So it’s probably premature but anyone else thinking it’s getting way too easy for teams to get a 130-140 game even without OT. Is any defense being played? A matter of fouls being called more strictly? Points of emphasis for this year? To me it is at least partially the rules, since you cannot touch a guy for even a second unless the refs decide it’s okay like against stars. It’s just not fun to me that defensive options have been taken away. We saw these scores in the 80s / early 90s and ironically once hand checking became illegal and zone defense introduced we got the 70-90s scores in late 90s - mid 2000s. Granted there was a lack of talent and adjustment, so schemes have evolved and in some ways the game maybe, but there has to be a turning point for the league to look at bringing defense back. Thoughts?
I also think the 3 point shooting record of 29 made 3s might fall again this season. Or couple teams will come close to hitting 28 treys once or twice.
I have always thought it was weird that in spite of baseball and football routinely ending up with game scores where teams doubled, tripled, or did even worse to their opponents’ score, in basketball you had a sport that mostly ended up with scores with a margin of less than 10% of the total score. And for the most part, my dad’s aphorism was oftentimes correct when he said you only needed to watch the last 5 minutes of the game to see the good part. Now with increased scrutiny on the refs, and the elimination of home court advantage, I think you’re seeing a bit of a result of that. We all knew the NBA was the most manipulated league of the major sports when it came to officials making calls to affect outcomes. And someone had put out statistical analyses showing that calls always tend to favor teams that are losing, like someone in last place in Mario Kart getting all the good items. Now we’re seeing that effect mitigated a bit. The NBA SHOULD be having more blowouts. It’s just the nature of how a sport should be when one team is better than another on the court. Think about your own games of 21 when you play pick up. The score is not always obligated to be 21 vs 18 or whatever; sometimes it’s 21 vs 8.
no fans...guys are out there comfortable as hell rushed training camp and preseason...the defense is still a work in progress for most teams
Not sure that's a good comparison. There is no filter or criteria in our pick up or league games. You get some people who can't play and just out there for fun or exercise. The level of skill and talent varies quite a bit. The nba while there definitely is a talent disparity between teams is still composed of the best of the best players. But blowouts are just part of the game
With the 2 practices this week that makes a total of 4 practices with a full team for Silas and staff. The defense will start getting better
There was a point in time where, if you scored 80, it was a good offensive night. Pretty crazy to think about.
College games have much more big blowouts. It might be that the talent levels team by team in the NBA are really very close. Any team can beat any team in a given night. Upsets in the college level is very rare because the gap between good teams and bad teams is very wide. Basketball has a high number of possessions. The higher the number of possessions, the closer the score should reflect the talent differences of teams. Point differential is still the best predictor of final records for basketball.
In the NBA? Definitely not. Everyone was complaining how ugly it was, how bad it looked, but cracking 100 was amazing. Now it’s 140-150 to be considered great. 120-140 is pretty normal, now that’s insane!
I don't care about the high scoring as much as the lack of competitiveness. I feel like the Rockets v. Blazers game might have been the only close game of the season. If 50 point blowouts become the norm (especially the abomination that was the Christmas Day games), the NBA will really need to do some retooling to make it interesting again.
It could be similar to what we saw in the NFL season; majorly reduced offseasons and training camps and preseasons resulted in teams being helter skelter and confused on defense. A lot of guys are learning on the fly.
