Tiny Archibald in 1972-1973

[3ball]

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[COLOR="White"].................................................. .[/COLOR][COLOR="Red"]Spacing[/COLOR]


In the picture below, weakside floor-spreaders (spacing) have drawn defenders away from the strongside.. If Noah doesn't leave #20 Mosgov and flood to the strongside, the strongside will only have 2 defenders on it.






Otoh, previous eras didn't have weakside floor-spreaders (spacing) drawing defenders away from the strongside, so the strongside was already flooded with all 5 defenders - there are already multiple defenders standing where today's defender would flood to:





Ultimately, spacing causes today's defenders to make extra rotations.. But without that spacing (previous eras), defenders are already in closer proximity and the rotations aren't necessary.

Spacing and defensive movement offset each other, which is why league-wide offensive rating (the stat measuring how hard it is to score) has been stable for 30 years.. ORtg has ranged between 105 and 108 since 1980, excluding a brief downswing from 1998-2004.. The minor shifts within that 105-108 range are due to style of play differences between the eras that affect inputs to the ORtg calculation, such as offensive rebounding rate and FT rate.

30 years of stable ORtg proves the difficulty of scoring hasn't changed, and the changes in offensive strategy (spacing) and defensive strategy (extra rotations) are offsetting - you either have extra rotations required by spacing and defensive 3 seconds (today's game), or the rotations aren't necessary because there is no spacing or defensive 3 seconds (previous eras).
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[feyki]

35 points with %50 against Sloan . Amazing .