NBA Trends, Part I: The New Era of Speed, Athleticism, and Aggressiveness
Evolving court geometry, rules, ball pressure, and the new paradigm
We’re officially into offseason mode here at digginbasketball.
That doesn’t mean I’m not still glued to every playoff game. Sure, there are no Lakers, no Mavericks, and no Luka games, which definitely sucks. But I also really enjoy this time of year, when there’s more space to watch, observe, and crunch numbers. It’s the perfect opportunity to zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
Content might come a bit less frequently in the offseason, but the goal is to make it more thoughtful and meaningful. First up: something I’ve been thinking about for a while now — how the NBA is changing. Some shifts are obvious on the surface, but are they part of a bigger trend? Is there data to support it? And as we watch playoff basketball, the most important question is whether these changes actually carry over when it matters most. As always, I’ll try to explore how these trends and shifts matter specifically for the Lakers and Mavericks and their looming team-building challenges.
Before I dig in (no pun intended), I’d love to hear from you. If you have your own observations, ideas, or things you’d like me to explore in future parts of this series, drop them in the comments or, even better, let’s open a chat and talk it through. For this series, I’ve parsed the last 20 years of game logs, more than 50,000 regular season and playoff records, including box score, advanced, and four factor data. I also went through the last 12 seasons of available tracking data. Some of you have mentioned wanting to learn more about data and analytics, and this is the perfect time of year to dive into it together.
Today’s highlights:
New, extended court geometry and spacing 📈
The need for faster, more versatile, and more athletic players 📈
The need for aggressive and physical players 📈
Adapting or falling behind? Are the Lakers and Mavericks built for it?
1 – New, extended court geometry and spacing 📈
I don’t need to spend too many words on how the rise in three-point volume has changed the game. This past regular season hit an all-time high in three-point attempts, with the Boston Celtics becoming the first team in NBA history to take more than half of their shots from beyond the arc. None of this is breaking news, but it’s worth highlighting again to help visualize the trend.
But three-point volume isn’t the only factor. The continued evolution of range is just as important, if not more, in redefining court geometry. Offenses are now pulling defenses well beyond 25 feet from the basket. For players like Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons, Luka Dončić, and even Jalen Green, the average screen is set more than 28 feet from the hoop. These are players who can pull up from anywhere, and that kind of deep spacing forces defenses to extend further than ever before.
Not only is there much more space for defenders to cover, but they also have to do it faster and more often than they did a decade ago.
The average pace has hovered between 99 and 100 possessions per game over the last few seasons. At the same time, the total distance covered in miles by NBA players has reached its highest point since Second Spectrum tracking data became available in the 2013–14 season.
2-The need for faster, more versatile, and more athletic players 📈
The idea that modern NBA defenses are worse or less demanding than those of past decades doesn’t hold up. The skill level and speed of today’s game are significantly higher, which makes defending much more challenging than it was in a slower, more condensed era. The rising share of heavily contested three-point shots is another sign of how much more defensive activity is required to keep up with today’s three-point-heavy offenses.
The increasing average pass distance on non-transition possessions, which reached 16.9 feet this season, is another indicator of how much more ground defenders have to cover. It is also another highest mark recorded in the tracking era.
That extended spacing, along with the rise in off-the-dribble shooting from deep, has also contributed to another major trend — the increased reliance on switching defenses.
Not only are switches becoming more frequent, but the types of switching are also getting more complex. Smart defensive teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder now use fast, versatile defenders to peel, veer, scram, or triple-switch across the floor, all in an effort to prevent mismatches and limit 4-on-3 or any kind of other advantage situations. Boston is another team that has been experimenting with all kinds of switching for years, leveraging their smart and agile defenders to stay connected and disrupt actions before they develop.
Most teams operate with a defensive shell designed to shrink the floor, collapse on drives, and show bodies against dominant scorers, then rotate — or in NBA terms, “fly around” — to contest shots on the perimeter. The Lakers were a clear example of that, and the Mavericks’ pack-line defense last season used similar principles to crowd Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Anthony Edwards in the playoffs. Some teams, like the Wolves, apply the opposite approach — starting with a wider shell and collapsing late. Here’s J.J. Redick explaining the difference in approach.
Regardless of the scheme, what’s becoming more and more important in the context of changing court geometry and increasing pace is the need for long, athletic, and versatile defenders who can fly around, cover ground, and execute complex rotations all over the floor.
3-The need for aggressive and physical players 📈
If you’ve been following this year’s playoffs, you’ve probably noticed that physicality has been one of the main talking points. The Lakers were eliminated by a Timberwolves team that was simply bigger and more physical. Ironically, Wolves coach Chris Finch later complained about that same physicality — saying Rudy Gobert, who dominated the Lakers with 27 points and 24 rebounds in the closeout game, was on the wrong end of the whistles in Minnesota’s Game 1 loss to Golden State. Kenny Atkinson said the line was crossed in the Cavs-Pacers series. Jaylen Brown made similar comments in Boston’s first-round battle with Orlando. Warriors-Rockets was a rock fight. And the OKC-Denver series looks like it might follow the same path, potentially decided by how much force the league’s most aggressive defense is allowed to throw at Nikola Jokić.
But the rise in physical play isn’t a new trend. After last season’s midyear scoring explosion, capped by Luka Dončić’s 73-point outburst against the Hawks in late January, the league quietly adjusted. As reported by Tom Haberstroh, Adam Silver later admitted the NBA made “a bit of an adjustment” to officiating during the season. That shift amounted to a reduction of about two fouls per team per game. The free-throw rate this season dropped to its lowest point in the last 20 years.
More pressure, contact, and hand-checking are being allowed on the perimeter and on drives, and the most aggressive teams have taken full advantage by ramping up their on-ball pressure. While tracking data can be a bit inconsistent with some of these classifications, the metrics for non-transition possessions with pressure on the ball-handler and the share of picks with contact on the screen are both at their highest levels since tracking began.
Teams like Oklahoma City with Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, and Cason Wallace; Houston with Amen Thompson, Dillon Brooks, and Tari Eason; Boston with Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, and Jaylen Brown; Minnesota with Jaden McDaniels and Nickeil Alexander-Walker; and Indiana with Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith are all prime examples. These teams don’t just have fast and athletic defenders — they also have one more essential trait for effective on-ball pressure: aggressiveness.
4 – Adapting or falling behind? Are the Lakers and Mavericks built for it?
If you’ve been following my Mavericks analysis here since the start of the season, you know I’ve consistently highlighted their lack of on-ball pressure as the biggest weakness in their defense — even before Nico Harrison made the “Defense wins championships” trade. The contrast in on-ball pressure was among first things I noticed when I started watching the Lakers more closely. Their bench hustle unit — Gabe Vincent, Dorian Finney-Smith, Jordan Goodwin, and Jarred Vanderbilt — played with much more aggression and was a major reason behind the Lakers' mid-season defensive resurgence.
However, due to their offensive limitations, or rather J.J. Redick’s lack of trust in them, the roles of everyone in that group except Finney-Smith were drastically reduced in the playoffs. A lack of size, length, athleticism, and speed was the Lakers' downfall in their series against the Timberwolves. The warning signs were there well before, including my well-documented tracking of their negative fast-break point differential streak after the trade deadline.
After a disappointing first-round exit, the Lakers enter the offseason facing a similar problem the Mavericks had after trading for Kyrie Irving. They’re too small and not athletic enough for a team built around Dončić. The Mavericks recognized that issue and addressed it in the 2023 offseason by adding Dereck Lively II, Derrick Jones Jr., and Dante Exum. It was the first glimpse of a blueprint for building a fast and athletic team that can run and defend — even with Dončić, a player rarely associated with either trait. Later, they added two more athletes in P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford, transforming the team into a competent defensive unit and one of the fastest-paced squads in the league earlier this season.
The Mavericks' blueprint is something Rob Pelinka is well aware of, and based on his stated offseason priorities, it’s a path he will likely try to follow — despite limited options and assets this summer. As for the Mavericks themselves, even in a short span and despite fielding huge lineups with defensive anchors like Anthony Davis, Lively, and Washington, they saw firsthand that size and length alone aren’t enough to build a championship-level defense. Irving, Klay Thompson, Spencer Dinwiddie, Brandon Williams, and Jaden Hardy make up one of the weakest defensive guard groups in the NBA, especially when it comes to on-ball pressure and aggressiveness. With Irving expected to miss extended time recovering from a torn ACL, and clear holes to fill in playmaking and ball-handling, it will be interesting to see how the Mavericks address these challenges with both the short term and mid-term in mind — especially given Nico Harrison’s own admission that there is no long-term view.
For both the Lakers and the Mavericks, ignoring these evolving NBA trends would be unwise. They are already a step behind, and the priority this offseason should be to close the gap rather than lag even further in the new, faster, and more aggressive NBA.
really really insightful stuff here Iztok. Well done
In hindsight, the Mavs lagged the league for the first 4-5 years they had Luka; they finally remedied that with the long, athletic wings and centers that took them to the Finals, but it’s intriguing to think about where they would be if they built around Luka with more patience and insight starting in 2018. The Lakers are so much like those early Mavs, one dimensional players, good defenders without reliable offense, not enough size or versatility. No real center. Now, every team wants long, athletic, defenders who can attack the basket and hit an open jumper. The Lakers have their work cut out for them, and not a lot of assets to work with. Mavericks need a high level ball handler or two - they can be competitive if they find a gem in the draft, and AD stays healthy. Will be interesting how aggressive Nico is this summer.