In an announcement earlier today, NBA Vice President Joe Dumars revealed the league’s ongoing efforts to “monitor” the offensive imbalance of the league. Speaking with ESPN, he explained that the league’s competition committee has officially begun assessing whether or not the game in its current form has tilted too far on the side of offense.
“It is a topic that we’re monitoring,” Dumars told ESPN’s Tim Bontemps and Kevin Pelton. “We’re diving in right now to make sure that we’re on the right side of this.”
This season has seen a record scoring pace across the association and even teams considered “average” today are on the higher end for teams across in NBA history. Over the past eighteen months alone, we’ve seen a number of 60-70 point explosions from players, including Luka Doncic (73), Damian Lillard (71), Devin Booker (70), Giannis Antetokounmpo (64), Karl-Anthony Towns (62), and Stephen Curry (62).
As great as the games have been, many fans are ready to see more defense in games and their reaction to the NBA’s latest announcement was overwhelming approval.
As for what specific rule change the NBA could make, many fans agree that the elimination of the defensive 3-second rule is the best way to go.
Only time will tell what the league decides to do here but the important thing is that they do something to bring some weight back to defense.
There were a small number of people who spoke out against this development and some expressed doubt that any rule change would actually do anything to change the product on the court in the long-term.
Aside from a few exceptions, however, most fans and experts agree that this is a long-overdue change for the league. Now, the hope is that this committee will conclude their investigation quickly so fans can see the changes they’ve been waiting so long for.
Too Much Scoring In The NBA
The NBA has evolved a lot over the years and the game has changed in many ways. In the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, we saw completely different rules on defense, and players were allowed to guard their opponents much more physically than we see today. Over time, due to hand-check rules and other changes meant to protect the offensive player, defense began to take a less prominent role in NBA games.
The result has been a scoring boom the likes of which we haven’t seen before. Most of the teams today are severely outscoring even the best teams from years ago and the ease with which they are doing it is shockingly high.
According to Luka Doncic, the Euroleague’s lack of a defensive 3-second rule makes it more difficult to score than in the NBA, where bigs and rim runners are constantly being pulled from the paint.
With some tweaks to the rules, or maybe the outright elimination of some protocols, the NBA could take some serious steps to counter the offensive explosion and try to reverse some of the modern-day trends. Of course, there will be pushback from players and coaches alike but Joe Dumars has made it clear that nothing is off the table right now as they consider the best way to maximize NBA competitiveness.
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