EARLY THEME TO SEASON: YOU SCORE, I SCORE

Maybe it’s the 3-ball. Perhaps it’s all about small ball. Whatever the reasons, NBA teams had few problems putting the ball in the basket and piling up points through the first week of the regular season.

A third of the league is averaging 110 or more, and the Brooklyn Nets became the first team to score 115 in their first four games in 32 years — and they only won half of them, because they were giving up more than 120 a night.

The floor is open and offences are flowing — with ease.

“The game has changed. Offence has changed in the last 10 years radically just because the players are getting better, they shoot the ball better, offence has opened up, 3-point line, everybody shoots now,” Houston coach Mike D’Antoni said. “So the offence has changed radically. Defence traditionally has not changed that much.”

It’s advantage offence in a big, entertaining fashion.

D’Antoni ran the NBA’s most potent offence when he was in Phoenix a decade ago, and in 2006-07 the Suns were the only team to average 110 for the season, finishing at 110.2.

That would have barely cracked the top 10 entering Tuesday’s play. The Nets — yes, the Nets — are leading the way, averaging 123.5 a night.

The system of playing small and firing 3-pointers may have been sneered at then, but it’s practically becoming the norm now.

“It’s hard to keep your bigs in the game now, so there’s nobody tall at the rim anymore,” Orlando coach Frank Vogel said.

“I think that’s made offence a lot easier. It’s really just kind of a style of play and stylistically teams are playing with more shooting and more guards and more speed and less rim protection around the basket, so it’s definitely benefited the offence.”

He had Roy Hibbert in that role when he was in Indiana, and the Pacers rode their rugged defence toward the top of the Eastern Conference. Now, Vogel’s Magic have yielded 126 and 121 while splitting a pair of games against the Nets.

Brooklyn is the first team since the Lakers, Pacers and Pistons in 1985-86 to open with four straight 115-point games.

D’Antoni believes defences will have to evolve because “they can’t keep up with the offence.”

That, NBA fans, understatement. is an

Nobody has ever started an NBA season quite like Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The Greek Freak put up 147 points, 43 rebounds and 21 assists during the Bucks’ 3-1 start, stats the NBA said had never been reached in a player’s first four games. He scored at least 30 points in every game, including a career-high 44 against Portland.

Antetokounmpo is also off to the best scoring start in Bucks history. Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 146 in 1970-71, when he won his first of two straight MVP awards.

Antetokounmpo might be on his way to one. The online sportsbook Bovada lowered his odds from 10 to 1 in the preseason to 5 to 2 Monday, listing him as its current MVP favourite.

DeMarcus Cousins returns to Sacramento for the first time since his midseason trade to New Orleans last season when the Pelicans visit the Kings on Thursday. The next night, Paul Millsap is back in Atlanta for the first time since moving West to the Denver Nuggets over the summer.

San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich needs four wins to pass Phil Jackson and move into sixth place of the NBA’s career list. Jackson had 1,155 victories in the regular season. Popovich had 1,152 entering the Spurs’ game in Miami on Wednesday.

Two of the league’s best backcourts go head-to-head on Friday when John Wall and Bradley Beal will lead Washington into Oracle Arena to face Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. nationalpost.com