NBA Stars Are Stuffing Stat Sheets Like Never Before. But Why?

It’s often an important day when LeBron James has one in every of his patented statistical eruptions. In Monday’s victory over the Houston Rockets, James notched a hyper-efficient 48 factors, to go along with eight rebounds, 9 assists and 0 turnovers. It was an eye-popping output to assist carry his short-handed Los Angeles Lakers — even from the participant who retains defying Father Time. 

However on this NBA season — and the fashionable NBA extra typically — LeBron’s explosion was simply one other piece within the league’s big-game puzzle. A number of weeks earlier, Luka Dončić posted the NBA’s second 60-point triple double ever, after which adopted that up with a 51-6-9 stat line 4 days later. Two nights after that, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell poured in 71(!) factors in opposition to Michael Jordan’s former crew — greater than MJ himself ever mustered in a sport — to go along with eight rebounds and 11 assists. And sooner or later after that, Milwaukee Bucks ahead Giannis Antetokounmpo went for a relatively tame 55 factors, 10 rebounds and 7 assists.

These are only a few of the gaudy performances which have seemingly come a dime a dozen within the NBA this season … and it’s not clear after they’ll cease. In actual fact, we will exhibit this visually. Utilizing Basketball-Reference.com’s Sport Rating metric (which measures single-game statistical output utilizing all of a participant’s field rating numbers), you may see that the typical crew chief in game-by-game efficiency per 100 possessions has by no means been stuffing the stat sheet higher in fashionable NBA historical past:

Critically, at this level within the season (greater than midway in), this total mark implies that it’s not simply one-off herculean performances like these of James, Dončić and Mitchell clouding our notion that particular person participant outputs are getting larger and larger. And it’s not simply scoring, both: Although factors maintain the largest weight in Sport Rating’s calculation, it accounts for a lot of different statistics as nicely, together with rebounds, assists, steals, turnovers and extra. 

So what would possibly clarify all of those particular person statistical explosions sweeping throughout the league? And is it sustainable?

The best and most blatant reply to this current uptick in high gamers’ uncooked output is that NBA offenses, as an entire, have by no means been higher. The league’s collective offensive effectivity of 114.0 is the best it’s been since no less than the merger, as groups have moved to trim the fats out of their scoring diets, specializing in the choicest pictures each inside and outdoors the 3-point arc. Outdoors of the occasional rule-breakers, NBA groups have discovered that profitable basketball lies not simply past the 3-point arc … however deep inside it, too.

Based on Cleansing the Glass, groups are taking simply 30.8 % of their pictures from the midrange, together with simply 9.4 % from the lengthy midrange, the latter of which is the bottom determine since no less than the 2003-04 season. But it surely doesn’t seem as if the newest uptick in offensive effectivity has been attributable to groups capturing extra threes. General 3-point try charges have stabilized in 2023, however groups are taking the next share of their makes an attempt on the rim — and making extra — than they did final season. 

What that will imply for the NBA’s stars, then, is that they’ve had extra room to function and are utilizing it to nice impact. As The Athletic’s Mike Prada famous just lately, the impact of the 3-point revolution hasn’t simply been on threes, however on all the opposite pictures which have gotten simpler with defenses needing to deal with the arc. Stars are nonetheless getting the identical pictures they obtained in previous seasons, however they’ve by no means been higher optimized to transform them so effectively.

From the lens of participant utilization, too, it appears obvious that groups are asking their stars to burn brighter than ever — a not-so-surprising growth within the heliocentric age of basketball that we dwell in — to the tune of three of the ten highest Sport Scores for the reason that merger coming in the course of the first half of the 2022-23 season alone. Not coincidentally, Antetokounmpo, Dončić and Joel Embiid are on tempo this season to personal three of the ten highest utilization charges in fashionable NBA historical past, too.

Enjoying time may assist clarify why somebody like Dončić has excelled — he’s No. 2 in minutes per sport performed this season — however even he’s not taking part in absurdly excessive minutes by historic requirements, as his mark of 37.4 wouldn’t crack the highest 200 of minutes per sport performed this century. It’s extra about what Dončić and gamers of his ilk are being requested to do inside these minutes, and what number of eye-popping numbers they proceed to place up on a night-by-night foundation.

In fact, it’s in no way clear that this surge of particular person field rating energy correlates to serving to a crew win. One notable holdout to the age of heliocentrism, perennial MVP candidate Nikola Jokić, hasn’t fairly caught the eye of the standard stat-stuffing metrics this season. Regardless of main the league in FiveThirtyEight’s RAPTOR wins above alternative, Jokić’s common Sport Rating is available in only a hair beneath 26.0 per sport, nicely beneath the typical for an NBA star this season. And the monitor document of groups constructed round high-usage superstars isn’t an excellent one. Michael Jordan, who posted a 34.7 % utilization fee (good for forty third all time) throughout his 1992-93 season with the Chicago Bulls, is the highest-usage participant to win a championship for the reason that merger. So with three of the sport’s preeminent stars posting otherworldly utilization charges — Dončić and Antetokounmpo at 38.2 and Embiid at 38.0 — we’re about to get an actual take a look at of whether or not fashionable basketball’s excessive heliocentric mannequin can lastly win in 2023.

However on a sure stage, maybe none of that issues. Because the saying goes, massive field scores don’t lie, and the NBA’s greatest stars have irrefutably handled us to one of the best collective main performances within the league’s historical past thus far this 12 months. When a 48-point barrage at age 38 by arguably the best participant of all time is handled as an afterthought, the bar for particular person excellence has been raised. 

Neil Paine contributed analysis.

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