NBA committee hoping to give defenders more freedom, as scoring is down since All-Star Game

It seems as if the NBA’s latest offensive explosion doesn’t have everyone happy inside the organization, as they’ve realized the league must also protect defensive players’ freedom on both sides of the floor. In a recent meeting, the NBA competition committee explored different ways in which they can empower defenses. 

According to Shams Charania, the group comprised of executives, owners and players, met on Tuesday to discuss how to address this issue moving forward.

“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,” the insider said.

The league is looking to do something about this season’s offensive explosion 🗣️

“The NBA’s Competition Committee met on Tuesday and discussed ways to incorporate more defensive freedom, evaluating how to allow more physicality.”

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“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,” he added.

Earlier this year, the subject came up in this same setting, as Marc Stein reported on January 28 that the defensive topic had been addressed at a remote competition committee at the start of that month. In that instance, NBA executive vice president and head of basketball operations Joe Dumars confirmed that they were analyzing if offenses had gone too far.

“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,” he told ESPN. “But you don’t make changes like that just on an anecdotal call.”

This week, the NBA announced publicly that they haven’t given referees any new mandates to referee contests differently, even though the stats have changed a lot since the All-Star break, as overall scoring has decreased.

Last month Adam Silver said that he believed scoring in the NBA seems easier because the player’s talents have improved

There is no doubt that modern basketball in the NBA has changed immensely in the past decades, not only with the game’s rule book, but also in the way it is intended to keep growing as a show business, not just as a sport. The league’s top-rated offense is averaging almost 124 points per game while the average this season is 115.6, the highest since 1970.

Also, over the past two competitions, four different players have produced 70+ point games. “I want to dispel any notion that the league feels, or the league office necessarily feels that high-scoring games in the abstract are good,” Adam Silver said. “I think what we want are competitive games. … The skill level is off the charts.”

What better example of change in basketball than this weekend’s All-Star Game in Indianapolis, as it was the highest-point exhibition in the showcase’s history and the Eastern Conference dropped a new record with 211 points.

“Every player at every position has to be able to shoot the ball. … You’re seeing this global pool of talent coming into the league (with) some of the best athletes in the world who can frankly shoot the lights out. I think that’s partly what’s responsible for the increased scoring,” the commissioner said last month.