Ben Cote

Over the last 20-30 years NBA scores have skyrocketed. Teams went from scoring 60-70 points in a game when the league first started to people doing that in a good game. Scores have changed, insane moves have gone from really impressive to every game thing and people are even playing less defense than they used to. In this article you will learn about the NBA’s past and future, from average scores per season and the percentage of making the playoffs and finals.

From the 1960s to the early 1990s teams have scored above 100 ppg on average which is pretty impressive because moves were just being invented back then and alot of those years that were above 100 ppg were even above 105 and up to 110 ppg. Then in the early 90s to early 2010s the scores dipped back into the 90s. But now from 2018-on they score over 110 ppg on average.

During the early 2000s defense got a lot better and no new moves were being made so people knew how to defend every and all moves that people would try and use to score. But I feel as though people haven’t been focusing a lot on defense so people can easily score and that is a reason why the score has gone so high. The highest score in recent NBA is almost 115 points. But average scores for teams are way different so far in the 2024-2025 season the Celtics average 120.2 ppg. You are probably thinking that that is the highest, but no they are 5th for ppg the highest is the Cavs with 122.4 ppg and the lowest being the jazz with 105.7 which isn’t that bad it is just the lowest out of all the teams.

Even though the Celtics may not be the highest ppg, does not mean that they don’t have leading players in things. For example, 3 players of the Celtics are in the three pointers made category: Jayson Tatum, Payton Pritchard and Derrick White. Even though the stats on things don’t mean that the person or the team is good, some things are true. Like the Celtics are a top 5 team easily and that’s what some of the stats say. Even though the Bucks are 25th in the league Giannis still leads the ppg for any player and people who don’t know basketball that well will think how is that possible the highest scorer should be winning but, it is a team sport and Giannis is putting up 40 a game – which is hard to maintain – while his teammate are putting up 10s and 20s – the good ones at least – . 

The NBA changing is a big thing. It went from scoring 60-80 a game, to people scoring half that or even all of that by themselves. The highest scorers in recent NBA is Kobe with 81, Luka with 73, Lillard with 71, and Embiid and D Book with 70, along with about 20 Wilt Chaberlins from 100 point to 60 points. The average ppg for a good player is 25. The average ppg per team is different though. This chart shows the years 1980-2025 ppg. As you can see from around 1995-2010 the average ppg was under 100, and now it is above 110.

Positional scoring is also a pretty big role. In this graph the green represents the percentage of shots made positionally, and the red represents the shots missed positionally. As you can see centers have the best scoring and missing rate. While point guards have the worst, they shoot more shots than centers with jumpers and threes while centers play more around the net and hit little but big layups. Then you have the SG and SF who have about the same average as the PG. But, the PF kinda stands on its own. It’s in the middle of the Center and Guards but that’s mainly because they take more shots than the center from far and miss them more than the guards. But still play and shoot around the net. So overall we could probably say that centers have the best shooting. Some may say that a shooter does and I wouldn’t disagree. They take more shots meaning that they miss a bit more. But it also means that the balls are the safest with a center. They might not be able to dribble the best but the stats say that they have the best average make rate. Sophomore Sonny Dellasanta says that he “would trust the point guard to take the last shot with 2 seconds left because of  their good ball handling skills and ability to shoot. He also said he didn’t pick the center because they might not be able to get open.”

Even though we are so early in the season we can still think about what teams will make it to the playoffs and who won’t. We could also come up with finals contenders. The Cavs for example are 15-0 they are most likely making it to the playoffs. But the Wizards are 2-11 so they will probably not make it to the playoffs. Then you have some teams in the middle like the Clippers and Kings who both have a .533% win rate and could either be good or terrible depending on the 60 or so games left. We are gonna have to look forward to these surprising losses and wins that will change the whole outcome of the league. From the source https://www.espn.com/nba/bpi/_/view/playoffs they say that the highest a team has to make the playoffs is 100% by the Celtics and the Cavs. The lowest a team has to make the playoffs is 0% by the Jazz and Wizards. The link also shows chances to make the conference championship and even the finals. The highest chance to make it to the conference championship is 80.2% by the Celtics and the highest finals chance is 51.2 by the Celtics with the next highest being the Cavs with 37.8%. Also the Celtics have a 36.9% chance to win the title with the next highest being 25% by the Cavs. So we can say that the Cavs and Celtics are the biggest targets in the league. 

WC:1049