Where have all the points gone?
In a trend first pointed out by Tom Haberstroh on March 1, and continuing to the point where sharp bettors slammed an unbelievable streak on unders, points and fouls are way down since the All-Star break.
NBA teams are scoring nearly four points less per game since the All-Star Break, moving from 115.5 PPG to 111.85 PPG on average.
That means your average score of 231 total points is now down to 223.7.
But is this just bad shooting variance and a small 141-game sample size against the first 820 games of the year?
It is unlikely to be the shooting percentage differences, which have shown a negligible 0.75% decrease since the All-Star break (from 47.6 percent to 46.85 percent).
It is far more likely to be the free throws, which are coming with far less frequency, down 11.5 percent since the All-Star Break, with personal foul calls also down 12.7 percent since Feb. 18.
A league spokesman tells The Post “there has been no direction from the league to call games differently.”
But the numbers paint a different picture, with pre-All-Star Break foul calls reaching 19.4 personal fouls per game per team and dropping to 16.93 personal fouls per game in the 141 games since, a 12.7 percent change.
On average, you were seeing 38.8 personal fouls per game; now, you’re seeing 33.86, meaning about 8.5 fouls per quarter, down from 9.7 per quarter.
The pace and flow of basketball have been a major talking point with league higher-ups, notably executive Joe Dumars, who threw cold water on the notion that NBA scoring needed a change.
“There’s no push here at the league office from me or anyone else that we want to see a certain score,” Dumars said on Feb. 1.
However, legendary coach Steve Kerr said a few days prior that NBA scoring was out of control.
“I think there are absolute changes [to be made],” Kerr said on Jan. 27 after Joel Embiid and Luka Doncic put up 70-plus points earlier that month.
While the NBA said the referees did not receive new directions, several players who are notorious for getting a friendly whistle, including Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, have gone to the line less often lately.
| Player | Pre All Star Break free throw attempts per game | Post All Star Break free throw attempts per game | Rate of change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Luka Doncic (10 games played) | 9.3 | 7.1 | 23.66 percent decrease |
| Jalen Brunson (6 games played) | 6.3 | 5.3 | 15.87 percent decrease |
| Damian Lillard (9 games played) | 7.6 | 5.1 | 32.89 percent decrease |
| Stephen Curry (9 games played) | 5.1 | 2.3 | 54.9 percent decrease |
Notice that these are all point guards and it would seem they are being treated differently by referees.
Forwards like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant, though, have seen no change in free throw attempts during this time span.
As Haberstroh noted, the crux of this story is offensive players initiating contact with defenders resulting in foul calls, slowing down pace of play, inflating statistics and scores and overall putting together a poor product for the viewing fan.
When answering questions like this, it is wise to ask: What other factors could be at play that make the first halves of seasons different from the second halves?
Tanking immediately comes to mind. Perhaps teams are tanking and performing worse, and that would explain the rate of change that we are seeing from team free throws.
But compared to the same time span last year – pushed back one day to account for the leap year – free throws are down even further year over year.
Personal fouls are down 14.48 percent per game year over year from the All-Star Break last year to the second Monday in March.
Free throws are also down 14.17 percent year over year per game during this stretch (19.8 free throws per game in 2023 vs. 16.93 free throws per game since the All-Star Break this season).
In total, during this stretch, scoring is down 3.2 percent per game, which might seem minuscule but is substantial and something that betting giants figured out before the rest.
Unders in games were some of the least profitable bets you could make this season up until mid-January.
Things began to change around that time, and is now a red-hot trend. Of course the books are going to correct, they are a business founded on squashing trends like this.
But since the All-Star Break, unders are hitting at a nearly 60 percent rate (98-66-1).
Post-Action Betting reported that unders were hitting at a 71 percent rate, with books having since corrected their strategies soon thereafter.
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Edges evaporate in the gambling world all the time as books use the available data at their disposal.
But it would seem that this is either a bizarre anomaly that oddly coincides with Kerr and Dumars’ comments or a true change in the way that the NBA is officiated.
