50-point performances this season: Coincidence or new NBA trend?

The 2018-19 NBA season is on pace to rewrite the history books in terms of scoring, but why?

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

What came first, the demand for a high-paced, score-first NBA or the talented scorer?

In order to really know, it’s important to take a close look at what potentially created this offensive-minded era.

Some think current Houston Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni’s famous “Seven Seconds or Less” Phoenix Suns’ offense is where it started. Ironically, that 2004-05 squad’s NBA-best 97.37 possessions per game would be dead last today behind the Cleveland Cavaliers (100.1).

In other circles, the cynics can shake their head and call it an outcome of the instant-gratification associated with the social media generation. But the NBA has seen scoring eras like this before, and not too long ago (like, the 1980s).

While elements like pace and the introduction of the 3-point line opened the door, it’s the talent that walked through it — Kevin Durant being a perfect example of this (relatively) new, uncanny, position-less superstar prototype.

But this trend is not only about the amount of 50-point performances. The real anomaly is the diversity of scorers.

In the past, serial offenders had been largely responsible for 50-point game frequency. Wilt Chamberlain alone is responsible for 118 of them, and Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan have chipped in 25 and 31 of them, respectively.

While transcending talents like those will change the numbers, the diversity of scorers this season (and in this era) is what makes it especially potent, and likely the greatest scoring era since the introduction of the 3-point line back in 1979.

A little over a month into the 2018-19 campaign, there have already been eight 50-point performances, by eight different players.

In previous generations, only a few players actually had the elite ability to score 50 in a game. But today, there are more than a handful.

Even if you remove Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose as flukes, what about guys like DeMar DeRozan, Devin Booker, Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard who could drop 50 in a heartbeat?

The fact is that in today’s NBA, far more players have the ability to score 50 points. After all, the Golden State Warriors alone roster four players (if you include DeMarcus Cousins) who could drop 50 with no hesitation.

So when asking the question, “What came first… a demand for a high-paced, score-first NBA or the talented scorer?” the answer is clear as day: The trend is because of the talent, and not the other way around (score one point for the millennials).

If you look back at the amount of 50-point games in the last decade, guys like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade dominated, and while flukes like Terrance Ross chipped in a few, the numbers were generally down. In fact, in any given year from the 2010-11 season through the 2012-13 season, there weren’t more than three 50-point games at all.

While the dominance of Michael Jordan put individual performance at the front of our minds for decades to come, the diversity of talent in today’s league looks a lot more like the beginning of that NBA Golden Age, which featured the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers, the Larry Bird-led Boston Celtics, and ended with MJ’s greatness.

While Jordan is still the greatest of all time, perhaps this new trend will help move away from the problems with focusing too much on the individual, and instead will allow for a redesigned, fast-paced NBA to breed great individual performance that can coexist with sound basketball.