Joe Dumars attended a game a few weeks ago that came down to the final shot and thought it was one of the best games of the season thus far. Denver 102, Boston 100 was the final score
It served as a reminder that defense can still be played in the NBA today.
Amid a flurry of big individual performances — Luka Doncic scoring 73, Joel Embiid scoring 70, Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns each scoring 62 — in the last two weeks alone, Dumars said Wednesday that NBA officials aren’t concerned because the league’s scoring average is only slightly higher than last season.
“It’s where the game is today,” stated Dumars, the NBA’s executive vice president and head of basketball operations. “It is the game’s speed. It’s the number of 3s being shot right now. “You’ll have some offensive outbursts like that.”
Since April 1978, there had not been a day when two players scored at least 60 points. That is, until it happened again last week: Embiid and Towns had monster games on Jan. 22, and Doncic and Booker put on scoring exhibitions on January 26.
Having those events occur twice in a few days is undoubtedly a statistical anomaly. However, the figures reveal that there isn’t much more to it.
As of Wednesday, the league’s scoring average was 115.6 points per game, up just 0.78% from 114.7 points per game last season. The surge was even larger last season, when scoring increased by 3.7% above the league’s rate of 110.6 points per game in 2021-22.
There have been more high-scoring games, but the averages show that things tend to level out. As of Wednesday, there has been 78 instances of teams scoring at least 135 points in a game this season, which is already the second highest for a full season in league history and on track to break last season’s record of 112. The previous record was 74 games of 135 or more completed in 2019-20.
“We’re going to see offensive eruptions with this kind of pace and the amount of 3s people shoot,” Dumars told reporters. “But there is no push here at the league office from myself or anyone else to see a specific score. I left that Boston-Denver game thinking, ‘Wow, terrific game.’ That is exactly what fans desire. Fans want to leave a game or watch one and think, ‘That was great.’ That comes before the score. Fans only want to watch amazing games.”
