That's a great question. Maybe league expansions resulting in influx of better offensive talent? The Celtics pioneered fast break basketball during that time period. Perhaps other teams started following suit, and the faster pace led to more layup opportunities?
You are right he was about average I was just reacting to him shooting 40%. I don't know why percentages went up that much in 5 years, I thought that was odd as well.
I'd put out the theory that the jump shot became significantly more prevalent in the late 50s over the set shot, which led to a general increase in accuracy and ability to get up a shot quickly without a lot of passing. The 1956-1957 season looks pretty wild without context; somehow total FGA per team went up by almost 3 shots per game, but assists dropped by 5.4, and FG% dropped as well. That would seem to point to an increase in isolation play, and guys who could reliably score in that kind of environment took over and flourished. I don't know of many players who actually changed their shot over time, but a lot of the black top scorers like Elgin Baylor, Hal Greer, and Sam Jones used the jump shot. I'm guessing it took time for it to trickle down to the college and HS ranks and be an acceptable practice for the majority of players. Alternatively, it could be more like the recent massive increase in 26+ foot deep 3-pointers we've been seeing over the past few years. At first, it was seen as a horrible/desperation shot, then it became a feature of a few stars like Curry and Lillard; now it's basically a requirement for 3-and-D guys, and overall, despite both the difficulty of the shot, and a wider number of less talented players taking the shot, percentages have continued to increase as players train from that distance.
The most impactful rule change had to be adding the 24 second shot clock, which was in 1954. It was certainly very disruptive to the way players played the game. Probably getting used to the new clock played some role as well even a few years after it was instituted.
So, if he was LEAGUE average - is that the goal, to be average? I dunno, that is pretty poor tbh, may have something with that set shot theory. DD
Certainly possible. Innovation would have taken a lot longer to proliferate through the league back then, with no resources to scout what other teams were doing. It took years for teams to embrace analytics in all of the major sports in the 2000s, and that's with the benefit of the internet and millions of dollars. In the 50s, I'm guessing even getting reliable footage and scouting of players who played on the west coast in college was like trying to scout Giannis off of the pre-draft tapes of him dominating in what looked like afterschool Christian Youth Leagues. I mean, it took around 5-6 years for the league to actually start to embrace shooting 3-pointers in the 70s, and even up until the time that they shortened the line, teams were only shooting 10 per game! To me, Allen Iverson is the cross-generational comparison. Around league average efficiency, but the fact that he was even able to maintain that when routinely being in the top-5 in FGA when the game was heavily biased against both dribbling and non-big man generated offense is why he's an all-time great. AI in his heyday was one of the most feared scorers in the league, a defining player of his era, and an influence on an entire generation of players. Looking at him now with the benefit of modern analytics doesn't paint him in as favorable a light, but to compare him to his peers, what he did at his size was nothing short of magic.
Completely different era bordering on a different game. Pre-80s basketball was totally different. Hell even the 90s to now is very different
Is every old white nba player gonna come for JJ's head now? I don't think it's worth while to compare across eras like that but he was just contributing to a topic on a hot takes sports show. In that context it's rough to place a guy from that era above a guy who is/was obviously more skilled.
Basketball was a different game back then. You might as well compare George Mikan to Shaq or compare the players on James Naismith's team to current players. Mikan and Cousy were great for their era, but it was a pre-modern era and they were essentially playing a different game. I don't think comparing players from the pre-modern era to players in the modern era makes a lot of sense. It's like comparing baseball players in the 1800s who were playing an entirely different game to today's players, or football players from before the forward pass to today's Chiefs. I think the earliest it starts to makes sense to compare players to current players is the stars of the 1960s, like Chamberlain, Russell and Robertson (roughly--I know Russell and Chamberlain started at the tail end of the 1950s). That's when jump shooting started, when you start to see more use of screening, the lane was widened to the current size. The game looks a lot more like today's game.
