A look at the NBA’s record-breaking high-scoring season

Recently, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has witnessed a scoring surge that is even more striking this season. Noteworthy performances include Luka Dončić’s incredible 73-point game — he currently averages 33.8 points per game. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are averaging 30.7 and 30.4 points a game, respectively. They are the three highest-scoring players this season, each averaging over 30 points. And it’s not just individual stars excelling — teams as a whole are also scoring more on the court.

In the year the NBA was founded (1949-50), teams scored about 80 points per game. Now they average 114.5, nearly matching last season’s peak of 114.7, the highest in the last 50 years. Not since the 1960s, when players like Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robertson led to team averages of over 117 points per game, have NBA fans seen such prodigious scoring.

The 2022-23 season set a record with 282,127 points scored in 1,230 games. Back in the 1949-50 season, 561 games tallied 89,806 points. Over time, the NBA expanded its schedule to include more teams and games. It wasn’t until the 1967-68 season that the 100,000-point mark was surpassed. By 1980-81, 200,000 points were reached, and only during the 1998 and 2011 lockouts did the final tally fall below that milestone.

Top scorers

This season has seen impressive individual performances ranking among the best ever. In fact, since the start of this season alone, 6% of the top 100 scores have been achieved, with two surpassing 70 and four reaching 60 or higher. The standout nights of the season so far belong to Luka Dončić and Joel Embiid, each scoring over 70 points. Dončić hit 73 on January 26, securing a spot among the top four single-game scorers of all time, while Embiid, who scored 70 on January 22, is currently sidelined due to injury.

Extrapolating these figures to the top 100 individual performances in history confirms the recent scoring surge. Since 2020, players like Karl-Anthony Towns, Damian Lillard and Donovan Mitchell have claimed places on top-scoring lists. Projecting this trend for another year will produce numbers that haven’t been seen since 1960-1965, when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game. Both five-year periods stand out for team and individual scoring peaks.

Three-pointers are the key

Since the NBA introduced three-pointers in the 1979-80 season, teams have adjusted their strategies to use them more. Currently, teams are attempting an average of 35 three-pointers per game, the second-highest in history after the 35.2 attempted in the 2021-22 season. The success rate this season is the third-highest ever at 36.5%. The emphasis on three-pointers also affects free throws. The record for free-throw attempts was 38.3 in the 1957-58 season, compared to the current 21.9 attempts. This means that teams now make nearly half as many free-throw attempts as back then, although the completion percentages are similar: 78.3% today versus 74.6% then.

Two-point shot attempts dropped when three-pointers were introduced over 40 years ago, but have since stabilized. On average, 89 two-pointers are taken per game in the current season.

As the season nears its end, offensive production remains consistently high. Fans and sports reporters are watching with delight all the top scorers playing today who now rank among the best in history.

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