Triple Threat: 73 points and counting, what’s next?
- James Bao
- Jan 30, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Feb 3, 2024
Triples and free throws are behind NBA’s recent historical scoring sprees.
By James Bao
January 30, 2024
Published on Annenberg Media
“Triple Threat” is a column by James Bao in which he covers trends in the NBA through an analytical lens.
Welcome to the first edition of the “Triple Threat,” where I’ll be writing about the strategies, stories and statistics that make up the National Basketball Association. Forget just highlights and box scores, this column will go beyond the surface and decode the defensive schemes that stifle LeBron James, analyze the statistics that fuel Nikola Jokic’s dominance and uncover the legends who are still influencing today’s NBA.
It’s as if superstars like Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns, Luka Doncic and Devin Booker somehow knew I needed a strong pitch to kick off the column as they put up insane — not just insane but historical — scoring numbers last week.
NBA’s recent scoring spree
In case you missed it, Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers put up a career-high 70 points last Monday against the San Antonio Spurs. Soon after, on the same night, Towns recorded his own career-high of 62 points for the Timberwolves in a loss to the Charlotte Hornets.
But it didn’t stop there.
NBA fans saw two more historical scoring efforts last Friday from Booker (62 points) and Doncic, who dropped a whopping 73 points on the Atlanta Hawks.
73!
In a game where the Dallas Mavericks had 148 points in total, Doncic single-handedly carried half of the entire team’s scoring efforts on his back. It’s also a tally that tied for the fourth-highest ever in a single NBA game.
What’s crazier is that none of the games went to overtime, meaning that Doncic scored all 73 of his points in the 45 minutes he played. That’s an average of 1.62 points per minute in the most competitive basketball league out there.
So, what’s driving the scoring spree?
Patterns of the past
After looking at the statistical anomalies of last week’s scoring and comparing them to past high-scoring performances, one pattern emerged: 3-pointers and free throws weren’t just raining down, they were rewriting history.
Back in 1990, 3-point offense was about as common as unicorns. But on March 28, Michael Jordan lit up the Cleveland Cavaliers for 69 points; he took six out of the total seven shot attempts from beyond the arc that game.
More importantly, Jordan had 23 free-throw attempts out of a game total of 37, and he converted 21 of them, or 91.3%. Now if you take away the freebie points, Jordan would have scored 46 points — still very high, but not enough to make the history books.
Kobe Bryant’s 2006 one-man assault on my home team, the Toronto Raptors, remains second in the historical tally. He averaged 1.93 points per minute, converting on a ridiculous 61% of his 46 shot attempts.
Combining Bryant’s three-pointers (7-for-13) and free-throws (18-for-20) that night sums to 39 points, almost half of his scoring efforts. Although Kobe’s era still saw plenty of traditional post-play and midrange jumpers, it also signaled the start of a modern era when perimeter-oriented playbooks run the courts.
Scoring in the modern era
Six players have crossed the 70-point threshold in the 2000s, but four of those milestones occurred during just the last two seasons. These performances start with Donovan Mitchell’s 71-point outing in January 2023 and end with Doncic’s recent 73-point effort.
“It’s a perfect combination of historic efficiency and astronomical usage rate — and astronomical use of the 3-point line." Chris Herring, an NBA expert and senior writer for Sports Illustrated said in an interview with ESPN.
Here are some stats from the four 70+ outings from 2023-2024:
41 of Mitchell’s 71 points came from seven threes and 20 free throws.
53 of Damian Lillard’s 71 points in February 2023 translated from 13 threes and 14 free throws.
One three-pointer and 21 free throws made up 24 of Embiid’s 70 points.
Doncic’s eight threes and 15 free throws combined for 39 points out of his 73 points.
Besides Embiid, who is mainly a power forward/center known for his dominance in the painted area, all the other players were guards who depended heavily on shots from deep and the line.
From the Los Angeles Clippers’ veer play for J.J. Redick to Golden State Warriors’ elevator doors for Stephen Curry, the league is evidently evolving towards strategies that emphasize outside shooting, which I believe is a source of fuel for recent scoring trends.
The mamba lives on
Statistics aside, it’s been four years since Bryant’s passing (R.I.P.), but his “Mamba Mentality” undeniably remains an influential and enduring legacy within the NBA. Coincidentally, the day Doncic put his name into the record books was also the four-year anniversary of Bryant’s passing.
“Triple Threat” runs every Tuesday.
