NBA Scoring Binges Increase as Three-point Shooting Increases

In Milwaukee’s win over Washington on last Tuesday, Giannis Antetokounmpo set a career high with 55 points, but that wasn’t even the NBA’s Central Division’s top scoring effort for the week.

That belonged to Donovan Mitchell of Cleveland, who scored a mind-boggling 71 the night before.

The best scorers in the NBA have been showing off their one-upmanship almost every night over the past few weeks. There seems to be a player putting up a huge total everywhere you look, whether it was Mitchell’s outstanding performance for the Cavaliers or Luka Doncic of Dallas scoring 50 points three times in a nine-day span.

“I think there are a lot of layers to it. You just see night after night, guys are having enormous offensive games,” Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr. said. “It’s fun to watch as a fan, of course. Frustrating when you’re trying to game plan to stop some of these guys because they’re scoring at all levels — the paint, the 3s, getting to the line.”

This season, Antetokounmpo, Mitchell, Doncic, Joel Embiid, Devin Booker, Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson, Pascal Siakam, Darius Garland, and Stephen Curry are the only ten players to have already scored 50 points in a game. The other nine are Stephen Curry and Darius Garland.

Sportradar reports that only eight players, most recently in 2016–17, have ever had more than one season with a 50-point game. Every season since, at least 10 players have done so, with a record 14 doing so in 2021–22. In this increasingly high-scoring era, some of this is to be expected. NBA teams were scoring an average of 113.8 points per game as of Monday night, which if it holds up would be the highest total for the league since 1969-70. However, the overall scoring environment only partially reveals the story.

Only two players had a 50-point game during that 1969–1970 season, despite teams scoring an average of 116.7 points. Teams averaged 110.8 points in 1984–85, the 1980s’ highest scoring season. However, only five players that season—Bernard King, Larry Bird, Purvis Short, Kevin McHale, and Moses Malone—produced a 50-point performance.

Therefore, recent trends go beyond simply increased scoring across the league. The top players are also churning out massive games with astonishing regularity. The potential role of expansion There are 30% more teams than there were in 1985. It makes sense that there are more instances of a player scoring 50 points because there are more teams and games.

But there have also been other changes to the sport.

“Guys come into this league, and the most impressive thing is the skill set — the handle and the shooting,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “What’s lacking, I think, is the foundation, the institutional knowledge that players used to have when they came into the league after a few years of college. Sometimes the defense isn’t great. Transition defense is at an all-time low in this league.”

Nowadays, virtually every top scorer is proficient from beyond the arc, in contrast to the 1980s, when some stars largely avoided the shot and not many attempts were made.

“Guys are taking 15 or 16 3s in some games,” Los Angeles Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said. “Teams are encouraging guys to take those shots, and if you take so many shots, and if you get hot and make some, you can score a lot of points.”

The 3-point shot has a greater impact on the game than that, and current players have a variety of ways to quickly rack up points. Teams can spread the floor in a way that penalizes double teams by having so many players capable of making open 3-pointers.

“You have to pick and choose the guys you try and double team and get the ball out of their hands because they are not great passers, but there are some guys who can score, but can also pick you apart with their passing,” Lue said. “So, when you have guys like that, you want to let those guys try and get theirs and take everyone else out, but sometimes it can backfire on you as well.”

King didn’t try a single three when he scored 60 points on Christmas in 1984. Antetokounmpo didn’t even attempt any shots when he scored 55 this year. Mitchell, however, made just seven of his 15 attempts in his 71-point performance.

“I think that 3-point line, as we’ve seen over the years, has definitely changed the game,” Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins said. “Now you’re getting more guys to embrace that. The volume of attempts creates those opportunities. It’s pretty rare that guys are shooting 2 repeatedly to get to that 50-point mark. It’s definitely the evolution of our game to see more of that. I would expect that trend to continue.”

News source: basketballnews.com