The NBA has changed

19 games in or so, let’s see how many are still averaging that after 82 games are played.

There are always a lot of high PPG averages this early in the season. Everything will settle down eventually. Last season, for example, there were three players who averaged more than 27.7 ppg by season’s end.

It’s not 2011 anymore. Let’s do points per possession.

In 2011 Dorell Wright lead the NBA with 2.4 3s a game.

There are 52 guys this year at or above that level.

Back when averaging 20 used to mean something

James and Steph still being great at year 17. 2009 draft represent!

fun fact the last time someone won a scoring title averaging under 30 was westbrook in 2014-2015

Giannis not play enough games to make the cut?

The season isnt even 20 games in… 

Where is Giannis? He is over 30ppg

It’s November.

In 2013 there were only 11 people who averaged >20 a game.

NBA season doesn’t start till Christmas

Austin Reaves is an All-star level player now. Remeber when pundits says his peak will be 20ppg?

dang at the time it felt like kd, bron, kobe and melo were averaging like 30

Hand checking separates the men from the boys.

Adam Silver let this league turn into a soft league where you cant play defense treating it like there are CTE concerns like the NFL…

Volume shooting is becoming pretty boring to watch. Cant play D when their launching shots midcourt.

We are in an inflated era. That is it. It is that simple. Freedom of movement + landing space rule equals buckets

How much of it is pace, how much of it is a change in playing styles and teams shooting more 3s, and how much of it is rules favoring the offense?

Yeh it’s just inflation. Offense is crazy inflated now, especially because of the fast paced offense and high volume 3s. Also the defense is mid. Teams only start playing real defense in the playoffs now.

This is why I look at the number of seasons that a player was top 5 in ppg as a quick overview for scoring, as opposed to career ppg.

Inflation is also up 44% since 2011. A \(100 item back then costs \)144 now

its a different league.

You definitely see it with kd himself averaging 27 now as a top ten player when he used to get 27 and be fighting with prime Bron for mvp

This thread thinking 2011 KD wouldn’t average more in today’s game. SMH

Sample size

we are not even 20% into the season

25ppg scorer is today’s 30ppg scorer.

That simple.

Melo used to have (until the last seasons cut it down a lot) a career of 25ppg or more average. . That number was a staple of “elite scorer”. Lebron’s 27-7-7 starting to look unimpressive when ppl scoring 30+ppg.

 

the fact of the matter is that
-Knicks shot a lot of 3’s one year and were successful in 2012.
-GS shot a lot of 3’s and completely revamped the league strat in 2015.
-2017 or 2018, rule changes made it so fouls increased.
-14 second shot clock timer after offensive rebound.
-“protecting the landing space” fouls have added up.

 

A BUNCH of stuff have been added that has made scoring jump from

-“100 points” is a nice scoring game
-to people getting 105pts on the regular
-to then 110-115pts on the regular
-to now teams scoring 120 to 135pts on the regular.

 

Those extra 30pts…I’d say ¹⁄₃ of those pts go to the #1…thus effectively raising a “big time elite scorer” from 25-28ppt to 30-35ppg.

 

Also the reason why now a teams’ #2 will easily score 20ppg when back in the past a #2 scored 16 to 18ppg. 20ppg scoring was regulated to a team’s #1. 23ppg and up was for greatest of great scorers. 25-29 was for elite scorers.

Inflation situation type beat

and lebron still hasn’t gotten 27/7/7–what a bum

It’s still super early in the season, I don’t think the current averages are too off from previous years at this point in the season. But also it does feel like high scorers are scoring extra hard this season

Singling out KD’s 2011 scoring title for what reason exactly?

I don’t understand why Adam Silver doesn’t make some rule changes to make the pendulum swing back even just a little bit to defense. In the early 2000’s, the league was too defense oriented. That was the time of the Pistons and Spurs. Ending games with 70 points wasn’t something crazy. David Stern realizes this was a problem so he changed some rules such as hand checking to move the pendulum a little bit back to offense. Silver isn’t trying to do this at all the other way around

Shai doin it in 3 qtrs

Yeah, so far. (still impressive though)

I’m sure if you took the first 19 games of ²⁰¹⁰⁄₂₀₁₁ and made a similar list, it would have more than just KD on it.

That being said, this is still fascinating. Wouldn’t be shocked if half these guys are still averaging these numbers towards to end of the season.

11-13 is just down years for volume scoring

Compare it to 2006.

It’s because the shot clock changed to 14 seconds

Fastest pace in like 60 years will do that

Players have gotten better and the competition has gotten deadly. Just how time works, the game has evolved.

It’s why you can’t take top players from the past seriously.

Back then they played this thing called defense.