“We are... immersed in an era where offensive basketball dominates the game,” writes David Aldridge, NBA analyst for TNT, in his article “A broad overview of the NBA illustrates the transition of the game.” “The assault gives the NBA game a new and different form.” Aldridge wrote his article almost a year ago; the game's continued, convoluted evolution over the span of eleven months proves that all of his assumptions about the game's future are correct. But before looking to the future, we must look to the not-so-distant past. Looking back from the 1990s and early 2000s to today best reflects the seismic shift from “old school” basketball to the modern game. Isolation ball (a player, often the team's best, handling the ball and looking to score one-on-one against his defender) ("Types of Offenses") was once in fashion; Ball-dominant superstars like Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or Charles Barkley handled by far the largest share of their team's touches, and their performances largely dictated the team's success, for better or worse. The guards were not the dominant forces they are today; instead, teams ran their offenses through at least one, and sometimes more, competent entities in the frontcourt (the “big men,” power forwards, and centers). Shooting a large number of three-pointers was not an integral part of a team's success. In fact, some coaches looked down on it, condemning it as a riskier shot not to be attempted with regularity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Fast forward to the modern NBA. The game continues to speed up, with the top teams playing at breakneck speed in transition. The isolation ball has all but perished, replaced by free-flowing pass-first style offenses. Frontcourt positions, previously frozen in paint (the painted square between the basket and the free-throw line) as massive, heavy masses of flesh and bone, have been entirely reinvented by the new breed of "greats." kids” of the NBA – agile and incredibly athletic. players like Kristaps Porzingis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Davis who are completely redefining the role of the big man in the modern game. Their resurgence is due to the incredible explosion of the three-point basket throughout the championship. This has led to a league focused on scoring, which also accentuates the need for good scorers to lead contending teams. Players like Stephen Curry, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Russell Westbrook come to mind. The game has indeed grown considerably since the 1990s, with the main points of interest being the explosion of the three-point shot, the shift in focus towards "score first" point guards, and the renaissance great men with an entirely new role. playing in the modern era.First and foremost is the league-wide explosion of the three-point shot. Without this offensive expansion, the two other points of evolution mentioned would be impossible. Today, teams from the top of the league, like the Golden State Warriors or the Houston Rockets, to teams from the bottom of the league, like the Brooklyn Nets, employ systems focused on outside shooting prowess. The three-point shot brings a whole host of new elements to the offense. He draws the defense to the arc, opening lanes for guards to get to the hoop. This gives sharp guards another passing option on the perimeter in case the lane suddenly becomes crowded, orif they wanted to misdirect the defense by drawing them and passing to an open shooter. The three-pointer is also much more effective, as opposed to the long two-point jumpers that were the pearl-handled guns in the frame of mid-range gunslingers like Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant. Coaches around the league have noticed the impressive changes possible if they push all three players to become more prominent in their offenses. For example, as Minnesota Timberwolves assistant coach Bill Bayno told the Huffington Post: "It's just simple math... you can shoot 33 percent from 3, and that generates as many points as shooting 50% from 2, which very few teams have shot. do throughout the year” (Schultz). Surprisingly, the date of this article reveals that it was published almost five years ago. Since this article was published, the three-pointer has continued to evolve and change offenses. Regarding time and the evolution of offenses, it is quite interesting to look at the statistics on the evolution of three-point shots in offenses. Basketball Reference, an online basketball statistical reference archive, compiles a huge amount of different statistics on an equally large number of interesting topics. For the purposes of this article, the “Team Season Finder” is very useful. It ranks every NBA offense from 1973-74 to this season by any stat a viewer would care to examine. The overall offensive rating (“An estimate of points produced (players) or scored (teams) per 100 possessions,” explains the information menu) is a measure of efficiency that will serve well in analyzing the evolution of offenses . Indeed, the best teams in the league tend to set the trends that the rest of the league tries to follow; examining the major offenses of the 1990s and modern times would provide a good overview of the changes discussed. A prime example is the first entry on the list: a tie between the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors. State Warriors, with each team boasting an offensive rating of 115.6. The 1980s were the first full decade to feature the three-point line, and in the latter half of the decade, top teams began implementing the three-point shot into their offenses. The Lakers of the 80s were an all-time great team; being forward-thinking in their offensive structure, they attempted 447 three-pointers, draining 164 at a rate of about 36.7%. Looking at the 2016-17 championship-winning Warriors, renowned for their unfathomable and deadly three-point assault, attempted an incredible 2,562 three-pointers and made 982 of them, at a rate of 38.3% ( “Team Season Finder”). In thirty years, from a best team of the previous era to the best team of this era, the change is remarkable. The Warriors attempted and converted three-pointers six times more than the Lakers. As previously stated, the best teams in the league set the trends for how the rest of the league plays; This incredibly huge explosion clearly shows the importance of the three-point shot in the evolution of NBA offenses. A huge volume of the three-pointer explosion across the league has come from the new breed of incredibly dominant, scoring-first point guards. The increasing focus on offenses only heightens the importance of having an elite player at the position in the modern era. Players like Stephen Curry, Kyrie Irving and James Harden have disrupted the traditional role of point guard (Levasseur). In the '90s, point guards generally weren't the star scorers;their primary responsibility was to keep the offense flowing and get the ball to the more capable wings or gigantic power forwards and centers in the paint. John Stockton and Penny Hardaway are two of the best examples of this type of guards; Their team's first players didn't score either, but they perfectly illustrated the role of the traditional leader. However, the 90s also showed a change in the role of the leader. Some have begun to break the mold of tradition; Isiah Thomas, Tim Hardaway Sr. and Kevin Johnson have started to show a shift toward a more scoring-oriented mindset. In some situations, change is born out of necessity; Some teams simply had no options other than their guards and were forced to let them go. In other cases, the guards were so dominant that they absorbed the majority of the touches. This was the case in Detroit, for the Pistons. The Pistons of the late '80s and early '90s had a number of solid scoring options, from Bill Laimbeer to Joe Dumars to their eccentric leader at point guard, Isiah Thomas. Thomas redefined the position, bringing explosive scoring along with the usual passing savvy associated with the league's best point guards. He paved the way for the generational talents of today's point guard. Today, some playmakers have almost become the entire team, almost single-handedly deciding how games go with their play on a given night. No one says it better than the always great Chris Paul, himself a leader: “The most difficult position in the NBA, night after night, is the point guard position. Every night you look at the table, the coach will almost say, his team is going like so and so. So that’s the hardest part, and it’s probably the most fun [sic] part, because it’s the competition” (Aldridge). The shift in focus of this position has caused an almost radical shift in the duties of point guards today, revealing another critical element in the overall evolution of offenses from the 1990s to today. Although the modern game has become relatively dominated by guards, there are a number of big men who are quickly rising to stardom. Players like Karl-Anthony Towns, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kristaps Porzingis and Joel Embiid are completely redefining the role of big men in the modern NBA. They are the first of a new breed of big men, possessing a whole toolbox of techniques, a long shooting range and athleticism and ball-handling skills on the level of some of the guards in the league today. Of the two frontcourt positions, the power forward position has evolved the most. Initially a secondary center (primarily concerned with rebounding and scoring in the post) in the 1990s, the power forward position in general expanded to include a number of new duties, such as more much of the handling of the ball, controlling some of the tasks. inside passes and three-point shooting. David Gendelman of The Guardian recognizes the new abilities and roles of these players in his article "Size Matters: The Evolution Of The NBA Big Man", writing about the "new generation of NBA big men... who... can shooting three-pointers, passing and dribbling, a collective set of skills that have historically been the preserve of guards alone. Their recent emergence, a result of the evolution of the NBA game, has become so prevalent that it is changing the balance of power in the league. One might wonder what necessitated this vast change in the role of front-line actors. The answer lies in many factors.