Recently, I became interested in the makeup of the greatest offenses in NBA history. Questions like “how far can so called “inefficient scorers” take you?” and “how did the best offenses ever distribute their scoring?” piqued my interest. Therefore, I set an arbitrary mark of +5 rORTG (5 points above the league average offensive rating) and went through all NBA seasons to find every single team (starting from 1950–51 since offensive rating doesn´t exist for prior years) that had surpassed this mark.
From my understanding, comparing to the league average isn’t perfect, but it’s better than anything else I could think of. Teams from the sixties, for example, had a hard time making it onto this list because there wasn’t a lot of separation between the few teams in the league — Oscar Robertson’s Royals posted five season above +4 and eight seasons above +3, but could never reach the magical/arbitrary +5 mark — but an abundance of teams from the nineties made it, which was presumably helped by the expansion era creating some very bad teams during that time. In total, 79 NBA teams made the final list of teams who posted a rORTG of +5 or more during the regular season and we’ll now have a look at how their scoring was distributed, how efficiently their highest volume scorers operated and what sort of conclusions could be drawn from that. For this exercise, scoring volume and efficiency are the main topic. The correlation between TS% and ORTG is close to perfect (~0.85), which is why it’ll be used as the measure of efficiency for this exercise (PPP is a more accurate measurement, but it requires possession data, which doesn’t exist for most parts of NBA history. Likewise Points per 75 would be a better measure of scoring volume, but that also requires possession data).Turnovers and playmaking are also important parts of great offenses and will be mentioned sporadically, but they won’t be the main focus.
The First Options
The average first option of these seventy-nine teams produced 25.3 points per game and a rTS% of +6.05, which already shows that the first options of great offenses tend to be highly efficient scorers. This shouldn’t be a surprise and it’s the outliers that are much more interesting. James Harden, especially, sticks out in terms of scoring volume. Seven of the seventy-nine teams had 30 PPG scorers — there’s been seventy 30 PPG seasons up to the 2018–19 season — on their roster. James Harden scored 4.4 points per game more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the Milwaukee Bucks in 1971. It seems like common sense that a great offense has to have multiple good offensive player, which makes sharing the scoring load seem like a good idea, so how can Houston produce such great offensive seasons even though Harden does a lot of the scoring? There are multiple possible reasons:
- Efficiency: The 35 PPG-mark has only been reached 11 times in NBA history. Out of all these seasons, Harden produced one of the highest scoring efficiency seasons (+5.6 rTS%) with his 2018–19 campaign. The other players to achieve this benchmark are Elgin Baylor (38.3 PPG/+1.3 rTS%), Rick Barry (35.6 PPG/+3.8 rTS%), Kobe Bryant (35.4 PPG/+2.4 rTS%), Michael Jordan (twice: 37.1 PPG and +2.4 rTS%, 35.0 PPG and +6.5 rTS%) and the late great Wilt Chamberlain (five times: 50.4 PPG and +5.7 rTS%, 44.8 PPG and + 5.7rTS%, 38.4 PPG and +5.0 rTS%, 37.6 PPG and +3.0 rTS% as well as 36.9 PPG and +5.2 rTS%). In terms of efficiency, only ’88 Jordan, ’62 and ’63 Chamberlain can compete with Harden. They weren’t part of all-time great offenses for different reasons, which will become clear soon enough.
- Supporting Cast: Often times when players get into the territory of 35 PPG or more, it’s because their teammates aren’t good and they feel the need to take a huge volume of shots in order to get the offense to at least a passable level. This wasn’t the case in Harden’s 2018–19 season. Houston’s supporting cast is special because they fit Harden’s strengths perfectly. Shooters like Eric Gordon and P.J. Tucker (and more) spaced the floor for him, Chris Paul could relieve him of some ball handling duties, and he also had great partners for the spread-pick-and-roll he likes to run. Harden covered the main scoring and creation load and his teammates brought all the other ingredients needed for a great, not only passable, offense. Jordan, for example, didn’t have these ingredients. His best scoring teammates were Charles Oakley, Sam Vincent and Dave Corzine, which makes it all the more impressive that they finished with the 9th best offense in the league.
- Scoring/Playmaking Balance: When Harden drives to the basket, he increases not only his own chance at scoring, but also that of his teammates because of his passing ability. This element of getting the maximum opportunity for the team instead of just himself might be a reason why Harden’s 36 PPG led a great offense and Wilt’s outrageous scoring seasons didn’t. During Harden’s 2019 campaign, he averaged 7.5 assists and 29.34 true shooting attempts (FGAs+ (0.44*FTAs); this isn’t consistent throughout NBA history, but it’ll do as an indicator for this exercise). Therefore, he averaged 3.912 true shooting attempts per assist which is probably even slightly below average when compared to all seasons ever with at least 20 TSA per 36 minutes (compare to the “Black Holes” graphic in Ben Taylor’s Backpicks GOAT article on Wilt Chamberlain). Chamberlain, on the other hand, averaged 46.98 TSAs and 2.4 assists during the ’62 season as well as 40.716 TSAs and 3.4 assists in the ’63 season. These ratios are huge historic outliers and can help explain why Wilt didn’t play on a great offense until he found the right balance between scoring and playmaking. To put it in simple terms, the offense of those Philadelphia Warriors team was predictable. During the 1966-67 seasons, he increased his own efficiency to +14.4 (huge outlier in the graphic above) and decreased his TSA per AST ratio to 2.43 and immediately led the Sixers (+5.4 rORTG) to the best offensive season ever to that point. That need for balance might be another reason for Harden’s success.
The other interesting outliers are those first options that weren’t incredibly efficient. To find out why they worked, I created another arbitrary mark of +2.5 rTS% and decided to look at the teams of all eleven first options that didn’t surpass this mark:
- It seems like scoring 22+ PPG with +2.5 rTS% still has a lot of value. Ray Allen, who scored 23.9 PPG with that efficiency for a Supersonics team that finished with a +6.1 rORTG in 2005, didn’t have the most amazing supporting cast. Rashard Lewis (20.5 PPG/ +4.1 rTS%) definitely provided value and the team had three other 10+ PPG scorers (who weren’t particularly efficient), but these factors can’t fully explain why the Sonics were so good offensively. Since they also “only” ranked ninth in TOV%, it seems like Allen’s scoring was very valuable. The same can be said about Carmelo Anthony (28.7 PPG / +2.5 rTS%) and his 2013 New York Knicks, who finished with a +5.2 offensive rating. Their second and third scoring options were J.R. Smith and Raymond Felton, neither of which even hit the league average in terms of efficiency. The team had some very efficient low-usage players like Tyson Chandler (67.1% TS), Steve Novak (60.2% TS), Pablo Prigioni (59.5% TS) and a fraction of Amar’e Stoudemire (63.7%), which definitely helped, but it, again, seems like the high volume scoring on +2.5 efficiency has more value than it may seem. It is also worth mentioning that the Knicks succeeded partly due to their low turnover rate, which ranked first in the league.
- For Bob Cousy, it’s easy to see why his ’54 Celtics succeeded even though his efficiency was “only” +2.2. His outstanding playmaking definitely helped his teammates and it’s no surprise that Ed Macauley (18.9 PPG/+12.1 rTS%) and Bill Sharman (16 PPG/+8.8 rTS%) were incredibly efficient. It also helps that that Cousy didn’t shoot a billion shots a game. The other leading scorer with +2.2 efficiency was Mark Aguirre on the ’87 Mavericks. Similarly to the Celtics, the Mavs distributed their scoring well: they had five double-digit scorers with above average efficiency and avoided turnovers (2nd), which seems to explain why their offense was +6.6. The ’95 and ’98 Sonics, whose leading scorer Gary Payton posted 20.6 PPG on +2.1 and 19.2 PPG on +2 efficiency respectively, also balanced their scoring very well — five 10+ PPG scorers on each team — and had very efficient second and third options in Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf and Vin Baker.
- The most interesting teams are those five whose leading scorer did not reach +2 efficiency. The 2015 Clippers posted a +6.8 offense with Blake Griffin (21.9 PPG/+1.7 rTS%) as their best scorer. According to pbpstats.com, the Clippers had a 118.4 offensive rating with Griffin on the court and 104.3 when he was not, which shows his importance to the team and how good they were with their starters. Besides Blake’s offense seemingly having a lot of value, it also helped to have one of the greatest playmakers ever in Chris Paul and very efficient play-finishers like J.J. Redick (16.4 PPG/+8.8 rTS%) and DeAndre Jordan (+10.4 rTS%) on the team. It may have also helped that Blake acted more as a play-finisher himself (67.2% assisted two-pointers) so that the ball wasn’t in his hands all the time.
- The 2012 San Antonio Spurs seem baffling at first glance. Yes, they avoided turnovers well (3rd), but they didn’t have a 20 PPG scorer, only three 10 PPG scorers and their main two scoring options, Tony Parker and Tim Duncan weren’t particularly efficient. It does become clearer when considering how those Spurs teams played. They moved the ball well, had ten players score at least 7 PPG (albeit some only played a quarter of the season) and some very efficient role players. Manu Ginobili is an outlier on the following third option chart with an efficiency of +14.1.
- The ’89 Suns are similar to the Spurs. They balanced their scoring well (five 13+ PPG scorers), avoided turnovers (third in the league) and had no inefficient players. Tom Chambers (25.7 PPG) might have “only” been +1, but their three 20 PPG scorers averaged +3.2 efficiency, which seems to have been a positive factor.
- The 2011 Denver Nuggets are a special case. Their best scorer was Carmelo Anthony (25.2 PPG / + 0.5 rTS), who got traded 50 games into the season. With Anthony on the floor, they posted an offensive rating of 113.2 when he was on the floor and 112.5 when he was not. The initial team with Anthony had six other double-digit scorers, most of which were extremely efficient. Among them were Chauncey Billups (16.5 PPG / +9.2 rTS%), Nene Hilario (14.5 / +11.5 rTS%), Aaron Afflalo (12.6 PPG / +7.8 rTS%) and Ty Lawson (11.7 PPG / +5.1 rTS%). In the Carmelo trade, the Nuggets lost Melo and Billups and replaced them with Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler and Raymond Felton, three other 10+ PPG scorers, who helped keep the offense at an elite level.
- Finally, the most inefficient scorer to ever lead one of the Top-79 offenses of all time in scoring: DeMar DeRozan, who averaged 23 PPG on league average efficiency (+0) for the 2018 Toronto Raptors. In all other seasons, the Raptors’ offenses weren’t any worse when DeRozan was on the floor, maybe indicating the replaceability of the inefficient scorer, but during the 2017–18 season, the Raptors posted an incredible offensive rating of 116 when DeRozan was on the floor and 110.7 when he wasn’t. This was definitely helped by having many other efficient scoring options: Kyle Lowry (+4.3 rTS%), Jonas Valanciunas (+7.3 rTS%) and Serge Ibaka(+1.9 rTS%) also surpassed 10 points per game. In addition to that, they avoided turning the ball over (4th). It’s hard to determine the exact value of DeRozan’s scoring, but it definitely had some value to these Raptors.
The conclusions we might be able to draw out of the case “studies” will follow at the end. Before that, let’s take a look at the second options on the greatest offenses ever, their scoring volume and efficiency as well as the outliers:
The Second Options
As you can see, most of these players fall in similar spots on the graph. The second options produced 19.8 points per game with +4.6 efficiency. The volume outliers on this graph can be explained by the way their teams was built. Kobe Bryant is represented by his 2001-season here, where him and Shaq were the one-two-punch and the third best scorer didn’t even crack 12 PPG. Durant was the second best scorer on multiple Golden State teams that had three main scorers. Jerry West was part of an extremely balanced offense with five 10+ PPG scorers, including an incredibly efficient Wilt, and Kiki Vandeweghe was the second option to Alex English on the ’83 Nuggets, who put the scoring load on three shoulders (21.6 PPG by Dan Issel) and didn’t have another player even reach double digits.
It also has to be said that this graph is slightly unfair to Chris Webber. When the Sacramento Kings posted the best rORTG off their franchise history in 2004, Webber ended the season as their second highest scorer, but only played 23 games. It’s safe to assume that his scoring did not have positive value during that season (it certainly did in other years), but the Kings compensated for that with six total double-digit scorers and a scoring leader in Peja Stojakovic who surpassed +10 efficiency on pretty high volume. You might not think of Peja as the focal point of an all-time great offense and they only surpassed +5 once, but during the 2003–04 season, the Kings posted an rORTG of +7.4, tied for ninth in NBA history.
In general, a lot of the players on this list with negative efficiency seasons had other very efficient teammates. Westbrook obviously played with Kevin Durant, Mike Gminski was the second option to Charles Barkley (25.8 PPG / +11.6 rTS%) on the ’89 Sixers and Michael Finley played with Dirk Nowitzki (25.1 PPG / +6.2 rTS%) and Steve Nash (17.7 PPG / +5.7 rTS%) on the 2003 Mavericks. We’ll return to the Nash-led offenses of the Dallas Mavericks when looking at the fifteen best offenses ever later on. Before we get to that, however, let´s also take a brief look at the third options of the best offenses ever.
The Third Options
These third options produced 16.3 points per game on +4.7 efficiency on average. An average Top-79 offense therefore has three scorers between ~15 PPG and 26 PPG, all of which have at least +4 efficiency. This time, the players are a bit more scattered around on the graph because the production of third option is even more dependent on how the team is structured. Still, you can see that almost none of these players can truly be classified as “inefficient” and also that there (basically) isn’t a single Top-79 offense that didn’t at least have three 10+ PPG scorers. You can argue that the 2001 Los Angeles Lakers are an exception because their third-best scorer Derek Fisher only played 20 games, but their fourth-best scorer Rick Fox also averaged 9.6 points per game and teams didn’t score that much anyways since the pace was very slow.
The Fifteen Best Offenses Ever
The main takeaway from this graphic should be how good Steve Nash was. The Canadian Point Guard was the main ball handler of six of the fifteen best offenses ever. This could probably work if you had other all-time great playmakers like Chris Paul or Magic Johnson, but it’s interesting (even though not surprising) to see that you can create amazing offenses when surrounding a great playmaker with efficient play-finishers like Shawn Marion, Dirk Nowitzki and Amar’e Stoudemire.
Conclusions:
- If your main scoring option isn’t incredibly efficient (< +3 rTS%), there’s still ways to create all-time great offenses around that player. The teams that managed to do it usually shared the scoring load between multiple players, had some very efficient role players, avoided turning the ball over and didn’t let their main scoring option taken an unreasonable amount of shots (maximum: 25.7 PPG among players with less than +2.5 efficiency).
- The seventy-nine best offenses average an estimated (estimated because of injuries, trades and my math skills) 4.76 double-digit scorers per team. Only nine of these teams managed to produce such a great offensive season while only having three players score in double digits. Some teams had as many as seven players who scored 10 or more points per game. Looking at the amount of double-digit scorers is absolutely not a perfect measure of how much the scoring is shared around, but it indicates that offensive balance is a way to success. The fact that the first option, on average, only scores nine more points than the third option supports that thesis.
- Great offenses are obviously built around efficient players since efficiency just means maximizing the output per shot attempt which is precisely what makes these offenses great. The averages of 25.3 PPG with +6.05 efficiency for first options, 19.8 PPG with +4.6 efficiency for second options and 16.3 PPG with +4.73 efficiency for third options give an indication how a successful offense might be built.
- Having Steve Nash on your team is a very good starting point to creating an all-time great offense ;)
