Target number on the rise in today’s NBA
Come on over, baby. Whole lotta scorin’ goin’ on. (Bet you didn’t expect to get your daily Jerry Lee Lewis fix taken care of in the sports page. But we digress.)
Yes, welcome to the NBA, where 140 points is the old 120. Or possibly 110. Through Thursday, we’ve had Philadelphia with a 146 twice, Milwaukee with a 146 and a 142, and New Orleans with a 142. I mean, you no longer blink when you see a 140. Don’t forget, either, that our lads in the green and white hit Indiana with a blistering 155 back on Nov. 1.
You might think this scoring binge represents a straight line upward since the institution of the 24-second clock prior to the 195455 season, and indeed the effect was immediate, with the Celtics moving from a league-leading 87.7 points a game in ‘53-54 to becoming the first NBA team to crack the 100-points-per-game barrier with 101.5 the following season.
Scoring continued to increase, and by 1961-62 the Philadelphia Warriors (with Wilt Chamberlain) were scoring 125.4 per game.
Who could possibly have imagined that before the turn of the 20th century, the NBA would have entered a miserable ice age in which we would be subjected to NBA Finals in 1994 when neither New York nor Houston hit 100 in the seven-game series, or 1996 (Chicago and Seattle), in which
100 points was cleared only three times in six games.
How bad was it in 1994? How about 90 being broken only five out of 14 mutual tries, with 93 being the high-water mark? Wait a minute. I’m not done. In 1998, champion Chicago and runner-up Utah managed to break 90 twice in 12 mutual attempts. Game 3 was an incomprehensible 96-54 — yes, 54! — triumph for Chicago.
Nope, not done yet. In the ’99 Finals between San Antonio and New York, they managed to break 90 . . . are you ready? Once in five games. (Gee, we’ll have to chat up Celtics consultant Jeff Van Gundy about that, won’t we?)
We in the media had fun picking on commissioner David Stern during those dreary Finals. His defense was, “Well, you baseball guys don’t mind 1-0 or 2-1 games, correct?” Sure, we said, but not seven of them in a row.
I well remember a beleaguered Detroit “Bad Boys” mentor Chuck Daly doing some media duty, wailing, “Don’t blame me!” He pointed out that his 1990 champion squad averaged 104.3 p.p.g., which would have led the league in 1996-97. His championship backcourt of Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, and Vinnie “The Microwave” Johnson remains the most potent offensive guard trio ever. No, Chuck, it wasn’t your fault.
So, what was going on? You can postulate that defenses were becoming more sophisticated, but there was more to it than that. My everlasting belief is that the league was infested with fraidy-cat coaches who really didn’t even like offense, and who apparently were happier when their teams did not have the ball. Yes, the league was getting increasingly populated with greater and greater pure athletes, but coaches were more interested in channeling said athleticism into defensive skills. The pace of game was generally slow, the “Showtime” Lakers excepted. Back in ‘66-67, the St. Louis Hawks were in 10th and last place with 98.8 shots per game. By ‘92-93, Portland was leading with 89.5 and Minnesota (79.6) didn’t break 80. It was awful.
The fact is, basketball needs sufficient offense if it is to remain popular. No one ever fell in love with the sport because he or she said, “Oh, wow, what a great stop.” We all fell in love with basketball because we love seeing that round ball go through that orange rim.
By the time of that horrible Knicks-Spurs ’99 Finals, which featured an 80-67 Spurs triumph in Game 2 and a 78-77 Game 5 clincher for the men of Popovich, the 3-point shot had been around for 20 seasons with surprisingly minimal effect. Layups, dunks, and midrange jumpers were still the currency.
The Daryl Morey-fication of basketball had yet to take root. No one was proclaiming that “the long two is the worst shot in basketball.” Even Poppa Curry (Dell, that is) was restricting himself to twoplus threes a game back in 1990. I’m sure even he could not have imagined what sons Stephen and Seth could someday accomplish.
Incidentally, you know who would really have thrived in today’s game? Larry Bird, that’s who.
More than anyone in his time, Bird utilized the three mainly as strategic mental weapon. He was actually philosophically opposed to it, for two reasons. The first, he said, was that he didn’t think that a 2-point lead late in a game should be eclipsed by a three. Seriously. Secondly, he felt referees mistakenly called some twos a three and some threes a two. Now, of course, technology has taken care of that problem.
Bird tried to save threes for key moments, such as the 1981 Game 6 put-away hoop from the left corner in Houston that sealed his first championship. And let the record show that he made the first NBA All-Star Game three in the 1980 Washington affair.
I would also like to call attention to a spectacular run Bird had in the historic ‘85-86 season. From March 10-26, he went 25 for 34 on 3-pointers, scoring 50, 31, 33, 26, 36, 43, 21, 32, 36, and 35 for an average of 34.3 points a game. In the last four of those games he was a modest 6 for 8 on threes. It just wasn’t the game that it is today.
I’m quite sure that if you told him to go out and crank up 10 or 12 threes, he’d say, “Well, if you insist ...”
OK, perhaps that was a bit of a digression, too, but, hey, we’re talking about Larry Bird, and that’s always legit around here.
What we’re mostly talking about is scoring, and the Pacers are pushing 130 points a game while taking about 95 shots and 38 threes. You probably won’t be shocked to hear that the Celtics are battling Dallas for the honor of taking the highest number of threes per game, each in the 42 range.
That’s it for today. Class dismissed.