INDIANAPOLIS — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he liked the way the game was going, and Stephen Curry said the same thing hours earlier.
But somehow the league office should know that while the answer to virtually everything is “more,” we are nearing, or perhaps even past, an inflection point where there are too many attacks. .
Everything is bigger now. All-Star Saturday Night is now held at Football Stadium, but this isn't the first time the NBA has done this. For Silver, it is a difficult task to continue to grow the sport and expand its international reach and revenue while keeping the essence of the game as pure as possible.
And he was flexible, moving the All-Star format back to East and West to make it more competitive, setting the stage for a “Steph vs. Sabrina” shooting competition. “Offense sells tickets” is the statement.
Over the past 10 years, scores have increased significantly, and over the past 20 years, they have decreased further. But with teams averaging 115 points per game in the league, it feels like the pendulum has swung too far in that direction.
“The idea that the league feels, or the league executive feels, necessarily abstract high-scoring games are better,” Silver said at the All-Star Weekend press conference before Saturday night's events began. I want to get rid of it,” Silver said during the All-Star Weekend press conference. “I think what we want is a competitive game.”
Silver slyly tried to point out that the score was up exactly one point from last year, but he didn't say exactly how things got to this point. Ten years ago, the league average was 101 points per game.
Another one is:
“I don’t agree with the idea that teams aren’t playing defense,” Silver said. “The intensity of defense is there. Defensive players are being asked to cover a much larger area of the court than has historically been required.”
While that statement is true, Silver was asked about how coaches feel that defense is being legitimized outside of the game, not that defense is not being played. Silver was probably referring to the crowd of NBA critics who spout the same old tropes about running and dunking without any real defense, as opposed to realistic concerns that the game has evolved into something that throws it off balance. .
“Actually, I'm happy with the state of the game,” Silver said. “That being said, I know there are some coaches who feel that we have, in some ways, hindered the ability of our defensive players to defend, at least the way it used to be done in this league. Partly, it was very intentional.
“There was a time in this league when people thought the game was getting too physical and it was taking some of the beauty out of the game. I was one of those who felt that way in the '90s.”
Silver acknowledged that in changing the All-Star format from the most recent version, which had a live draft before the game, the league was too focused on the entertainment part of the game, not just the game.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to translate that idea to regular season basketball. The bump-and-grind basketball of the '90s, the product of several factors that will likely never be repeated, expanded from 23 teams in 1988 to 29 by 1999. The talent pool couldn't keep up with the number of jobs available, and the game developed into something not very pretty.
But there was diversity in the styles of play, and even though the Chicago Bulls ran through the decade thanks to Michael Jordan, they looked more competitive and competitive each night.
To his credit, Silver understood the importance of competitive games gaining fans, not pretty fans.
“I think from a defensive standpoint, there are some rules. I know Coach (Steve Kerr) talked about it a little bit, but there are rules that can give the defense a little bit more of an advantage,” Curry said that day. He spoke early. “I like the brand of basketball because everybody out there can put the ball on the floor and almost always, like I said, be a shooting threat. We will see a trend toward scoring, but I think the league cycle will reset at this point.”
That was believed nearly two decades ago, but the league ensured that the pendulum swung toward a more favorable style with rule changes that favored offenses. The offense doesn't seem to need any more help right now, what they do need is the defense.
Fans are smart enough to understand what they're seeing. It's not that today's numbers aren't real. They see and hear every day about the league's emphasis on offense, and the league understandably wants its deepest treasure trove of talent to display that talent night after night without holding it back.
Having 70-point and 60-point games is rare and not something we collectively yawn about. Silver understands the value of scarcity, expanding his All-Star roster from 12 to some other unnatural number simply because there are some players who feel held back and disrespected. I stopped thinking about doing it.
And the NBA is making sure that fans (long-time fans as well) understand that the scores are won through hard-fought battles, not by tilting the slider to one side's advantage. Even first-time fans should be aware of this.
There was a time when players weren't great shooters or scorers, but they were valuable contributors to winning games on the floor. Some may think the league values those types and wants to highlight multiple ways to explore the game being played the right way, in an effective way.
The competition committee and Silver have a real job to do this offseason, and I hope they see it as such. This game is indeed beautiful and should be allowed to show its beauty in different ways.
