Should we change how the NBA scoring leader is determined?
As the debate over players missing games for precautionary reasons intensifies, it's found a new battleground in the scoring race. Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid is currently edging out Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic atop the league points per game leaderboard, and with Doncic's return earlier this week, both have now reached the 58-game minimum the NBA sets to qualify.
Switch to total stats, however, and both Embiid and Doncic slip behind Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics, who has missed three games this season and therefore has scored the most points. In New England in particular, the idea that Tatum is the rightful scoring champ is gaining steam.
But, does it make sense?
Throughout the NBA season, I answer your questions about the latest, most interesting topics in basketball. You can tweet me directly at @kpelton, tweet your questions using the hashtag #peltonmailbag or email them to peltonmailbag@gmail.com.
In addition to the main question, this week's mailbag also answers ones on the best offense in NBA history relative to league average and the longest stretches of uninterrupted play in the league this season.
"Do you think the scoring title should still go to the PPG leader and not the player who scores the most points in a season? It feels like we are penalizing Tatum for playing in more games than the rest of the leaders."
-- @slyboy_22
It's interesting to note that this would actually be a return to the way the NBA awarded the scoring title through 1968-69 before changing from total points to points per game. Although there is just one trophy, to some degree you could say both leaders are valid in their own different ways, like MLB's leaders in both hits and batting average.
I'd also admit with a Jordan shrug I don't really care about either of them. As my last mailbag on Giannis Antetokounmpo's career-high scoring implicitly pointed out, increasing usage while suffering a corresponding drop in efficiency results in more points but isn't necessarily better for the team depending on the context. To me, the way to determine the best scorer would forget about actual points and weight those two statistics appropriately. But I'm on an island there.
Returning to the question, you probably won't be surprised to learn that having different leaders in points per game and points has become more common lately. The NBA decided to change its policy after the first time on record, actually, when Dave Bing (2,142) scored more points than PPG leader Oscar Robertson (29.2) in 1967-68.
After that, the change came into play just three times over the next three decades, per Basketball-Reference.com's leaderboards:
Jerry West (31.2 PPG) over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2,361 points) in 1969-70
Bernard King (32.9 PPG) over Michael Jordan (2,313 points) in 1984-85
Dominique Wilkins (30.3 PPG) over Alex English (2,414 points) in 1985-86
Starting in 1998-99, however, the points leader was different from the scoring champ in six of the next 10 seasons. Allen Iverson wasn't the leader in total points in any of his three seasons with scoring titles, nor Tracy McGrady in his two. And this would be the sixth time in the last 11 seasons it's happened, including last season when Trae Young (2,155 points) was the answer to a difficult trivia question.
Using total points could help with star availability to the degree players would currently rather manage their minutes by sitting out full games rather than playing fewer minutes per game. Still, I suspect load management absences are driven more by the sports science research suggesting greater risk to players in back-to-back games than by players protecting their scoring averages.
That leads to your specific comment: Does playing every game actually hurt Tatum's scoring average? I don't think so. First off, he's playing more minutes per game than the high scorers playing fewer games -- second in the league to Pascal Siakam, in fact. Additionally, Embiid has played a nearly identical proportion of his games on back-to-backs as Tatum and outscored him in back-to-backs (35.6 to 31.2), on two days' rest (32.9 to 29.3) and three days' rest (34.0 to 30.6), the bulk of all games.
Ultimately, I'll leave you with this: Imagine if the scenario were reversed and Tatum was set to win the scoring title with the league's sixth-highest scoring average. I think in that case there'd be an even greater outcry in favor of changing the metric to points per game.
"The Kings having 'the best offense in league history' is mostly a product of our scoring environment. Wouldn't a better way to judge 'best' offense be something like relative [to] the league average that season? Under those parameters, what's the best offense in the NBA history?"
-- Mike
At 118.6 points per 100 possessions, Sacramento is indeed the most efficient offense in NBA history, surpassing the 2020-21 Brooklyn Nets (117.3), who themselves surpassed the 2019-20 Dallas Mavericks (115.9), who surpassed the 2018-19 Golden State Warriors (115.0). I would agree, though, that the rapid changing of the belt suggests none of these should truly be considered the best offense ever.
If we look at offensive ratings since 1996-97, when the NBA began tracking them using play-by-play data, it becomes clear a rising offensive tide has lifted all teams. The typical offense scores eight-plus points per 100 possessions more than as recently as 2015-16, whereas the Kings' offensive rating is barely five points per 100 better than the 2015-16 leader (the 73-9 Warriors). As a result, I would agree this isn't the best offense in NBA history.
Moving instead to percentage above league average -- and adding teams since 1973-74 using estimated possessions -- gives us a less modern top 10.
There's a distinct Steve Nash flair to this leaderboard. Nash's Suns and Mavericks teams hold three of the top five spots. Meanwhile, no team has cracked the top 10 relative offenses since Golden State in 2015-16. This high-efficiency surge hasn't been driven by a single dominant team.
"In the second quarter of the New Orleans Pelicans-Portland Trail Blazers game on March 12, there wasn't a whistle from the 7:13 mark to the 1:20 mark. That's the longest stretch I can recall. What is the longest stretch without a whistle?"
-- @coachktemp
I happened to be watching that game and noted the unusually late mandatory timeout. As a refresher, timeouts are automatically taken at the first stoppage under the seven-minute mark of each quarter and again after the three-minute mark unless a timeout has already been called by one of the two teams. So playing all the way to 1:20 without a whistle is uncommon.
Still, that 353-second span of uninterrupted play was just the fourth longest in the NBA season according to my analysis of play-by-play data -- with the caveat that plays where the ball goes out of bounds but is retained by the offense aren't tracked there.
The longest came over the first 6:12 of the Boston Celtics-New York Knicks game on March 5 that would ultimately go to double-OT. Tom Thibodeau called a timeout before the mandatory stoppage could occur in that one. That's the only one to top six minutes this season, though a couple others have come close.
At 5:54 seconds, the next-longest stretch also started a game between the Charlotte Hornets and Utah Jazz on March 11. The Knicks also played an extended period without a stoppage on Dec. 16 against the Chicago Bulls, going from a ball out of bounds 24 seconds in through Thibodeau taking timeout at the 5:52 mark without an apparent stoppage.
It's no surprise most of these stretches tend to come at the start of games, when foul rates are typically at their lowest based on some combination of well-rested players and referees letting the teams settle into the game. In fact, I didn't find any other period of more than five minutes without a whistle after the first quarter aside from the Blazers-Pelicans one that triggered this question.