NBA competition committee looking to give defenders more freedom, and scoring is down since All-Star break

At least some of the NBA’s power brokers appear to have had enough of the league’s offensive explosion. At a meeting on Tuesday, the league’s competition committee discussed ways to empower defenses moving forward, according to Shams Charania.

Here’s Charania’s report: 

“I’m told the NBA’s competition committee, which is comprised of league executives, team executives, team officials, team owners, players, the NBA players union, they all met on Tuesday and they discussed ways to incorporate more defensive freedom, evaluating how to potentially allow more physicality, the merits of that and much more. 

“They’ll use the next few months and the offseason to strategize how to implement potential changes and allowing more defensive freedom into next season… This is something the league is discussing and a lot of it is because players and all these different stakeholders are bringing it up in these calls.”

This is not the first time that this subject has come up in this setting. On Jan. 28, Marc Stein reported that this was discussed at a remote competition committee meeting earlier that month. In an ESPN story last month, NBA executive vice president and head of basketball operations Joe Dumars confirmed that the competition committee had officially started reviewing whether or not the balance had shifted too far in offense’s favor. 

He did not, however, indicate that the league is close to implementing any on-court changes.

“We’re diving [into the data] right now and just a ton of film and putting together a ton of reels to be able to look at this and go, ‘OK, yeah, we do have a problem,” Dumars told ESPN. “But you don’t make changes like that just on an anecdotal call.”

The league publicly said this week that there have been no recent mandates to referee games differently, though the numbers from the last three weeks are much different than those before the All-Star Game.

This season, the league averages for offensive rating (115.6), points per game (114.9), effective field goal percentage (.547) and 3-pointers made per team (12.8) are all the highest of all-time. Furthermore, there have been 66 instances of a team scoring at least 140 points in a game, which is by far the most ever with a month of the regular season still to play. And while the All-Star Game is an exhibition the Eastern Conference’s 211 points made a mockery of the event. 

From the start of the 2022-23 season until the All-Star break of this season, there were only two games where a team scored fewer than 80 points. In the last three weeks, it has happened five times. The 152 combined points in the Philadelphia 76ers’ 79-73 win over the New York Knicks on March 10 was the fewest in a game since 2016. 

Fouls and free throws are down as well since play resumed. Prior to the All-Star break, the Charlotte Hornets were the only team in the league not averaging at least 20 free throws per game, and they were at 19.0. Since everyone got back from Indianapolis, only 13 teams are taking 20 free throws a game. The Memphis Grizzlies’ 24 free throws a night post-All-Star break leads the league, but would have ranked eighth pre-All-Star. 

It will be fascinating to see if this trend continues, and if so, how it impacts the remainder of the regular season and the playoffs.