Nylon Calculus: NBA offenses are surprisingly awesome in the new season
You may have noticed that scoring is way, way up in the early days of the 2018-19 NBA season. NBA offenses have scored at an awesome rate. Only 48 games have been played out of 1230 in the season but the early trend is quite clear — triple-digit scores are the standard. Only 12 times out of 96 tries have teams scored below 100 points.
The high-scoring games have also been very high scoring: On Friday, the Oct. 19, the New Orleans Pelicans and the Sacramento Kings combined for 278 points, with the Pelicans winning 149-129. It was the first time since March 15, 2009 that two teams had combined for more than 275 point in an NBA game not going to overtime. Back then it was (of course) the result of the “7 Seconds or Less” Phoenix Suns going against their slightly worse, but even more running mirror-image, the Golden State Warriors led by Don Nelson.
Since 2009 on average one game per season have gone above 275 points, and they have all been games that went to overtime. Last season had three such games. This season on the day after the Pelicans and the Kings combined for 278 points on Friday, the Dallas Mavericks and the Minnesota Timberwolves went out and combined for 276 points without playing overtime.
It is interesting that scoring is so high this early in the season. Usually, that is not so. The graph below compares points per game over the last 14 seasons and scoring so far this season really stands out:
It is worth noting two things. First of all, points per game are very high so far this season. Secondly, this is not business as usual for the early days of an NBA season. In none of the last 13 seasons have the points per game been higher in the first 48 games than in the season as a whole. NBA offenses usually start out less potent and gain power during the season. But the games this season have had a lot of points because, as Fig. 2 below shows, the pace has been very high and the NBA offenses have been unusually effective.
As can be seen above, the pace is usually a few possessions faster in the early days of the season, and this season so far the pace is at 103 possessions per game, around five possessions more than last season’s average pace. That is blindingly fast.
The NBA changed the rule so the shot clock is only set to 14 instead of 24 seconds after an offensive rebound, so that might push the pace. But as our own Daniel Massop showed this summer offensive rebounds are rarely followed by a long shot clock and so the change would affect very few possessions. Daniel estimated that this change would roughly apply to one offensive rebound every other game per team. Looking at this years’ actual numbers, there have been around one possession per game begun by an offensive rebound that lasted longer than 10 seconds. This means that the rule change cannot account for five possessions added. Part of the reason is also individual teams shifting their playing style: Last season The Sacramento Kings were last in pace, but this season they are first with 10 more possessions per game!
I find it peculiar that NBA offenses so far have been so effective in the early days of the season. As seen in Fig. 2 offenses are scoring at better rate than last year, even though offenses usually start out more sluggish and get better during the season.
As seen in Fig. 3 below, The 3-point rate has gone up again, which suggest better offenses shooting more 3s (League 3-point percentage is right around its normal value of 35-36 percent). It can also been seen from Fig. 3 that the rate usually starts out below the season average, so we might expect even more 3-pointers to come.
Free-throw rate can be seen above to start out higher than the season average. This might follow common wisdom of the referees enforcing a tight whistle in the beginning of the season, which the players have to get used to (or the referees change the tone.) This season the emphasis is on freedom of movement of players off the ball.
But the free-throw rate is not that much higher than previous seasons, so how does that align with the fact that teams are shooting more free-throws? We have to remember that free-throw rate is free-throw attempts per field goal attempts and the number of field goal attempts per game has also gone way up with the increased pace:
It is interesting that the increased pace has led to a lot more shots per game, but the number of turnovers per game is unusually low this early in the season. As seen in Fig. 4 above, turnovers are usually high in the early days of the season. But this year, the NBA offenses have been taking extra good care of the ball, while shooting it a lot more.
dark. Next. What’s the right number of 3-pointers to attempt?
Kevin Pelton noted at ESPN, in his dissection of the awesomeness of this season’ NBA offenses, that shots around the rim are up, which might be an effect of the increased emphasis on freedom of movement. Once we get a couple of weeks more of data, it would be interesting to follow up this analysis with a look at the efficiency of individual play types such as cuts and off-ball screens. Kevin also notes that it is hard to single out one particular reason for the offensive explosion and that I agree with.
Another way to look at this development is of course that defenses are bad this year. But we are not ready to go there. NBA offenses have been awesome.