One of the most iconic images in the history of world sport is the one you see portrayed Wilt Chamberlain hold a sheet in your hand that says “100”.
An iconic photo that tells an epic story, that of the hundred points of one of the most dominant players in NBA history. A record still unbeaten but which also represents a magic number, a basis that guarantees high odds of winning a game. However, things have changed.
The game has evolved. An irrefutable truth, linked to the conformation of the players, their skills and the new way of understanding basketball, strongly connected to shooting from beyond the arc.
Today, as a result, we score much more. The numbers, year after year, continue to grow dramatically. This season the teams that score at least 100 points lose 45% of occasions, a figure never so high in the last 50 years and 10% higher than the average in NBA history.
Detroit, Orlando e Houston, three franchises that are not fighting for the top of the league, provide clear and striking examples to be able to explain this new trend. By scoring at least 100 points, i Pistons have a 6-14 record, i Magic at 4-16, i Rockets of 7-15.
The average points per game of the thirty franchises in this first part of the regular season is 113.3 (the highest since 1969-70), about 13 and 17 points higher than eight and eleven seasons ago. In part, all this depends, as already mentioned, on the addiction to three-point shooting, which total triples record in one season he was beaten in the last one with 30,598.
Furthermore, there are more and more players who average more than 20 points per evening, around 50. Turning the clock back ten years, on the other hand, just 11 players could afford the luxury of collecting similar numbers.
I Los Angeles Clippers, to bring another example that can better clarify the data you have just read, in the 2014-15 season they scored 106.9 points per game, recording the second best figure in the championship. Today, they score 107.2 and are last in this special classification.
There is a lot of evidence to support this thesis, demonstrating how much basketball, especially on the other side of the ocean, is changing its appearance. One, however, is as curious as it is astounding.
On November 13, the Knicks scored 135 points in regulation time, in a loss. In fact, the Thunder were able to make 145. The last time the darlings of the Madison Square Garden lost the field to score so many runs without going into overtime dates back to March 2, 1962, the day the Philadelphia Warriors managed to beat them 169 to 147, helped by 100 points at Wilt Chamberlain.
