Review of The Editorial Piece on NBA by David Aldridge

“We are...enmeshed in an era where offensive basketball towers over the game,” writes David Aldridge, NBA analyst for the TNT television network, in his article “Broad Sweep Of NBA Illustrates Game's Transition.” “the onslaught is bending the NBA game into a new and different shape.” Aldridge wrote his article nearly one year ago; the continued convoluted evolution of the game in the span of eleven months proves all of his hypotheses about the future of the game to be correct. But before looking at the future, it is necessary to look to the not-so distant past. Looking from the nineties and early 2000’s to now best reflects the seismic shift from “old-school” basketball to the modern game. Isolation ball (one player, often the team’s best, handling the ball and looking to score one-on-one against their defender)(“Types of Offenses”) used to be all the rage; ball dominant superstars like Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or Charles Barkley handled by far the largest share of their teams’ touches, and their performances largely dictated the team’s success, for better or worse. Guards were not the dominant scoring forces that they are today; teams instead ran their offenses through at least one, and occasionally more, capable entities in the frontcourt (the “big men,” power forwards and centers). Shooting a large volume of three-point shots was not integral to a team’s success. In fact, some coaches looked down on it, condemning it as a riskier shot to not be attempted with any regularity.

Fast forward to the modern NBA. The game continues to pick up pace, with the best teams playing at breakneck speeds in transition. Isolation ball has all but perished, replaced by free-flowing pass-first style offenses. The frontcourt positions, previously stuck in the paint (the painted square between the basket and free throw line) as massive, lumbering masses of flesh and bone, have been wholly reinvented by the NBA’s new breed of “big kids” - nimble, freakishly athletic players like Kristaps Porzingis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Anthony Davis who are completely redefining the role of the big man in the modern game. Their resurgence is due to the incredible explosion of the three-pointer all across the league. This has led to a league focused on scoring, which also accentuates the need for great scoring guards to lead contending teams. Players like Stephen Curry, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Russell Westbrook come to mind. The game has indeed grown immeasurably from the nineties, with the main points of focus being the explosion of the three point shot, the shift of focus towards “score-first” type point guards, and the revival of big men with an entirely new role to play in the modern era.

First, and most important, is the league-wide explosion of the three point shot. Without this offensive expansion, the other two points of evolution mentioned would be impossible. Today, teams at the top of the league, like the Golden State Warriors or the Houston Rockets, to teams at the bottom of the league, like the Brooklyn Nets, employ systems centered around outside shooting prowess. The three-point shot brings a whole host of new elements to an offense. It draws the defense out to guard at the arc, opening up lanes for guards to get to the hoop. It gives slashing guards another passing option on the perimeter in case the lane suddenly becomes crowded, or if they want to misdirect the defense by drawing them in and passing to an open shooter. The three pointer is also far more efficient, as opposed to long two-point jumpers that were the pearl-handled pistols in the cadre of midrange gunslingers like Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant. Coaches in the league have noticed the impressive changes possible if they push the three to higher prominence in their offenses. For example, as Minnesota Timberwolves assistant coach Bill Bayno tells The Huffington Post, “It’s just simple math...you can shoot 33 percent from the 3, and that generates as many points as if you shot 50 percent from 2, which very few teams do throughout the year” (Schultz). Surprisingly enough, looking at the date of this article reveals that it was published almost five years ago. Since the publication of this article, the three pointer has continued to evolve and change offenses. While on the subject of time and how offenses have evolved, it is quite interesting to look at the statistics on the evolution of three point shooting in offenses. Basketball Reference, an online basketball statistical reference archive, compiles an enormous amount of different statistics on just as great a number of interesting topics. For the purpose of this paper, the “Team Season Finder”serves wonderfully. It ranks every NBA offense from 1973-1974 to this season by any statistic a viewer would want to look at. Overall offensive rating (“An estimate of points produced (players) or scored (teams) per 100 possessions,” explains the information menu) is a measure of efficiency that will serve well in analysis of the evolution of offenses. This is because the top teams in the league tend to set the trends that the rest of the league tries to follow; looking at the top offenses from the nineties and modern times would offer a fair insight into the changes discussed.

Serving as an excellent example is the first entry on the list: a tie between the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors, with each team boasting an offensive rating of 115.6. The eighties were the first full decade to feature the three point line, and by the second half of the decade, the top teams were beginning to implement the three point shot in their offenses. The eighties Lakers were an all-time great team; being forward-thinking in their offensive structure, they attempted 447 three pointers, draining 164 at a roughly 36.7% clip. Looking at the 2016-17 championship-winning Warriors, renowned for their unfathomably deadly assault from three point range, attempted an astounding 2,562 three pointers, and made 982 of them, at a 38.3% clip (“Team Season Finder”). In thirty years, from a top team of the previous era to the top team of this era, the change is remarkable. The Warriors attempted and converted six times as many three pointers as the Lakers. As discussed previously, the top teams in the league set the trends for how the rest of the league plays; this astoundingly huge explosion clearly displays the importance of the three point shot in the evolution of NBA offenses.

An enormous volume of the explosion of three pointers across the league has come from the newer breed of incredibly dominant, score-first point guards. The increasing focus on offenses only serves to accentuate the importance of having an elite player at the position in the modern era. Players like Stephen Curry, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden have turned the traditional role of the point guard upside down (Levasseur). In the nineties, point guards were typically not the featured scorers; their main responsibility was to keep the offense flowing smoothly and get the ball to the more capable wing players or the gigantic power forwards and centers in the paint. John Stockton and Penny Hardaway are two of the best examples of these types of guards; neither were the first options on their teams to score, but they perfectly exemplified the role of the traditional point guard.

However, the nineties also showed a change in the role of the point guard. Some began to break the mold of tradition; Isiah Thomas, Tim Hardaway Sr., and Kevin Johnson started to show a shift to a more scoring-oriented mindset. In some situations, the shift was born of necessity; some teams simply did not have great options other than their guards, and were forced to turn them loose. In other cases, the guards were so dominant that they soaked up the majority of the touches. Such was the case in Detroit, for the Pistons. The Pistons of the late eighties and early nineties had a number of solid scoring options, from Bill Laimbeer, to Joe Dumars, to their eccentric leader at point guard, Isiah Thomas. Thomas redefined the position, bringing explosive scoring along with the usual passing acumen associated with the league’s top point guards. He paved the way for the generational talents at point guard today. Some point guards today have almost become the entire team, almost single-handedly deciding the course of games with their play on any given night. Nobody puts it better than the perennially great Chris Paul, himself a point guard: “The toughest position in the NBA night in and night out is the point guard position. Every night you look at the board, coach is pretty much going to say, their team goes as such and such goes. So that’s the toughest part, and that’s probably the funnest [sic] part, because that’s competition” (Aldridge). The shift in focus of this position has brought about an almost polar change in the duties of point guards today, showing another vital part of the overall evolution of offenses from the nineties to now.

Though the modern game has become relatively guard-dominated, there are a number of big men ascending to rapid superstardom. Players like Karl-Anthony Towns, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kristaps Porzingis, or Joel Embiid are completely redefining the role of big men in the modern NBA. They are the first of a new breed of big man, possessing an entire toolbox of techniques, long shooting range, and the athleticism and ball handling skills on the level of some of the guards in the league today. Of the two frontcourt positions, the power forward position has evolved the most. From being basically a secondary center (primarily concerned with rebounding and scoring in the post) in the nineties, the power forward position in general has expanded to include a number of new duties, such as a greater share of the ball handling, controlling some of the inside passing, and three point shooting. David Gendelman of The Guardian acknowledges the new abilities and roles of these players in his article “Size Matters: The Evolution Of The NBA Big Man,” writing about the “new generation of NBA big men...who...can shoot three-pointers, pass, and dribble, a collective set of skills that has historically been the province of only guards. Their recent emergence, a result of the evolution of the NBA game, has become so widespread that it’s shifting the balance of power in the league.” One might ask what necessitated this vast shift in the role of frontcourt players. The answer lies in many different factors, most importantly the increased pace of play and floor spacing provided by the increasingly widespread integration of three point shooting into offenses. It simply became unfeasible to have huge, lumbering hulks sit in the paint all game and wait to gobble up rebounds or for feeds in the post. It became necessary for frontcourt players to adapt to the new style of play for them to be able to impact the game. They had to become faster, more agile, more skilled. Essentially, their survival depended on them melding the characteristics of guards into their own games. The prototype for this type of player and style of game was none other than the legendary Dirk Nowitzki.

Nowitzki “emerged as the first seven-footer to be a dominant offensive player both close to the basket as well as from three-point range. Additionally...he could effectively score on drives to the basket” (Gendelman). Nowitzki came into the game and almost instantly caused a seismic shift in defensive techniques. His offensive versatility created nightmares for opposing defenses; teams could put a big man on him and risk getting burned by his adept ball-handling, speed, agility, and scarily impressive shot. They could counter with a guard on him and he would bully them with size and strength on his way to an easy basket. Nowitzki came into a league that was fully unprepared for big men of his breed, and made easy work of it, even single-handedly dragging the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA championship in 2011. But Nowitzki was simply the key to opening the floodgates. His success in the league paved the way for the new generation of frontcourt players today to take control, banishing the traditional roles of big men to the annals of NBA history.

The NBA in the modern era is becoming almost unrecognizable in comparison to the game of previous eras. Teams zip the ball around with pinpoint passes, opening up better shots and lanes to slash through. The three pointer is becoming more and more popular with every passing season. Freakishly athletic big men are slowly taking the league by storm, completely changing the future outlook for large players in the NBA. It is difficult to definitively say where the NBA will go from here; there may be a shift back to playing inside, in the post. Or, there could be a continued evolution of today’s manic speed offenses, shooting ever increasing numbers of threes. However, regardless of whatever changes come, the game will remain incredibly exciting and riveting to watch and experience. This is the magic of NBA basketball.