NBA Investigating Whether Offense Needs To Be Throttled

The NBA’s competition committee has officially begun reviewing whether the game has become too advantageous for offense and whether some changes need to be implemented to achieve better balance.

“It is a topic that we’re monitoring,” Joe Dumars told ESPN earlier this month. “We’re diving in right now to make sure that we’re on the right side of this.”

When Adam Silver took over as commissioner, the league-wide offensive rating was below 105 points per 100 possessions and has since risen steadily to 115 points per 100 possessions this season.

Players are more talented and teams prioritize higher percentage shots than they did in the past.

“More high-percentage shots, which are shots at the rim and 3-point shots, are going to lead to more points,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse said before a game in Philadelphia last month. “Most everybody’s kind of got that as their theme of how they’re playing.”

The NBA isn’t close to taking any action yet.

“It’s not to that point yet,” said Dumars, who regularly fields calls from teams. “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.’ But you don’t make changes like that just on an anecdotal call.”