The NBA Is Getting WAY TOO SOFT

The NBA Is Getting WAY TOO SOFT

The NBA has a massive problem and it’s all their fault with the way the NBA is being officiated it’s becoming pretty hard to even watch these games anymore and it’s disgusting to watch thanks players are getting nonsense ejections defenses can do nothing against the offense there are constant game delays

Because of ticky tack fouls to wonder why the league is losing money that’s why people F good money to come watch these athletes play and they try to take over the game in a November game against the Pistons Giannis picked up a second technical foul and got ejected after

Staring down Isaiah Stewart and he would be gone for the game Trey young was tossed after clapping and disagreement over a call technical foul on Trey Young and the next night joic was ejected after a single technical foul because he said literally one word to the refs oh

My goodness they’re not throwing him out of the game really are they but why is the NBA trying to implement this kind of officiating and water down their own product I don’t enjoy what the NBA as a whole is becoming the NBA used to be a league full of hard-nosed tough guys and

Now it’s trying to be a ballet with the ball that’s outrageous this is completely BS shame for the referees shame for the league to allow this so what exactly is happening with the modern NBA and how did we arrive at a point where a 50-point game is just

Another day at the office in the 2010 NBA season only one player scored 50 points in a game in 2011 there were two 50-point games and the next year there were just three but in January of 2024 in a space of one week four players scored 60 including a 70 point explosion

From embiid 70 and a 73o Annihilation from Luka these are not the fault of the players the league is too damn soft the rules favor offensive minded players and teams so are the NBA players just that much better than before or or is the NBA purposefully making the game softer to

Propel modern scores in 2017 when Kevin Durant joined the Warriors the dubs had three of the best Shooters in NBA history and nobody was too surprised that they had the best offense in the NBA but not only did their 115.6 offensive rating lead the league it was also the best offensive rating in

NBA history 20124 that offensive rating would rank 18 below the league average the first reason for the Absurd jump in offensive efficiency is the most obvious one The increased volume of three-point shooting and a faster Pace however when we look at NBA history the current pace of play

Is only average the 2024 season ranks only 21st in terms of pace with 99 possessions per game because the 70s and 80s NBA was played at an insane Tempo topping out in 1974 at 108 possessions per game in the 60s teams played even more for ically and routinely averaged

120 possessions per game but those are actually unofficial numbers because the league first started measuring Pace in 1973 however when we look at the average points scored the 2024 season ranks sixth in NBA history with 115 points on average while the teams in 1962 averaged an insane 119 points per game in 1962

Wilt averaged 50 points while four other players averaged more than 30 and five players averaging over 30 well it hasn’t been repeated since so in terms of pace and scoring the modern NBA has only caught up to the 60s 7s and the80s and these modern high-scoring games only

Look Preposterous if you compare them to the dreadfully slow ’90s and 2000s basketball the basketball that we watched in the Jordan and Kobe era was rougher tactically simpler and more inclined to emphasize individual abilities through isolation as the ultimate offensive weapon AKA herob ball it was also a period of expansion teams

That diluted the quality of the league as the NBA hadn’t yet filled up the talent pool with international players and even when the first European players came they encountered problems because they didn’t quite fit into the player archetypes created by NBA teams and if you look at the 2004 NBA Finals between

The Pistons and the Lakers this brand of basketball looked more like a wrestling match than a basketball game you see back in those days all teams played with two traditional big men and those heavyweights battled like hell to establish a deep post position when players wanted to cut to the basket

Their opponent would frequently hold them without even being called for a foul because the infamous hand checking rule it was not yet in place the Pistons averaged 90 points per game in those finals while the Lakers barely eclipsed 80 in the 2005 finals between Detroit and San Antonio the offense was even

Worse with neither team averaging over 86 points the viewership and the profit had been in constant decline since Jordan retired and that is when the league decided to adapt the rules to punch up the scoring but the 2001 season brought the biggest changes the first and most important change was the

Introduction of defensive 3 seconds to prohibit big men from camping in the paint and deter guards from attacking the basket also zone defense became legal and the time to cross half court was cut from 10 to 8 seconds in 2004 hand-checking became illegal but even with the those changes as we stated at

The beginning of the video 50-point games were still an oddity and not the norm while off the ball wrestling was not as prevalent as it was before the hand checking and the refs started calling fouls if the players started acting too much like MMA it was still a

Pretty physical game and the playoffs were often a bar fight down 20 you’re down 27 points fight ball fight tonight was a ball fight man tonight was a ball fight you ever been in a ball fight and it stayed that away for more than a decade after the hand checking Rule and

The first NBA Finals where both teams averaged over 100 points was in 2017 which was the first time that it happened since the 2000 finals but in 2015 when the Warriors won the title well the whole NBA realized the power of spacing and three-point shooting so that very next season the

Rockets fueled by James Harden and Daryl Mor’s analytics they took it to a whole other level and enough the NBA went through the biggest offensive Revolution since the introduction of the shot clock in 1954 because until 2015 the NBA was a fairly rigid league in terms of its

Positions there were always players who stepped out of their roles but it was more or less known what the task of each player was throughout the 60s and up until the 2000s players were molded into given roles specializing them as much as possible point guards were game managers

Who distributed the ball wings were usually the best Shooters on the team and the centers were masters of post play and now 15 20 years later you got guys shooting threes it’s cute positions were historically mostly defined by Heights but in today’s basketball a player skill set is not at all related

To his size or the position that he plays position lead that I think you have to draft guys that have size but also has great length and athleticism modern NBA players are more versatile than ever as most teams play with five players who can dribble pass and shoot

There is no longer a team without a small ball five and there is no longer a defense without at least two or even three rotations based on aggressive switching as more and more teams they play position lless basketball there were of course pick and pop Bigs like

Pal Gasol Carlos Boozer or Dirk before but they were a minority and today they are literally everywhere and because because everybody can shoot there is more floor spacing than ever before also ball handling has reached such a high level that most teams have refined to pick and roll actions with bigs such as

Joic or Giannis and almost every player in the rotation has the green light to dribble or shoot ‘ 80s basketball it was tougher shut up Let It Go 80s cannot compete with ’90s 2000s and now and if we wanted to look at some non-shooting bigs from the ’90s

Such as Dennis Rodman who would still be a great defender today but because his offense was pretty much non-existent in the modern NBA he would be almost unplayable this versatility and increase in skill set has made it very difficult for defenses to adapt because the number of variables has increased 10-fold and

It’s much much harder to shut down the opponent and while the major reason for the current offensive optic definitely is the pace Space volume three-point shooting and the skill set of the current players the NBA also went along with those changes by making it even easier for the offense while it has

Never been harder to be a defender in 2017 after Zaza pulia deliberately put his feet in front of Kawhi Leonard and injured his ankle the NBA reacted by introducing the Zaza rule that a defensive player can’t place his feet in the shooters landing area now on the

Surface this was the right thing to do to prevent injuries but in reality it actually only made it harder for Defenders to stay close to their man furthermore players like James Harden Trey young and plenty of others started to hunt for fouls Harden well he was a

Pioneer of this and a true Master baiting players to raise their hands only to tangle them and draw foul and since Harden first started doing this it has gone from bad to worse it is almost comical how sometimes a Defender stands still with his hands in the air while

The offensive player runs into him exaggerating the contact like they’ve been hit with Thor’s hammer only for the refs to call a foul on the poor Defender Joel embiid is shooting 12 free throws a night and the defense is barely allowed to touch his 300lb body as he pummels

Through the lane Shaq on the other hand was literally punched and beaten up night after night and only once in his career did he shoot more than 12 free throws and he’s a guy that got fouled deliberately without the ball because he couldn’t even shoot free throws one

Thing I love about David sterer is he was real so we go in his office one day and he says son if we call every fou that was committed on you the game will last 4 hours and I felt about it like you’re right and he say Shaq you’re over

Here complaining about fing I got 2018s complaining about you other than ghost fouls the officials also started getting more and more lenient towards moving screens traveling and carrying the ball especially in transition this ultimately resulted in absurd moves like LeBron’s legendary crab dribble or Harden’s step back three and it’s not completely the

Ref’s fault that we’re often confused about traveling in the NBA it’s also the fact that players have become so much better at using every step that they’re allowed you can call travel in almost every play and once the NBA has allowed an extra few steps it becomes hard to

Even call Travel gather step was always present in the NBA but now players take that gather step to the absolute extreme they can time the pickup of the ball so that it looks like they’re taking Tak three or four steps without even dribbling because they are taking a lot

Of steps without dribbling but you never had to dribble with every step you just needed to have an active dribble which means you hadn’t picked up the ball yet now particularly on step backs they’re taking multiple steps back before actually picking the ball up another thing that the refs routinely don’t

Whistle is when a player moves his pivot foot which should stay planted to not become a travel but we often see players spinning and raising that pivot foot to a point where they made seven or even eight steps while the refs stay [Applause] silent they didn’t call it call oh my

God hey hey now considering the many changes that were made mainly with one goal to open up the offense it’s not surprising that the number of points is constantly increasing the amount of offensive Talent there is in the league right now is just insane I don’t think

People really realize it how much talent offense there is Steve Kerr once said that the players have never been more talented but the defenses are not up to par especially in transition you’re a good defensive team in this day and age if you giving up 110 points per game

Don’t make no damn sense but how could Defenders be up to par when they’ve been deprived of all possible tools to do their job I came in the NBA when people are hand checking when people can put their hands on you they can guide you over screens and where you can go and

Then I was in an era where they took your hands off and you had to guard a guy like this how do you guard a guy that super super fast and super strong and you know all that that’s getting a ball screen you can’t touch it however M travel calls endless gather steps

Flopping and ticky Tac fouls well they’re not the worst things about modern officiating Steve cerr is going nuts oh he just slammed down the board he gets a technical he might get thrown out he does the absolute worst thing in the current NBA is how the refs call technical fouls after the stupidest

Things which steal all emotion out of the game and it’s disgusting to watch thanks we don’t want to see players get texts for hanging on the rim a millisecond too long or for staring down an opponent look at this it’s unbelievable you used to be able to talk

To officials this is the raw emotion that brings up the temperature in the arena that starts rivalries and makes highlight reels for decades and that’s what fans want just imagine if alen Iverson stepped over teron l in 2024 he would probably get ejected for taunting

I remember I look at all the coaches and we’d all kind of smile because we’ve never seen anybody do something like that before and probably would never see somebody do it again in the Athletics 2023 NBA player poll 26% of Players called officiating the biggest issue in

The NBA and it is pretty hard to argue with them you touch somebody as a foul you can get teed up for having bad breath don’t Lord help you if you pass gas it’s understandable that the league tried to clean up it’s act after the malice at the palace and the nuggets

Nick’s brawl from 2006 and we get that certain players complain way too much to the refs and that they deserve to get thrown out especially when there’s cussing involved but just like they did with the offensive rules the NBA went too far I have a problem with the way

We’re we are legislating defense out of the game um if I were a fan I wouldn’t have wanted to watch the second half of that game it was disgusting commissioner silver and the NBA they should tweak the rules to allow more contact on defense and they should really allow players

More more freedom to express themselves on the court without being penalized maybe they could even abolish the defensive 3 second rule and adopt more things from the FEA rule book but generally speaking the NBA is in a good place there has never been more parody in the league and the players well

They’re more talented and more efficient than ever however right now it does feel like something is missing like a great meal at a Michelin restaurant when the chef is forgetting to put the salt and pepper in it no bro I’m not eating that hell no so to answer the question from the

Beginning is it normal that the NBA players are scoring this much the answer is that the current NBA scoring it’s actually normal if we compare it to the’ 60s 7s and the 80s it was actually the Jordan and the Kobe era that was the outlier then again the way the league is

Officiated right now it just doesn’t feel normal and it has gotten way too soft thanks for watching Non-Stop and if you enjoyed this one this next video might be even better

A hard discussion on the current state of the NBA and the many problems with how the game is played today.

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