In January 2010, Andre Miller scored 52 points and led his team to a narrow two-point overtime victory. Miller is a typical traditional point guard, with two long legs under his height of 1.88 meters, and a face of Karen Mok on his neck, he is keen on back play, does not like three-point shooting, and averages no more than one three-point shot per game in most seasons of his career, and he scored a career-high 52 points this time, including 1 three-point shot and hit, and 8 free throws to hit 7 shots.
Miller said after the game that he didn't plan to score that many points, but that he was "ready to go". Miller didn't expect that his 50 points would be the only 50 points in the whole of 2010. Miller didn't expect that 14 years later, 50 points would be a sparse occurrence in the league, and we could see Embiid score 70 points and Towns score 62 points three days ago, and Doncic score 73 points while Booker scored 62 points three days later.
Doncic could have scored 75 points — five seconds into the game, his opponent was still three points behind, and the ball was sent to Toko, who would rather let time run out than send him to the free throw line again — and even then, Toko's 73 points were already the fourth most in the league in single-game scoring, or the third. In front of Dongzi, Chamberlain has a high 100 points and a third-highest 78 points, while Bryant has the second-highest 81 points in history.
So the most immediate question is at hand: 100 points or 81 points, is it a record that can be touched?
There is no video circulating of Chamberlain's 100-point battle, and according to eyewitness confessions, it doesn't seem to be a particularly elegant game, a bit of an admiral brushing 71 points for the scoring title, including teammates fouling when leading to hurry up to help score points. Let's not study this 100 points, but look at 81 points.
Bryant's 81 points occurred in 2006, and there is a video that everyone can see. Infinite triangle offense + conversion, plus the opponent Raptors led by 18 points in the second half, and did not withdraw all the main forces until they trailed by 15 points in the final 2 minutes and 36 seconds of the game, all of which contributed to Kobe's 81 points.
There are many benefits to the triangle attack, the most notable of which is to create space for the superstar to go head-to-head, and the next step is to see if the star can get the ball in.
Bryant scored 26 points in the first half and the team trailed by 14 points, then he scored 27 points in the third quarter, 53 points in the third quarter, and 76 points after hitting both free throws in the final 2:36 of the fourth quarter. You can certainly understand Kobe's last five points as a small brush, but there is one more detail we haven't mentioned:
In the second quarter of this game, Bryant had half a quarter off the court. Kobe himself later said that if he didn't stop for these 6 minutes, he would have scored an extra 14-15 points, and it would have been easy to score 40 points in the final half. Kobe Bryant's statement is very sincere, and everyone wants to believe it.
So take a look back at the last few super scores:
Doncic scored 41 points in the first half and only had a two-minute break on the night of 73 points, and Doncic's score dropped to 32 points in the second half.
Embiid scored 70 points, scored 34 points in the first half after only 19 minutes, played 12 minutes in the third quarter and scored 25 points, and the score opened in the fourth quarter, Embiid only played 5 minutes to score 11 points and left the game early.
So if you only look at the first three quarters, Dongzi and the Emperor have already scored higher scores than Kobe Bryant's three quarters that year, one is 57 points, and the other is 59 points, you can see that they are still close to 81 points in the end: the cooperation of the opponent.
The Spurs were defeated on the Emperor's side, and there was no reason for him to continue to stay on the court, which was the most common reason why the super high score could not be released. Kobe Bryant scored 81 points 1 month ago, he had scored 62 points in the third quarter of the game against the Mavericks, and during the break, the Zen master asked Kobe if he wanted to play for a few minutes and score 70 points before coming down, Kobe looked at the score, when the Lakers were already leading by 30 points, he said no, "Next time." ”
Brian Shaw was by Kobe's side at the time, thinking that this person should be crazy, "next time", listen to it, is this what people say?
The situation encountered by Dongzi's side was different, in the second half, the opponent changed to a pinch, and put on an attitude that Dongzi must die if the game can be lost.
And in the 81-point game, in addition to stubbornly resisting to the end, the Raptors almost did not cover Kobe. Sam Mitchell, who was the Raptors coach at the time, was so confident in his system that he even used a lot of joint defense during the game, telling the players: "It doesn't matter how Kobe scores, as long as we win the game." ”
As a result, everyone knows that Mitchell can hide his fame and fame, and Kobe Bryant opponents such as Jalen Rose have become the eternal joke in the 81-point story. Years later, Mike James, who was with the Raptors at the time, was still resentful when he mentioned it: "The coach won't let us wrap up, you can't go against the order." Maybe then we should have rejected the coach's arrangement, given up the weak joint defense, and we should have played against him physically every time he received the ball. ”
Bryant himself said after the game that in addition to "losing 15 points" for those six minutes of rest, he also missed two free throws and missed some open shots after 62 points, so "I think 100 points is possible, I really think so." ”
There's nothing new under the sun, there's no reason why we won't encounter similar scenes again, similar to confident opposing coaches, and the only thing we doubt is whether we can really see a great scoring performance like Chamberlain or Kobe Bryant again?
Obviously, the star-studded scoring performance over the past week has given us some confidence, and if we extend the time frame, we can have a little more confidence.
In terms of 60 points per game, only 4 games in the 70s of the last century reached or exceeded this score, in the 80s and 90s it was the same 5 games, in the first 10 years of the new millennium 9 games, in the 10s 11 games, and in the 20s will be in the past 4 years and 1 month, there have been 16 people who have scored 60 points or more in a single game. On the whole, the number of individual single-game high-scoring games is accelerating, and with the base getting bigger and bigger, it seems only a matter of time before it breaks through 81 or even 100.
The reason is not difficult to explain, and many people who understand the ball have explained it to us. The difference is not simply due to the superficial explanation that the game is faster and more shots, but fundamentally the improvement of the shooting efficiency of modern players, especially after the three-point ability of role players has improved, and the space of the whole court has become better, which means that it is difficult to implement a long package tactic against one star in a single game, and for defenders, they are often faced with two bottles of poison, being killed by a star or being shot by someone else.
On the night of Kobe's 81-point score, the Raptors players begged Mitchell to wrap Kobe Bryant, "We'd rather be shot by Smush or Odom!" "In the past, this strategy of "pinching the star and letting someone else take care of us" was popular because the ability of the role players often did not match the intensity of the defensive end of the game, but this notion is hardly a sustainable strategy in the modern game, because the modern role players are more likely to actually shoot you than in the past.
So the question is essentially asking: why is there a huge increase in the offensive efficiency of players in modern games?
And the explanation of this problem is not difficult, as many people think: everything is driven by the business alliance, and it is the high-level design that makes the game what it is today. And for the league to drive the game in the direction it wants, it only needs to understand one thing: the rules.
The NBA was a business from the beginning, and a good business needs a good business model, and a good business model needs to have a full and detailed understanding of the needs of its audience, and the league's first president, Podorov, set the tone for the league's business from the beginning: fans prefer to watch high-scoring games.
However, there is often a certain experimental or lag in the change of rules, because there is a certain difference between the maximization of profits that businessmen want to achieve and the victory goals that teams want to achieve as participants in competitive sports.
For example, after the introduction of 24 seconds in the mid-50s, it was a key move to improve the spectacle of the game. And for the teams in the league, spectatorship is not their primary concern, winning is, and their understanding of the 24-second rule is that the game needs to be faster to win easier, "since we have to shoot in 24 seconds, then we use more shots, higher scores to suppress the opponent." Five years after the introduction of the 24-second rule, the NBA entered an era of all-out offense, with a record high of over 118 points per game in the 1961-62 season, and 115 points per game so far this year6 points, and with current developments, the NBA has the potential to reach the level of 120 points per game during the new broadcast contract.
But things often don't work out that way, in the early 60s, after the rhythm, scoring explosion, the average points per game began to decline year by year, the team gradually found that going all out to increase the number of rounds or let Chamberlain cut an average of 50 points per game can not significantly improve the team's winning rate, so they began to gradually turn to saving energy, enriching rotation and playing more efficiently, at the same time as this turn, the defense also gradually surfaced, especially after the further expansion of the penalty area in 1964, Gone are the days when it was easy to throw the ball at the giants and do everything, teams are starting to drop the number of overs and defending is starting to make more sense.
And in 1979, the three-point line was introduced, and in the early 80s, a series of small rule fine-tuning theoretically increased the actual game time and court space, and in the late 80s, it became back to three referees, reducing the frequency of inside wrestling interrupting the game, but these small fights could not prevent the defense from slowly gaining the upper hand, and the game began to become slow and dull, but at that time Stern had already entered the globalization process with the NBA, the league income was greatly **, and the epic star-making movement around Jordan was in the ascendant, The tedium of the game itself was masked, and shots, shooting percentages, and points all began to slowly decline, reaching a low point in 1999.
So the rules began to change, the changes at this node are mainly to make a fuss about time, the original kicks, defensive technical fouls, off-ball fouls, have to go back to the table to 24 seconds, this rule is optimized to the offensive time left when the game is interrupted or between 14 seconds, in addition, the back dribble below the free throw line is limited to less than 5 seconds.
As if that weren't enough, the more important back-office operation came at a juncture across the new millennium: the league set up a special committee for the optimization of rules, chaired by the elder Colangelo, who was highly respected in basketball circles. The special committee was set up with one goal: to change the rules, to get the game up again, and to give smaller players more room to play.
Under the control of the special committee, the NBA began to introduce three seconds of defense, abolished "illegal defense", allowed joint defense, changed the time to pass the halfcourt from 10 seconds to 8 seconds, reduced the length and number of timeouts, and by 2004, the hand-checking rules that longtime fans talked about were optimized, and the act of using hands to "confirm" the opponent's position was blown off.
The three-point era set off by the Warriors in the 14-15 season did not stop the league from pushing the game to high scores, and they also reduced the time of the second offense to 14 seconds, and more importantly, the league began to promote a penalty scale since 2018: the free movement rules were blown stricter.
Yes, no defense, no limbs can be used to hinder the free movement of others, this is the most basic principle of basketball. But over the years, this basic spirit has often been overlooked when the actual penalty is blown, and this spirit has been ignored, resulting in classics such as Miller pushing away Jordan to catch the ball or Jordan pushing Russell to pull out the ball. NBA players are taught from an early age that this type of contact is called "confrontation." But since 2018, the "free movement" rule has been strictly punished, and almost every year after the start of the NBA season, the referee committee will carry out special training on the "free movement" rule, requiring the referee to be as consistent as possible, and this scale is as consistent as possible, that is, basically you can no longer grab or push the opposing player with your hands to hinder the opponent's movement.
Former NBA center Gortat was on the show some time ago, saying that when Paul or some players are stuck in the position, they will hit your balls with their hands or break your thighs, and if you look at him, he will smile at you, meaning it's normal to play basketball and catch an egg, friend. Gortat said he later wanted to work out to make sure his core muscles were strong enough.
We don't know exactly how Gortat worked out, but his words basically reflect the NBA's long-standing style of play, where swift and essentially foul moves don't get caught by referees, but since 2018, similar behavior has decreased dramatically, and the game has actually become more fluid.
Recently, I saw some people on the Internet leaving a message behind a game post where Dongzi or the Emperor scored high, saying that "old fans don't like this kind of game that only has offense". I don't know how old the old fans are, whether they were as old as they were in 1961, or when they were in the 80s, or if they just liked to watch the 90s when they were emptying the ball stars. But according to my observation, when there is a little dirty action on the court, such as you give me an elbow and I give you a leg, it is also the same group of people who are using slow motion ** frame by frame analysis, expressing their disgust from a moral point of view and the experience of "fighting on the field for a long time".
I'm not saying that there are many problems with the views of these "old fans", it's just that now the league is thriving and the income is increasing year after year, although Xiao Hua was sprayed like a dog by the old fans, but yesterday he renewed his contract until 2030. So the thing is very clear, although some people will complain, saying that they can't defend now, and they will miss the era of no three-point points, and they don't know which era it is the "old era", but the vast majority of coaches and players in the league should sincerely welcome the league to give them more money, and the league can send more money, indicating that they are dressed up under various operations, and the vast majority of fans are very buying.
The Clippers beat the Celtics back-to-back on the road.
With the ball, it's time for Bing to talk about them.