If there is an expert in basketball for special escalations, then it is Svetislav Pesic. The old coach fox, once European champion with Germany and world champion with Yugoslavia, was surprised about the game in the USA a few years ago. “Every morning you see the NBA results and it’s 129:119 or 122:120. Everyone celebrates it and is happy,” he rumbled after a Euroleague game.
Pesic, now 73, says that his heart doesn’t get warm when he scores so many points: “It’s not real basketball.” Excellent debate clubs are opening up around the world as to what is right or wrong. Some appreciate the spectacle in America more, others rather the puristic Euroball. One thing is certain: Pesic would not like what is currently going on in the North American professional league.
A few examples from last week as the NBA’s record festival soared to a new level: Dallas archer Luka Doncic scored 60 points against the New York Knicks, wiping Dirk Nowitzki’s 53-point record with the Mavericks off the books . The Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson gave the Hawks 54 points, including a whopping ten three-pointers.
Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks played such a yo-yo with the Wizards that many of his baskets looked like something out of a ’90s video game: assembly line dunks, 55 points, career-high. And finally, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Donovan Mitchell stunned with a 71-point rush against the Chicago Bulls. It even scratched Kobe Bryant’s 81 points against the Raptors in 2006, and inevitably made many think of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point surrealism against the Knicks (1962).
Donovan Mitchell was still pestering like crazy across the field against the Knicks after 50 minutes of play – first during the game, then while celebrating.
(Photo: Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports)
The NBA offers these landslide moments almost every evening, 14 times this season alone one player has already surpassed the 50-point mark – and that after less than half the season. It all happened in the early 1960s, but those were the days when Chamberlain, the first true basketball giant, dominated the business – he was simply two heads taller than the rest. The league is now entering the new year with a fit of megalomania . Or should one say: with continuous gasping? Highlight videos waft through the web, flanked by almost grotesque statistics, with which the product can be optimally marketed. The only problem is: If everything is historical, then what are records worth?
The NBA always wanted to be “The Greatest Show on Earth”, the promise has long been kept – at least for fans of sprawling offensive art. But what is behind it?
Klay Thompson hits ten three-pointers in the NBA, Donovan Mitchell scores 71 points
Anyone who conducts sober research into the causes ends up with terms like “spacing” or “offensive efficiency”. The room layout has improved so much in recent years that “fire free” areas have now emerged everywhere on the NBA floors. On the pitches, which are larger than in Europe, teams use every angle to expand the action. The three-point shot is booming, players today shoot from outside almost twice as often as ten years ago. At the same time, actors also get into the zone for completion more often.
Because many franchises can muster formations with up to five throwing specialists (there are hardly any hard workers among the baskets anymore), the defenders have to pursue their opponent into every corner. A player with a basketball IQ like Doncic can easily pass his marker with deceptions and dribbles and then finds a bouquet of options in front of him: Pass to the free teammate, finish with a three-pointer or go through the middle.
“He knows all his options at all times. He can throw, he’s extremely dangerous there, but he also has power when he goes to the basket,” says German Dallas export Maxi Kleber about his team-mate with the Mavericks. “Luka creates so many good shots for himself, but also for colleagues.” Good throws are those that promise high hit rates. More and more NBA teams are striving for them, harnessing the abilities of their subtle minds and thinking basketball heliocentrically: the best gets the ball, the rest orbit it like planets orbit the sun, giving more chances of a promising play. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” enthused Mark Cuban about Doncic after his 60-point show. And the Mavs owner was allowed to watch a Nowitzki from the front row for 21 years.
Doncic himself (once at Real Madrid) keeps saying that he finds it comparatively easy to score in the NBA. The Greek Antetokounmpo put it similarly at the start of the season: “Of course the boys are more talented here, but there’s just a lot more space, there are holes everywhere that you can slip through.” Last but not least, they are caused by listlessness on the defensive – about that laissez faire during the NBA regular season, critics of US basketball have long wondered. But it is also true that the rules hardly allow any hard physical contact, unlike in the 80s and 90s. If you foul, you risk free throws or a sending off, so the defenses are punished – at least until the start of the playoffs.
But the decisive factor is probably the talent in the attacking lines: never before has there been such a generation of exceptional talents at the same time. Players like Steph Curry, James Harden, Kevin Durant or LeBron James are still productive even in old age. And in the end there are also very banal reasons for the rain of points: Donovan Mitchell simply enjoyed an extra portion of playing time at his gala. It went through two overtimes, and NBA games already last eight minutes longer than games in Europe. Even old Pesic can’t possibly raise any objections to that.