It’s easy to forget details about last year’s regular season, because of all the fun and excitement of last year’s playoffs. The Wolves had some mild swings throughout the 82-game slog, but were pretty much just a great team from start to finish.
An easily forgotten detail, however, is starting to re-emerge around the greater NBA preview world. First, I guess I kick myself for not asking Chris Finch about it at Media Day. Time was limited, I’m still a little shy in that environment, and the mic didn’t make its way to me. I had it down on my little notepad as the thing I would have asked. Oh well, others have asked a different coach, who provided the answer, and now a leading NBA analytics writer has taken the issue in depth on a big podcast.
First, what is that detail?
It’s what Tom Haberstroh first identified last year after the All-Star Break, and was then amplified by Ethan Strauss, and then Zach Lowe, and then lots of others who were paying attention to the latest trend in ball:
The refs were letting em play.
The All-Star Game itself was extra embarrassing, with East beating West by a score of 211 points to 186 points. Before the game was played, Adam Silver had talked about the need to take it seriously again. They even got Larry Bird to speak, emphasizing the need to play hard. That obviously did not happen. Anthony Edwards was chief among the players not giving much of a crap during the weekend’s competitions.
That weekend was no outlier, of course. Scoring has been on the rise for many years, for a couple of apparent reasons. One is the understanding and embracing of three-point shot efficiency. That’s a simple case of evolution and enlightenment, and unless they eliminate or move out the three-point line, we can consider that a change baked in. The other reason, however, is less logical on its face. The league over time has allowed players greater freedom of movement in how the officiate perimeter contact by the defender. This alone was perhaps a reasonable idea, except that players are smart and adaptation happens. Not only were more fouls called, but the most clever (and, some might say, “unethical”) ball handlers learned how to initiate and exaggerate contact, fall down, and place a great deal of pressure on the referee to blow the whistle. With more fouls called, those defenders were scared into playing softer defense going forward. More free throws were generated and thus more points were scored. On certain nights, star players could get themselves in an unstoppable groove that would be a lot more “stoppable,” if the defender could exert some physical will on the situation, and fight back.
In the early 1960s there was a flurry of 70+ point games. Somebody older than me can try to explain that. But from 1964 through 2016 — a 52-year span — the only players to eclipse 70 were David Thompson, David Robinson, and Kobe Bryant, each doing it once.
Late in the ’16-17 season, a young Devin Booker got 70. Then in 2022-23, it happened twice. Once for Donovan Mitchell, and once for Damian Lillard. Then last season, within 4 days of each other, Joel Embiid scored 70 and then Luka Doncic dropped 73. Embiid’s 70 came on the same night as KAT’s “disgusting” 62 versus the Hornets. These 70-bombs were dropped in late January, not long before All-Star Weekend. Scoring inflation was rampant.
Then something changed. Coming out of the break, fouls were conspicuously down. Defensive physicality was conspicuously up. Scoring was down.
Among online NBA pundits, it seems as if the change was embraced, a breath of fresh air. Defense was back! Flopping was no longer rewarded!
It was a relatively short window of games. Then the playoffs take over, and the playoffs often times are a little bit more physical and defensive, to begin with, so I sort of forgot about that last segment of the regular season and how it may or may not carry into next year.
Rick Carlisle spoke on it recently.
I was going to post something about this after seeing Caitlin’s tweet yesterday, and then I was listening to Bill Simmons and Kirk Goldsberry discuss Kirk’s “5 league trends” this morning over breakfast. He cited last year’s physicality after the All-Star Break, he cited Carlisle’s remarks that teams expect the “prison rules” defense to continue this season, and then – just to complete the blog post concept in full, he went out of his way to start listing ways that this will benefit the Minnesota Timberwolves.
I’d encourage you to just listen to their interview in full.
Here’s what I’ll say about the issue as it relates to the Wolves:
I agree that fewer defensive fouls and less flop-rewarding helps the Wolves. I would say this is true for three basic reasons.
First, the Wolves build their identity around defense. It stands to reason that when the refs allow teams to play “more” defense, the best defenses stand to gain the most from it. Goldsberry cited Jaden McDaniels as a beneficiary, saying he might become like a Bruce Bowen of the league. Whatever specific differences might exist between those two, he’s saying that he could become the league’s best one-on-one stopper. Jaden does foul too much, so a relaxed whistle would help him. While we’re at it, a locked-in Anthony Edwards is an elite on-ball defender who sometimes fouls too much. Good luck scoring on those two if the whistles aren’t blowing.
Second, the Wolves do not rely on flopping or foul baiting. Ant doesn’t even know how to do it. Conley does, but he’s not a primary option. Naz and KAT would sometimes fall over, but nobody on the Wolves used “I’m gonna fall down and dare this ref to not call something” as a staple of their game, the way several NBA superstars have come to do, in recent years. Offensively, the Wolves suffer less than most teams if flopping is ignored by the stripes.
Third and finally, some of the Wolves chief competition in the West does rely on flopping. In the same Simmons pods, Goldsberry lists the Thunder (along with Celtics) as a team that might be positioned to string multiple championships together in the coming seasons. Well one way that might NOT happen is if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is incentivized to remain on his feet while dribbling the ball, instead of losing his balance because of marginal contact with his opponent. Shai is a notorious flopper who is on The List of candidates to suffer some efficiency droppage if the league continues this trend of physical on-ball defense.
Remember during the Denver series when Jamal Murray was being hounded by Jaden and NAW, and tried to resort to flopping and crying to no avail?
I do. It’s a great memory.
Goldsberry specifically listed Murray as one who might suffer with this change. If some of the Wolves chief rivals have to play Honest Ball, they might suffer for it, while Ant can just continue doing his best MJ/Kobe impersonations, using actual strength and athleticism, instead of gimmicks, to be a hero in fourth quarters.
One other area Goldsberry noted the Wolves as a possible beneficiary here is with getting Randle in for KAT. I guess I could see that, as Julius and his “bully ball” would naturally prefer a more physical game to a softer one. But I never really thought Towns’s negative issues stemmed from lack of physicality. (His fouling, if anything, shows him to be too physical, in some ways.) But it is certainly also possible that having Julius Randle will be a plus, in a more physical NBA.
Last basketball-related note on this trend. I’m old enough to remember when fadeaway jumpers were not just a cool thing, but a helpful thing. Before the league cracked down so hard on defensive touching, a lot of scoring required that an athlete jump backwards to create space for their shot. As the game softened with whistles, that shot went the way of the dodo bird. Why fade away when you can just straight up, and if the defender dares touch you, you can flop your way into fouls shots? Cool fadeaway jump shooters from the 90s/00s: MJ (duh); Kobe (duh); Kevin Garnett; Michael Finley. Certainly others.
Anyway, something to think about as the games begin.