defense you can shoot it from as far as you want throw fancy and super ambitious lobs do windmills on The Fast Break pull

All the stops to make offense as fun and flashy as possible and it it still doesn’t hit all because you’d see more defense if you tune into a YMCA pickup game instead offense is devalued by bad defense watching teams score 130 to 150 points all the buckets begin to blur

Together and if you’ve watched one possession it seems like you’ve watched them all not only because of poor defense but also the general uniformity of modern offense calling back to analytics and the arms race following the three-point Revolution a side effect of that wave is that offenses have become less and less

Unique as the best ways to score get demonstrated over time why would players and coaches choose to score in any other way but what works best the exploits on offense are now universally known around the league and every team is going to try and use them if you look at the top

Teams in the NBA they’re pretty much always going to be a team with a lead shot Creator and playmaker being the same player in this case likely a large wing surrounded by play finishers in particular three-point Shooters and they’re going to drive and kick over and over until they’ve created an advantage

Being a fast-paced team also isn’t as impactful as it used to be when everybody’s trying to be fast it makes being a fast team less of an advantage and more importantly it makes it less unique just for an example of that this season the slowest paced team in the

Entire NBA is the Chicago Bulls with a pace of 96.1 The 7 seconds or less Phoenix Suns in 2005 a year where they won 62 games and had the best offense in the NBA had a pace of 95.9 The Steve Nash Suns known specifically for their Pace would be the

Lowest team in the league this year so every team is fast every team is shooting a ton of Threes every team is built around a creating Superstar or just a star if they’re unlucky there’s a lot to be said about the enjoyment of variety in many ways the variety we like

In our lives can be artificial especially in regards to the products we consume most competitors in any given industry are actually owned by the same larger parent company but the variance an NBA team identity prior to the three-point Revolution was far from artificial many different teams had many different play styles with many

Different approaches and core principles now the more and more you watch the more things start to blend together into the same play style across the entire league not just the Pacers but the whole NBA this is likely a part of the reason why the spectrum of teams win loss records

Each season has become more narrow it used used to be a lot less common to have 60 win seasons and there used to be a huge difference between a one and an eight seed but because the way teams play has been homogenized the differences between good teams are

Smaller than ever You could argue this is a good thing for the sake of parody and this is certainly the highest level of parody the NBA has ever seen but do we want parity if it means sacrificing variety is 30 identical teams who all have an equal chance at the title a good

Thing obviously it’s not been taken to that extreme but it’s definitely going in that direction this homogeneity of Hoops dilutes the level of competition down to where it lacks any of its flavor [ __ ] ridiculous line of Hoops to loots This Ss like a [ __ ] Dr Seuss book The Essence of basketball is lost

When defense is almost impossible to play unless you’re Elite if the average NBA player doesn’t make much of an impact on defense that’s a problem at the core of basketball in essential quality to this sport is the head-to-head element one of the somewhat unique aspects of this sport is the

Degree in which every player is expected to play both ways sure other sports have players expected to play offense and defense but the expectations of a point guard versus a pitcher or Michael Jordan versus Messi is that the basketball players don’t have the option to not

Play both sides of the ball there is no designated hitter equivalent in the NBA in our death of positions video we briefly discussed how different positions have different levels of responsibility on defense and offense but even the least defensive oriented position in basketball still has immeasurably more defense to play than

Say a striker on the soccer field whose main job is to score goals so when basketball is devolved into just taking turns on offense the game arguably becomes something else other versions of basketball without the two-way element are called something different like horse and the Three-Point Contest their

Skills challenge so this new era of NBA basketball where defense is increasingly rare and matters less than ever might just become a new sport entirely and even if you’re a hater of defense and a lover of the modern game I challenge you to ask yourself this do fun entertainment and profits Trump the

Importance of retaining the essence of the game that’s always been played is it worth it to make basketball stop being a two-way Sport and make it three-point golf instead and if your answer to this is the same as mine then the question becomes The balance between offense and defense is a difficult one to strike the three-point Revolution spawning from the rule changes of the defensive era was absolutely unforeseen by the NBA there are unintended consequences all the time changes are difficult to actually Implement and there’s a unique challenge here that is unprecedented in NBA

History while the NBA can attempt to legislate one side of the Analytics equation that is discernably bad for business as they’ve tried to with foul baiting rules not even the NBA itself could close Pandora’s Box the three-point Revolution and the analytics that followed it happened and there’s no

Turning back you aren’t fully reversing this there is no changing the math of the game not that the NBA necessarily would want to take back all the things that have come with analytics the three-point shooting part of it was profitable at least in the beginning the warrior going from Monte Ellis to

Stephen Curry brought them from a low tier value team to one of the most valuable franchises in the NBA which supports the idea that offense is ultimately what’s profitable spacing and shooting equals offense which equals money right well yes but only up to a certain point and we’re seeing the game

Tip over into the territory where the offensive gains are not yielding higher viewership in fact it actually seems to turn people off the impact of this shift in the game has begun to wash out the other side of the floor and that has consequences in the viewership Department three-point shooting isn’t

Going anywhere the understanding of shot values isn’t going anywhere so legislating ourselves into a new game isn’t going to be easy we can’t just go back to what it was and I don’t think sticking with the direction it’s going is the move either so we need to

Establish some goals for how we’re going to reshape the game into something more balanced the first goal we’ll discuss here is to incentivize schematic creativity bringing back the flavor of having teams using their own play Styles and disrupting the homogeny of the current game could do a lot to spark

Another level of intrigue from fans hearkening back to the illusion of choice the reason that it’s something that we all buy into is the sense of identity that can come from it even if it’s mere mundane decisions as consumers like Xbox versus PlayStation things like

That and rooting for a team that has a certain style of play you can identify with is just another form of that consumption and yet in 2024 in the post 3point era the sameness of play Styles has weakened this aspect of the NBA’s product so variety is a key pillar to

Establish here defense is another one if you haven’t figured it out by now we want there to be more of a defensive influence than there currently is more Defense Forces more variety from offenses modern offenses have become simpler due to a lack of Defense in the

League so if we want to increase variety we must turn up the dial on D so those are our goals now it’s time to figure out how we get there we’ve already established that rules are technology for optimizing the game so rule changes are probably our best bet for continuing

To do that there’s been a lot of discussions about this topic recently so I wanted to get a good grasp of the general conversation I decided to tweet asking you guys what you think could be done to change the state of the game maybe the most popular idea in this

Field is the idea of removing the defensive three in the key violation Defenders are not allowed to stand in the paint for more than 3 seconds on defense unless they’re defending an offensive opponent who is also in the paint the idea of removing defensive three in the key is that it would give

Defenders more freedom in terms of how they cover the floor and thus there would be more of a defensive influence bringing back hand checking and allowing more physicality was popular removing foul baiting actually instead of the league just playing lip service to it was a common idea I’ve seen suggestions

Like moving the three-point line further back which I can’t say I’m a fan of but points for creativity I guess reducing the 8sec violation into a 6-second violation was suggested however with the pace of the modern game I’m not sure it would really matter much could potentially be used strategically by

Defenses but I have my doubts it would make much of an impact reversing the offensive rebounding clock change that happened a couple of years ago could definitely slow the pace at least marginally though again I doubt it would have major effects a few suggested adding fee’s rule around the rim and go

Tending and all that I’m personally not a fan of that idea though I know the feea rules are popular but I personally think the NBA has this one right already with some general ideas out there I wanted to end the video with some of my own propositions here’s what I suggest

The league do you know what I would do if I were the commissioner let’s say before I go on I do want to say that like none of these are 500 IQ suggestion they’re all pretty simple there’s probably some rules that far smarter basketball Minds than me could figure

Out that are more complex than these but I’m confident that all five of these rules would dramatically increase the influence of Defense on the modern game all while not going too far in the opposite direction you don’t want to overcorrect so with that said proposal number one six in the key many have

Suggested that the NBA remove the three in the key rule as a way to encourage more defense being played however I think fully removing it goes to too high of an extreme the argument is often that the game is more about threes anyway so allowing extra defense in the paint will

Overall just mean more defense and lower scoring outputs and from the perspective of a modern Defender I somewhat understand this let’s say you’re a big man in 2024 these days defensively you have to be moving around the perimeter and away from the paint far more than

Ever before and on top of that when you’re in the paint now you have to worry about standing there too long I agree it’s a bit much a rule that made a lot more sense for an era where there wasn’t nearly as much movement and versatility expected out of Defenders

Just loading up in the paint isn’t as effective of a strategy as it would have been in the ’90s however it still would be quite effective and that’s why I can’t outright say three in the key needs to be removed regardless of how valuable and how emphasized three-point

Shooting is in the modern NBA shots in the paint still remain and will always remain the most valuable shot in basketball the prevalence of three-point shooting not only expands the game to the perimeter but also makes paint scoring easier and if you allowed the defender to just stand right under the

Rim well at that point you’re going to only get even more three-pointers or at least ugly fast drives I think it ruins the flow of the game if defenses are just never going to leave the paint and that’s exactly what would happen believe me I am certain that Grizzlies Spurs

Thunder and Timberwolves would love nothing more than to have jiren Jackson Jr wemi Chad holgren and Rudy goar stand at the basket and just never allow a shot at The Rim but I do agree 3 seconds is a bit limiting so I’m proposing it be doubled to 6 seconds obviously three in

The key isn’t called the moment 3 seconds has passed or at least not often and I expect the same situation would apply here so Rim protectors get more opportunity to load up on the paint which allows for more of a defensive presence but not enough that it becomes

A cheat code for defenses to never allow shots around the rim remember the goal is to balance offense and defense not just shift all the power to the the other side proposal number two the no fou baiting for real this time Rule and yeah it’s really as simple as that the

NBA was on the right track towards adding more of a defensive aspect to the game when they introduced the anti-foul baiting rules to the sport not only does foul baiting result in free throws when it happens but just the very risk of giving up foul bait makes defense harder

Players who are known to foul bait will use the threat of their potential to draw a foul to make their Defenders hesitate and not play as strong a defense as they otherwise would or they deploy unconventional and just frankly weird and ugly alternative styles of Defense seriously the very existence of

Defense like this is proof in itself of how much defense isn’t allowed to be played anymore I think foul baiting that initiates contact should be a technical foul resulting in free throws for the defender team equal to the amount of points the offensive player was attempting to generate so if you foul

Bait on a three-pointer the defender gets to shoot three free throws now sure this might be a bit extreme of a punishment but honestly that’s exactly what I want it to be my hope with this is that it would be such an extreme punishment that it eradicates foul

Baiting from the game entirely it would hopefully be a call that is very seldom made and I’m not worried about any potential ambiguity either because players know when they’re foul baiting it’s not like an unconscious thing sure they’ve developed some muscle memory for it so it will take some time for

Everyone in the league to get used to it but after those growing pains are over I think you’ll have a much more pure version of the game where offensive players have to earn all of their points and Defenders don’t have to play with the fear of getting screwed over by some

Complete [ __ ] call proposal number three the defenses can be more physical again rule look not all of these titles are winners in general I think the threshold for what is a foul in the NBA is a little weak obviously the NBA has dialed back physicality for the sake of decreasing physical altercations in

These games but honestly I think the culture of the modern NBA just wouldn’t cultivate these types of interactions like they used to don’t get me wrong I don’t want to go back to the WWE on hardwood era punching people mid air is not defense it’s just admitting you

Can’t play defense so you hit them instead but that doesn’t mean that the changes we saw in the 2000s weren’t an overcorrection the difficult thing about fouls is they’re kind of just Vibes like some stuff is obviously a foul but a lot of the time things get left up to

Interpretation the rules are actually designed to empower the officials to use discretion and as a result it’s kind of hard to put this idea into concrete terms it really is just more of a Vibes thing but nevertheless the idea is there not all contact needs to be called as it

Is now a little bit of contact is good and as long as you have a fairly consistent threshold for what’s being called well I think you’ll notice the results free throw rate is actually super low in the NBA right now lower than it was for the more physical eras

Of the NBA but that’s really just a product of the general notion that you can’t be physical at all therefore Defenders rarely attempt to do it I’m actually okay with a few more fouls per game if it enables Defenders to actually play defense when they’re not fouling maybe this would actually increase

Scoring to a degree but it would at least be scoring that felt more earned not Ticky tack fouls or open shots because a Defender is afraid of fouling proposal number four the Draymond Green rule I know this seems like a setup for something funny like no more nut kcks or

Whatever but the rule technically already exists you’re not supposed to nut KCK but what I am referring to is illegal screens this is definitely something that’s been exploited in the past few seasons this is yet another rule that is more or less just saying actually enforce a rule that already

Exists but regardless it’s something that would punish the offense for being sloppy which I think is only fair given how much defenses are punished for being sloppy defending on Perimeter jumpers is so much more pivotal to the game than it used to be getting open on down screens

Is a huge part of the game so if the defense has to worry about all the running around that they do I think it’s only fair that they shouldn’t also have to dodge the offense getting away with a violation consistently proposal number five the carry rule for those who may

Not know carrying is a violation an offensive player can commit while dribbling the ball where they hold the ball with one hand for too long for it to continue to be a live dribble but they continue the dribble anyways carrying is not called in the NBA almost

At all and to a degree I’m okay with this I think enabling a little bit of carrying allows for more exciting dribble moves and ways of creating space so for that reason I don’t think carrying should be enforced strictly however there’s a lot of [ __ ] that players get away with with that is

Egregious and it should be dialed back so those are my suggestions like I said they’re pretty straightforward but I honestly think that’s for the better changing a few things to add more defense to the game really shouldn’t be all that complex there’s a few things that should be fairly easy to implement

Here it would just take some time for the players and refs to adjust the new officiating but it would be worthwhile in the long run really when you think about it other than the 6sec rule everything I suggested is something that we regularly see in the NBA already more

Physicality not blowing the whistle on foul baiting calling illegal screens and carrying more that’s all stuff that just happens in the playoffs the playoffs this previous season were such a breath of fresh air for how I was feeling about offense in that season seeing the game with players more locked in on defense

And allowed to get away with more physicality it was just a way better viewing experience obviously the environment of the playoffs plays a huge part in the intensity of it all but at the bare minimum the NBA can officiate more like it’s the playoffs but regardless of what changes should be

Made or should not be made I do want to end on one note I want to be clear that I love the NBA as it is now and I can more than tolerate the current product however I feel like we’re losing a part of the game that fun or not entertaining or not

Is pivotal to the overall experience of the sport otherwise it’s becoming something else something that at least for me personally is worse well that’s the end of the video thank you very much for watching if you have managed to make it this far and you haven’t already

Please do me a huge favor and drop a like on this video as it really helps the video do better in the algorithm I know I said this last time and then actually just changed the topic but that’s not going to happen this time the

Next video is just going to be me being a hater for like an hour uh but yeah that’s it bye

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0:00 intro
3:40 Chapter 1
24:14 Chapter 2
35:26 Chapter 3
43:56 Chapter 4

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