“We are… embroiled in an era where offensive basketball dominates the game,” writes David Aldridge, an NBA analyst for the television network TNT, in his article “ NBA's broad overview illustrates the game's transition.” “The Onslaught is bending the NBA game into a new and different shape.” Aldridge wrote his article almost a year ago; the game's continued and 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, it is necessary to look to the not so distant past. A look back from the 1990s and early 2000s to today best reflects the momentous shift from “old school” basketball to the modern game. Isolation ball (a player, often the team's best, handling the ball and trying to score one-on-one against his defender) ("Types of Offenses") was all the rage; Ball-dominant superstars like Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, or Charles Barkley handled by far the majority of their teams' touches, and their performances largely determined the team's success, for better or worse. Guards were not the dominant scoring forces they are today; teams instead ran their attacks through at least one, and occasionally more, capable entities in the frontcourt (the "big men", forwards and centers). Shooting a large number of three-point shots was not integral to a team's success. In fact, some coaches despised it, condemning it as a riskier shot not to be attempted on a regular basis. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Fast forward to the modern NBA. The game continues to pick up pace, with the best teams playing at a breakneck speed in transition. The isolation ball has all but disappeared, replaced by free-flowing first pass style attacks. Frontcourt positions, previously stuck in the painted area (the painted square between the basket and the free throw line) like huge, awkward masses of flesh and bone, have been completely reinvented by the new breed of "kids" NBA: agile, strangely 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 3-pointers throughout the league. This has led to a league focused on scoring, which also accentuates the need for great scoring guards to lead contending teams. Players like Stephen Curry, James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Russell Westbrook come to mind. The game has in fact grown immeasurably since the 1990s, with the main focal points being the explosion of the three-point shot, the shift in focus towards "score-first" point guards and the resurgence of big men with a completely new role. play in the modern era. The first, and most important, is the league-wide explosion of three-point shooting. Without this offensive expansion the other two evolution points mentioned would be impossible. Today, both teams at the top of the league, like the Golden State Warriors or Houston Rockets, and teams at the bottom, like the Brooklyn Nets, use systems that focus on outside shooting ability. The three-point shot brings a whole host of new elements to an offense. Draws the defense to the outside to protect the arc, opening up lanes for guards to get to the basket. Gives cutting guards another perimeter passing option in case the lane suddenly becomes crowded or if they want to routemistakenly luring the defense and passing to an open shooter. The three-point shot is also much more efficient, as opposed to the long two-point jumpers that were the pearl-handled guns in the picture of mid-range gunslingers like Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant. Coaches around the league have noted the impressive changes possible if they pushed threes to have more prominence in their offenses. For example, as Minnesota Timberwolves assistant coach Bill Bayno tells the Huffington Post: "It's just simple math... you can shoot 33% from 3, and that generates as many points as if you shot 50% from 2, which very few teams do throughout the year” (Schultz). Surprisingly enough, looking at the date of this article reveals that it was published almost five years ago. Since the publication of this article, the three pointers have continued to evolve and change offenses. Staying on the topic of time and the evolution of offenses, it is quite interesting to observe the statistics on the evolution of the three-point shot in offenses. Basketball Reference, an online statistical reference archive on basketball, collects a huge amount of different statistics on a equally large number of interesting topics. For the purposes of this article, the “Team Season Finder” is wonderfully useful. It ranks every NBA offense from 1973-1974 to this season based on any stat a viewer would want to watch. 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. This is because the best teams in the league tend to dictate the trends that the rest of the league tries to follow; looking at the major crimes of the 1990s and modern times would offer a clear view of the changes discussed. The first item on the list serves as an excellent example: a tie between the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2016-17 Goldens. 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 second half of the decade, top teams began implementing the three-point shot into their offenses. The Lakers of the 1980s were a great team of all time; being forward-thinking in their offensive structure, they attempted 447 three-pointers, draining 164 of them at a clip of approximately 36.7%. Considering the 2016-17 championship-winning Warriors, renowned for their unfathomable deadly three-point assault, they attempted a staggering 2,562 three-pointers and made 982 of them, at a 38.3% clip (“Team Season Finder "). In thirty years, from a top team of the previous era to the top team of this era, the change is remarkable. The Warriors attempted and converted six more three-pointers than the Lakers. As previously discussed, the best teams in the league set trends in how the rest of the league plays; this surprisingly huge explosion clearly shows the importance of the three-point shot in the evolution of NBA offenses. A tremendous amount of three-point explosion across the league has come from the new generation of incredibly dominant, score-first point guards. The growing focus on offense only serves to accentuate the importance of having an elite player at this position in the modern era. Players like Stephen Curry, Kyrie Irving and James Harden have turned the traditional point guard role on its head (Levasseur). In the 1990s, point guards were not typically the primary scorers; their main responsibility was to keep the attack flowing and get the ball to the more capable wingers or giant forwards and centre-forwards in the box. John Stockton and PennyHardaway are two of the best examples of this type of guard; neither was their respective teams' first choice to score, but they perfectly exemplified the role of the traditional point guard. However, the 1990s also showed a change in the role of the point guard. Some began to break the mold of tradition; Isiah Thomas, Tim Hardaway Sr. and Kevin Johnson have begun to show a shift to a more scoring-oriented mentality. In some situations, change was born out of necessity; some teams simply didn't have great options beyond their guards and were forced to release them. In other cases, the guards were so dominant that they absorbed most of the touches. This was the case in Detroit, for the Pistons. The Pistons of the late 1980s and early 1990s had a number of solid scoring options, from Bill Laimbeer, to Joe Dumars, to their eccentric leader at point guard, Isiah Thomas. Thomas has redefined the position, bringing explosive scoring along with the usual passing acumen associated with the best point guards in the league. He paved the way for today's generational point guard talents. Some point guards today have become almost the entire team, almost single-handedly deciding the course of games with their play every night. No one explains it better than the perennially great Chris Paul, himself a point guard: “The most difficult position in the NBA, night after night, is the point guard. Every night you look at the scoreboard, the coach will basically say, their team is like this and this is how it goes. So this is the hardest part, and probably the most fun [sic], because this is the competition” (Aldridge). The shift in focus of this position has led to an almost polar shift in the duties of today's point guards, showing another vital part of 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 quickly ascend to stardom. Players like Karl-Anthony Towns, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kristaps Porzingis or Joel Embiid are completely redefining the role of the greats in the modern NBA. They are the first of a new generation of big men, possessing a full range of techniques, long shooting range and the athleticism and ball-handling skills on the level of some guards in today's league. Of the two frontcourt positions, the forward position has evolved the most. From being basically a secondary center (primarily concerned with rebounding and scoring in the post) in the 1990s, the power forward position in general has expanded to include a number of new duties, such as a greater share of ball handling, control of some of the internal passing and three-point shooting. David Gendelman of The Guardian recognizes the new skills 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 shoot threes - pointers, passing and dribbling, a collective set of skills that has historically been the preserve of guards only. Their recent emergence, a result of the evolution of the NBA game, has become so widespread that it is shifting the balance of power in the league might ask what necessitated this vast change in the role of frontcourt players. The answer lies in many different factors, most notably the increased pace of play and spacing on the court provided by the increasingly widespread integration of the shot. three points in offensive actions. It simply became impossible to have huge, awkward bodies sitting in the paint all game and waiting to gobble up rebounds or feeds in the post.