Rule changes help boost scoring
By John Hollinger, ESPN Insider
John Hollinger Archive

Mark Cuban's influence might be doing the league's officials some good after all. How ironic, then, that his suggestions might make it harder for his team to win a title.

Allow me to explain. The owner of the aptly named Mavericks has complained vociferously about the state of officiating ever since he bought the team with his Internet riches back in 2000. His greatest hits include stating that then-supervisor of officials Ed Rush wasn't qualified to run a Dairy Queen, and that the refs choked when they ejected Juwan Howard for his infamous pancake-flip of San Antonio's Derek Anderson in the 2001 playoffs. Those infractions liberated more than a million dollars from Cuban's bank account, a total that might be going higher this week after he went ballistic over a blown call at the end of Dallas' 124-123 loss to Phoenix on Saturday.

Yet Cuban has had one very positive influence on the state of officiating -- encouraging the league's use of the refs to open up the game. From an entrepreneurial perspective, Cuban realized a more open-court game with higher scoring would create a more fan-friendly product. As Randy Galloway reported this week in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas owner pushed hard for the league to open the game up by cracking down on contact on the perimeter.

For years, the league had been trying to boost offense with little success. It seemed every year one of the league's directives on officiating was to "clean up the post play," with new interpretations of where a forearm could be placed and what could be called an offensive foul. The impact was minimal, however, and scoring continued its inexorable drop from 109.9 points per game in 1986-87, the year of the last Bird vs. Magic Finals, to a meager 93.4 last season.

This year, however, the league implemented Cuban's suggestion to try to stem the scoring slump. Instead of focusing on defense in the paint -- a virtual impossibility, considering the lane is more crowded than Clint Eastwood's trophy shelf -- the NBA decided to make it easier to get to the basket in the first place by calling a foul on virtually any contact on the perimeter.

It turns out that was the key to reviving offense across the NBA. The boost in scoring has been this season's biggest story, rivaled only by the malice at the Palace and Kevin McHale's raid of Herman Munster's wardrobe. Scoring has shot up to 96.8 points per game, and if it holds up over the season's second half, this would be the highest-scoring season since the league averaged 96.9 in 1996-97. Since scoring historically increases as the year progresses, it's possible the average will end up even higher.

If we break down how scoring has increased, the connection to the new rules is very clear. Field-goal percentage is only up slightly around the league, to 44.4 percent. That change alone would only increase scoring about half a point per game. One other difference, completely unexpected, is that free-throw percentage is up two points a game from a year ago, to 74.8 percent -- an amazing figure for a league with Shaq and Tim Duncan in it. But like the field-goal percentage increase, that only accounts for about half a point per game of increased scoring.

Turning points (through Feb. 26)
NBA Averages 2003-04 2004-05*
Points/game 93.4 96.8
FG Pct. 43.7 44.3
FT Pct. 72.7 74.9
FTA/gm 24.2 25.9
Pace Factor 92.0 93.2


The biggest contributors to the increase in offense, however, result directly from the rule changes. The biggest, as we might expect, has been a surge in free-throw attempts. With officials blowing a whistle on hand-checks they would have allowed a year ago, teams are averaging 25.9 a game compared to 24.2 last season. That's a seven percent jump, and it has added 1.25 points a game to the league scoring average.

The next item is a more subtle result but has accounted for just as much of the scoring increase as has the rise in free-throw attempts: Teams are playing faster. I introduced a term called Pace Factor last week that measures how quickly a team plays by how many possessions it uses in a game. The league average Pace Factor is up to 93.2 from 92.0 last season. Since teams average almost exactly one point per possession (1.03 this year, to be exact), that's boosted scoring by an additional 1.24 points a game.

It's easy to see how the increased pace is a direct result of the change in officiating. For starters, the increase in foul calls on the perimeter tends to result in quicker possessions. Teams get into the bonus sooner, and at that point a hand-check on the perimeter with 22 showing on the shot clocks leads directly to free throws.

But there's a second, more important effect that the changed officiating has on pace, and it's a trend that is likely to accelerate in coming seasons. Teams are shifting their entire strategy toward faster, quicker players who can take advantage of the increased freedom they have to operate on the perimeter. Nobody exemplifies this trend better than the Phoenix Suns, who abandoned using a traditional center, put a 6-foot-7 stringbean in at "power" forward, and have zoomed up and down the court to the NBA's second-best record.

The Suns aren't the only ones hopping on the quickness bandwagon. A brief look at the winners and losers from the rule changes shows how teams will have to reorient their thinking in future seasons. Looking at all the players who made big scoring jumps this season reads like a who's who in quickness: Dwyane Wade, Manu Ginobili, Gilbert Arenas, Larry Hughes, Amare Stoudemire and the resurgent Allen Iverson. Conversely, the disappointments now seem like dinosaurs because of their dependence on power rather than speed -- for instance, Carlos Boozer, Zach Randolph, Tim Thomas and Carmelo Anthony.

Thus, the lasting impact of the rule changes won't be the minor uptick in free throws that we're seeing this season, but the gradual takeover of the game by the greyhounds. I've focused on their offensive exploits, but as the trend feeds on itself, these guys are going to become equally valuable on defense. With players now required to use their feet instead of their forearms, teams will need to employ quicker, nimbler defenders.

Getting back to Cuban, this trend is interesting because it's not clear his suggestions will be of much benefit to the Mavs. Their feature player is a 7-foot jump shooter, and their main offseason acquisition was a long-coveted traditional center. While Dallas has a couple of players who can take advantage of the changes -- Jason Terry, Marquis Daniels and perhaps Josh Howard -- their attack is better suited to 2003-04 than to 2004-05.

That's not the case with the Suns, however, so it's ironic that Cuban helped create a monster in Phoenix that could be a roadblock to the Mavs' title hopes. Of course, it was Cuban's decision not to match Phoenix's offer for free agent Steve Nash that made Nash a Sun. But additionally, it was the rule changes Cuban helped effect that opened the floodgates on Phoenix's blistering offensive onslaught.

Considering Phoenix is one of Dallas' main competitors for the Western Conference crown, it seems like Cuban might get blindsided by an unintended consequence of the changes he urged. So while the league and its fans applaud offense's emergence from a decade of hibernation, you might forgive Mavs fans if their clapping is a bit more muted.

power...tim thomas...hahahahahahahaha...