Copycat league:Pace seems to be increasing

[juju151111]

http://www.nba.com/2015/news/powerrankings/11/02/week-1-power-rankings/index.html?ls=iref:nba:specials:homepage:t1

[Monta Ellis MVP]

Curry invented the new league.

[Marchesk]

60s with a 3pt line?

[GIF REACTION]

halo invented fps

[Monta Ellis MVP]

60s with a 3pt line?

No. The players are actually good.

[juju151111]

We heading to the 80s again.

[jlip]

We are three games into the season. I'm certain it will level off by All Star Break.

[GIF REACTION]

We are three games into the season. I'm certain it will level off by All Star Break.
^^^

dum dum thinks we going back to the 80's

[juju151111]

We are three games into the season. I'm certain it will level off by All Star Break.
Of course it will go down slightly, but it will still increase. Last year it started about average and went down. Also the fact is teams score at a higher FG% in the first 6 seconds of the shot clock. Don't think the league isn't a copycat league. It happens all the time. Pistons won chips in the late 80s and 90s on defense and 90s turned defensive oriented.

[GIF REACTION]

You're not saying anything that we don't already know

And it was mainly the New York Knicks with Pat Riley after he saw Detroit beat his Lakers in the finals playing that way

Essentially "No layups" defense... foul guys

[GIF REACTION]

Coaches have been telling their kids to rotate quickly on defense for decades; in the last ten years, the kids have learned to do it pretty well.
This is just good coaching on any level, teaching players to rotate and move their feet defensively. After 50 years of hearing it, kids are moving their feet on defense better than they ever have. It is much more cool now to be known as a good defender than it was 20 years ago when it was a euphemism for "guy who can’t shoot".

This renaissance in defense began in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s, perhaps with the Detroit Pistons who finally slowed down the Showtime Lakers, perhaps with the Pat Riley Knicks who rotated incessantly, or perhaps with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen stifling opposing scorers on their way to multiple NBA titles. Quickness in defenders became a priority in the 1990’s, especially in the NBA where you couldn’t hide a slow defender behind a zone defense. Slow guys who could shoot the ball didn’t necessarily get drafted, while "athletic leapers with tremendous potential" became the hot commodities, even if they never would be able to shoot the ball.

Better defense has both slowed the league and reduced the scoring efficiency. Teams need longer to get a good shot and, when they get it, it’s not as good as it once was. Figure 1 graphically demonstrates these things. Pace, represented in possessions per game per team, has slowed 6-8% in the last 10 years. Scoring efficiency, represented by points scored per 100 possessions (labeled as "Rating"), has come down 4-6%. That’s why points scored are down 12-14%.

http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/articles/rules2001/pace_pts_trend.gif


Coaches, led apparently by Pat Riley when he joined New York, forwarded the commandment – "No layups allowed" – and it is now followed religiously.
At the latter end of the 1980’s, word went around the NBA that the way to beat the Lakers was to beat them up, to "play them physically". Laker Coach Pat Riley resented it at the time and, when his team got beat in the Finals by a Detroit Pistons team employing the strategy, Riley remembered. After a year watching the NBA from the broadcast booth (and losing pop-a-shot competitions to Bob Costas), Riley came back to coach the New York Knicks in the 1991-1992 season. He came back determined to get vengeance.

Riley’s first season with the Knicks inspired a 12 game improvement in the team. Even more eye-catching to other coaches was what happened in the playoffs. The Knicks got nowhere close to beating the Bulls in 1991 in their first round series, losing 3-0. In 1992, under Riley’s changes (to be discussed), the Knicks beat the Pistons in the first round playing better bad-boy-ball than the Bad Boys themselves. They followed it up with a physical 7-game series loss to the eventual champion Bulls, battering the heroic Michael Jordan in the process.

Riley improved the Knicks through defense. He taught them to rotate quickly and he taught them to allow nothing easy. Riley saw the league getting more physical and he decided to push it. He espoused the infamous phrase, "No layups allowed." Numerically, the Knicks’ improvement from ’91 to ’92 was 1 point offensive and 3 points defensive; the Knicks’ offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) went from 105.4 to 106.4 and its defensive rating went from 105.6 to 102.3. They did it by fouling an extra 2 times per game and sending opponents to the line an extra 3 times per game. Their opponents shooting percentage went from 47.6% to 45.8%. Their opponents started taking more threes because they were getting beat up or double-teamed down low. Riley figured that he wouldn’t get beat with jump shots.

And the league learned. The league had been shooting more three-pointers every year for a while, but it jumped in 1993 and took a huge leap in 1995 (Figure 2). The big leap was due to the league's decision to move the three-point line in, a reaction to the Riley-style brutality in the post. The rule lasted through the 1997 season until the league decided that three-pointers were getting to be too prominent. After an initial bump up in 1995, the league shooting percentage from 2-point land actually spiraled down, one of the most disturbing aspects of the analysis. Figure 3 shows how 2-point FG% was steady until 1995, but has been plummeting since. The league’s effective field goal percentage, which adjusts for the additional point gained by making a three-pointer, has been in decline as well even though three-point percentages remain high.

This decline could be the lack of mid-range jump shooters that we’ve heard about, but it appears to be the "No layups" rule. Recall back in the 1980’s when teams would often have a guy like a Mark West or a Steve Johnson or a Buck Williams who just knew how to finish off after an offensive rebound. Remember when Dennis Rodman used to shoot nearly 60% doing the same thing. Then teams learned that he didn’t shoot foul shots very well and sent him to the line. Then he turned into a complete freak, but we digress. In the ‘91-92 season, Rodman shot 54% from the field, taking only 140 shots from the foul line. In the next season, Rodman shot 23 more foul shots (at 53%) in 1000 fewer minutes and his field goal percentage plummeted to 43%. Rodman was an extreme (there’s an understatement), but the league’s leading field goal percentage shooters showed a similar pattern. Figure 4 shows the average field goal percentage of the top 10 league shooters since 1990. Whereas the league’s top 10 used to shoot an average of 57% from the field, it now struggles to shoot 52%. In 2001, only the league’s leading shooter, Shaquille O’Neal, shot 57%. Figure 5 shows how fewer and fewer players are shooting at the levels they once were.

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[3ball]

Pace is increasing because guys are willing to take more contested 3's, so less offense and screen rolls need to be run to get a good enough look.. Thee only reason you run offense is to get an open look.

It's the same reason pace was faster in previous eras that only shot 2-pointers.. Less offense needed to be ran in the 2-pointer eras because 2-point shots don't need to be as open as 3-pointers.

But now 3-pointers don't need to be open either.. So pace is naturally picking back up as players start taking more and more contested 3-pointers.
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