It is often said nowadays that there is no defense played in the NBA and the numbers certainly back up that notion. We have seen some outrageous scoring outbursts this season and teams are seemingly scoring at a higher clip than ever before.
There has been some criticism aimed at the league because of it and commissioner Adam Silver had to address the outrageous scoring surge recently. He said the fans clearly seem to enjoy it but added that they are not afraid to reexamine the situation after the season. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr was asked about defense not being played these days and he stated that teams are trying to play defense, but that Stephen Curry and the rules in the NBA make it difficult.
via NBC Sports:
“I think it’s been an evolution over the last five or six years and some of it is [the] pace of play; everybody decided to play faster,” Kerr said. “Some of it is the influence of Steph [Curry] just shooting from where he does; now you’re seeing so many guys come across mid-court and pull up from the logo. That’s kind of common to see that in any NBA game now.”
“I think a lot of it is the rules,” Kerr said. “The NBA has really slanted the rules towards the offensive player. You’re seeing the offensive guys really gain advantages in so many different situations. I think it’s become almost impossible to play defense in a lot of cases the refs will tell you ‘He wasn’t in legal guarding position,’ and you’re like, ‘Yeah, but he barreled over my guy.’ What is legal guarding position if somebody just runs right through you?
“But this is the way the league has gone over the last decade; it’s really become more open and free and mostly with positive results, but I think we’ve gone a little bit overboard and we’ve taken away the power of some of the things that defense can do.”
Curry has had such a big influence on the league over the last decade or so. His 3-pointers per season are the perfect example of how he changed the game of basketball, and many young players follow his style. Simply put, scoring 3-point shots became the ‘new movement’ in today’s NBA. Everyone wants to shoot from beyond 25 feet and score 3-pointers like Curry. Everyone wants to shoot from the logo, and no one cares to shoot from the mid-range. As Kerr said, we see players just cross mid-court and pull up from near the logo these days. It’s not just that players want to shoot threes all the time, as the coaching staff is also encouraging them to shoot more.
We recently wrote an article about the most 3-pointers made by a team per season, and you can see how the game has evolved and been changed by Stephen Curry and then the Houston Rockets followed that template. We have seen record-breaking three-point shooting seasons from teams in recent times thanks to that and it is just how the game has evolved. There is really no way either to defend that three-point line effectively once players start shooting from further beyond the arc. In the past, you could at least try to defend someone who was shooting from mid-range but you don’t see a lot of players even attempting to shoot from inside the arc these days.
The rules in the NBA as Kerr mentioned also help offenses a lot more. While purists may not like the scoring surge, the casual fan loves to see high-scoring games and the NBA wants more and more people to tune in. The ratings have gone up as well, so you can’t really argue against it.
The 2022-23 season has seen teams average 114.1 PPG, which ranks 9th all-time in the history of the league. The eight seasons above them came between 1959 and 1970, which again shows how much of a surge we have seen this season. Considering the pace of the game and the direction we seem to be heading, it might just be a matter of time before the record gets broken.
Austin Rivers Claims Highlight Culture Has Killed The Game Of Basketball
Another reason why we see defense being perhaps given less of a priority by players nowadays is highlight culture. It’s the flashy dunks or those deep threes that get all the attention on social media, not defense, and with players trying to build their brands, they want to focus on what sells.
Austin Rivers went on a passionate rant recently, where he stated that highlight culture has killed the game of basketball. He stated that no one cares about the fundamentals of the game like playing defense and it shows in some of the players who have entered the league in recent years. It is unfortunate that things have panned out in this fashion but we don’t see this trend reversing anytime soon.
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