2021: The Land of Uber Scorers

How 10-year-old me perceives great scoring

Friends of the Program Mike Lynch and Seth Partnow unintentionally inspired this post by commenting on the scoring bonanza that is the 2020-21 NBA season. Seth was just throwing out a stat while Mike was being his usual surly self…

Mike Lynch @SportInfo247

Numbers are truly meaningless in this league. We’re on 15+ years of a coordinated effort to stamp out defense https://t.co/QTmCDZOLCw

Anchorage Man @SethPartnow

Reminder that there are *43* guys who are currently averaging at least 20 and have played 60% of available games so far

Well, Mike’s statement reminded me of a bygone era when I would copiously pour over basketball cards for statistics. And then one year my dad bought me an NBA stats almanac. Combined, these two sources of info led me to a conclusion on Uber Scorers.

Curtis Harris @curtismharris

@SportInfo247 Back when I was a wee lad dissecting basketball cards, I figured out that a player needed to average 24.2 PPG over an 82 game season to score 2000 points. So 24.2 PPG always stood out to me as the threshold of uber scorers.

Well, turns out my memory was fuzzy. It’s actually 24.4 PPG over 82 games that gets you 2000 points in a season. The point on the points stands, though.

The 24.4 PPG plateau is my arbitary threshold for the NBA’s Uber Scorers. Dudes who can get you buckets galore.

Now that doesn’t mean they get them efficiently or that they’re the best offensive players. It just means they score a lot.

So, I decided to scroll through basketball-reference.com using Stathead (see how far we’ve come from cards?) to see how many players per season average at least 24.4 PPG and just observe the trendline. I’m not here to litigate whether it’s good, bad, or in between. I’m just lookin’ for today because I’m overwhelmed teaching an American history class and grading papers right now.

Mike Lynch watching contemporary NBA basketball

For these observations, I’ll be starting with the 1976-77 season and just rollin’ on through till this season. Also adding in the caveat a player had to play at least 50 games in a particular season (or the equivalent for shortened seasons) to qualify.

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Season-by-Season Uber Scorers

Five-Season Intervals of Uber Scorers

So, uh, just observations here. No explanations… Dudes sure are scoring a shitload more points. We ain’t had this level uber scorers ever… well, at least since the NBA-ABA merger. I’ll look at the pre-merger era another day.

And maybe I’ll dig into the why later, or I’ll just wait and see how the current season ends because right now it is an extreme outlier.

Prior to 2016, there were just four seasons where the NBA (since the NBA-ABA merger) had over 10+ scorers get over 24.4 PPG. Those seasons? 1989, 1991, 2006, and 2007.

Then all of a sudden in 2017 we had 13 such players setting a new record. It fell back to just 10 in 2018. It then surged to another new record of 15 in 2019. It then fell back to 12 in 2020.

(FYI, 12 would have tied 2007 for a record high if not for 2017 and 2019.)

And so far in 2021 there are 21… TWENNY ONE… players averaging at least 24.4 PPG.

The number of players getting over 28 PPG is also running at a historic high. A few times previously, an NBA season had four players reach that 28-point scoring plateau. Then 2020 set a new high of six such players.

And so far in 2021 there are six players averaging at least 28 PPG.

Thus far the number of 30+ PPG scorers is sitting at just two, but there are three players sitting between 29 and 30 PPG, so that’s an area ripe for Uber Uber Scorers to make their mark.

Anyways, back to grading papers and making powerpoint slides for Zoom.

Thanks for reading!