Why “no one plays defense in the NBA”

What has happened to NBA defense in the last decade? Why are there so many high scoring players and games? This special deep dive, featuring Shane Battier, Stan Van Gundy and more looks at the evolution of tactics in the arms race between offenses and defenses over the last generation of basketball.

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stop me if you’ve heard this one before no one plays defense in the NBA anymore that’s what I’m told like every day i hear this talked about all the time we certainly get plenty of comments on it on all our videos thanks for that uh and and take this uh Instagram video by Caleb Nash Feamster i think this is a common perception of how defense has evolved over the years by the way it wasn’t that physical in the ‘9s or that much fighting in the ’90s that was more like 70s and 80s fights of that level but notice the 2020s when we get to the 2020s there’s a red carpet to the rim he has the big in the corner doing some kind of plyometric dance and uh there’s a ref in the bit to include the phantom foul and so I think there’s this idea that no one plays defense anymore that they used to play defense in older eras and the story is not only way more complicated but we may actually be seeing the very best defense ever played right now guys don’t know how to play post defense when have somebody pressure Nicole Joic bringing the ball up the floor you let him dribble the ball up the floor willingly throw the ball to the wing of course they going to be good you let him do what he want to do okay so where does this perception come from i mean the obvious place to start is that scoring is up so when more points go on the scoreboard I get it it looks like defenses are absolutely losing this battle a 135 125 game is obviously not a good look for a defense and then we have stuff like 20 point per game scores which was sort of like a a cultural artifact it was really important like could you be a 20 point per game score they used to be rare and now they’re everywhere in 2023 we had a record 43 20 point per game scores uh why why is this happening why are there so many 20 point per game scores well one reason that’s influencing and inflating all of these scoring numbers is pace meaning there are more possessions in the game so if you have 90 possessions you have 90 chances to score if you have 110 possessions you have 110 chances to score this is why in the 1960s scoring numbers were so insane it was like 140 to 130 every night but unlike the 1960s today efficiency is also at an all-time high and efficiency has been on this steady rise for the last decade as part of the pace and space era and the real thing to know here the most mind-blowing thing to know here is that in 1987 Magic Johnson’s Lakers set the all-time mark for efficiency at about 115 points per 100 possessions and that 115 mark was the gold standard for like three straight decades and all of a sudden in the last few years the league average has started to improve 108 110 111 to the point where the league average almost overnight is now as efficient as Magic Johnson’s 1987 Showtime Lakers the that Showtime team that was the gold standard for over 30 years that’s crazy that’s how much has changed right um how how could this possibly be happening now one of the first things that people point to one of the first reasons for this massive change besides some of the stuff we’re going to talk about on offense is the officiating it’s the way the game is played you remember that Instagram video where the ref was there for the soft phantom foul so the big question to start with is has too much physicality been taken out of the game are are defenders um allowed to really play defense anymore i asked twotime all league defender Shane Badier this very question is it true that no one plays defense in today’s NBA i don’t know if they’re allowed to i don’t know if they’re allowed to play defense in today’s NBA we have a 30inute video on this channel alone on the evolution of NBA rules and how they almost always make it easier for the offense to score the poor defenders get left behind you know I used to be able to really get up in guys and so on the catch I can make their catches really difficult and and in my opinion like that is where we we’ve sort of lost something as a league take uh the gather step for example right that used to not be a thing in the old days your two steps started as you finished your last dribble so as the ball came out of your hand your first step count started and you only got two of those steps today you can take an unlimited amount of steps before you gather it and then you get two full long jumping steps in any direction so uh Liberty with things like the traveling rules or moving screens is another one are a huge advantage for the offense that makes it easier for them to score that that didn’t exist in the old days you need to get the official get the officials to call it by the rule book okay stop the traveling stop the carrying the ball stop the moving screens call the damn game according to the rule book because players will adjust it’s such an advantage to let a guy carry the basketball or take an extra step that’s ridiculous call the game according to the rule i charted a game a few years ago 59 moving screens weren’t called 59 59 59 in seriousness this is something that came up immediately with Badier the second we started reviewing film of today’s game how would you approach defending these two guys you know in the old days you would just open and and and gap it and live with that shot but these guys hit that shot at at a really really good clip look when Joic is move this is a moving screen this is it’s impossible it’s a moving screen so first of all when guys that big are able to move there’s no answer no answer so um there’s nothing I can devise uh I don’t I don’t think there’s a good answer for that some people say “Okay we could call a moving screen on every possession.” And that’s probably not true but the point is there are a ton of liberties in the rules today that didn’t exist in the old days that help the offense and the screens in particular are not a small issue because of how much offenses have evolved over the years to take advantage of all those screens okay so is it really bad defense if the rules and the interpretation and the officiating makes it easier for the offense to score which creates the illusion that it’s bad defense but there is an offensive component to this as well because offenses have been evolving basically since James Naymith invented basketball i mean think about all the evolutionary advances that are at the soul of this game the the euro step the um crossover dribble the spaced out offenses i mean heck even the jump shot itself you remember that old thing we used to have set shots that was a huge evolutionary jump in the game and check this out it had major naysayers just like everything else even way back in 1956 here’s 13-year pro chick riser on the evolution of the jump shot here we go it used to be beautiful to watch the jump shot has made basketball less interesting both for spectators and players it’s a breakneck contest now you grab it run and shoot and playing defense which was once an art is all but forgotten change a few words in there and that rant applies to different eras the individualism of the 1980s or isolation basketball in the ‘9s or 2000s or or wait for it jumpshooting again in the 2010s but I don’t think the NBA all of a sudden is going to have a bunch of three-point shooters and play a bunch of small lineups and every time someone laments all these changes in the sport it comes back to what Chick said at the end there that no one plays defense do I do I sound like an old man when I say that so if you take the perspective that defense gets worse every time offense advances then defense has been getting worse for like the whole history of the sport i mean using our best estimates teams scored about 92 points per possession in 1965 98 in 1975 108 in 1985 then they apparently remembered how to play defense again in the late ‘9s and early 2000s then they forgot until they basically stopped trying over the last few years when we hit that 115 offensive rating mark obviously the other option here is that the offenses are evolving faster than the defenses can keep up with through the 90s and into the early 2000s for sure and and maybe even longer um the defense was ahead of the offense and part of that was that people were not focused on putting a lot of shooting on the floor part of it was the pace of the game part of it was the rules and the way they were enforced i mean the game was a lot more physical the handchecking was part of it um and so the defense was way ahead of the offense rapid advancements in offense make a ton of sense to me because we have more technology than ever we have more coaches than ever there are two rows of coaches and maybe most importantly we can build off the strategies of the past right we can go back and look at a team like the 2004 Pistons who may have been the best defense ever i mean statistically they’re certainly in the conversation and that Pistons team figured out hey if we pack the paint and put a bunch of length in the lane we can clog up the uh high value area for other teams and make them take long twos and offenses looked at that and kind of realized the counter here is not to take long twos it’s to take more threes that opens the spacing on the court and makes it harder for them to guard but the only way to get to a place where your team can play that way is to prioritize skill it’s to play more skilled players that can shoot and pass and handle and attack and use all that space and it’s to develop more skilled players who can play that style that takes away that defensive advantage yeah look I mean I I think you know you hit it on the head i mean the thing that’s changed is the number of skilled players out there look the the skill level is all-time high okay so I will I always say that like the the athleticism the skill of these players now way better even like when I played you know 10 years ago just everybody can handle everybody can shoot um and just the offensive nuance like unbelievable so for a really long time everyone played the same way because the two-point shot was king there was no ability to manipulate the space or change the floor like this and then we had this Cambrian explosion basically in the mid 2000s which culminated into the pace and space era with the uh Steve Kerr Warriors and Steph Curry and all that motion and shooting but those Mike Danton principles of space the floor out play fast shoot threes and put your most skilled players on the court uh really started to change and escalate this arms race between the offense and the defense the more more point guards you have on the team the better your team’s going to be whether it’s a point center you know there’s a lot of guys that are point guards anytime you have the ball in your hand you’re the point guard and so if that ball moves around you have your half you’re not shooting it if you’re going to make a play you’re the point guard and so all if you have five guys that can do that I mean just think how good your team and that’s why Golden State’s so good they have a lot of guys can make plays we’ve called all these changes pace and space but it’s really skill ball it’s a transformation from this grinding posttoriented game near the basket to this spaced out pick and roll dominated game starting possessions way out near half court and as a result defenses have had to change literally how they defend these possessions because the old ways just wouldn’t work the rules and the way the game’s officiated and the skill of the players has made it very very hard to defend one-on-one i mean to just go out there and as you say slap the floor now I’m going to D you up and keep you out of the paint well that’s not going to happen very easily remember defenders could be more physical on the outside in prior eras and they had to be super stationary when they set those screens so that combination has made it much harder to guard today’s actions than some simple postup or isolation game 100% and it’s way hard it’s way more difficult you know when these guys they have the ball in their hands and it’s off the bounce you just can’t really pressure them too far from the from the the basket they’re going to blow by you or they’re going to draw a foul um and so it there was it was a much more off the catch game when I when I played obviously and it’s way more off the bounce now i mean everybody plays off the bounce uh and so trying to evolve as a defender and figure out how to how to how to best uh mitigate these guys mitigates the perfect word there because defenses have just been scrambling for a while to try to figure out how to stop these innovations listen to Shane describe what was hardest for him to defend back when he played um if a team was was really attack oriented you know so I’m thinking like you know old school Phoenix Suns where every like every cut was live every pick and roll was live you know they’re looking to score they’re looking to get a shot instead of running just kind of false action that puts a different pressure on the defense that right there that is how most offenses are playing today there are these quick aggressive attacks looking for a shot right away with four or even five skilled ball handlers and shooters all on the court at the same time like that’s what made Phoenix back in the day with Nash and Barbosa and and Amari so tough to guard everything is live um but it’s it’s so much more difficult you know when when every cut’s live like that’s that’s like the thing I fear the most as a defender this concept of every cut being live came up when reviewing film with Cavs associate head coach Johnny Bryant this year and I asked him about their record setting offense and whether all their cuts are live like this yeah everything’s live because if you started back right when the ball goes to JA here stop jay automatically goes to the backside right but he can also play that front side action with Tai and and George so again the fiveman bigs they’re the decision makers right so he has the individual freedom to play either strong side or weak side we have different actions and different principles we look for on the weak side just to occupy the defense just like you see here so it’s not just that every cut is live it’s that every shooter is live on the outside too the big men are now acting like point guards and the speed of the game is just way harder to deal with than this slogging battle for post position in the 80s and ‘9s this is what we’ve seen from the 2025 Pacers in their incredible playoff run because they play this style of controlled chaos basketball where everyone’s moving at really high speeds but they’re all on the same page you know we we give our players the concepts to make the reads to be the basketball players that they are right you know when you start playing in patterns it’s easy to scout if it’s not scripted then it’s a little difficult for the defense to know what’s coming so yeah the officiating has helped offenses to some degree but they’ve also figured out how to basically stress defenses to the breaking point as Mike Praa said in his great book about the revolution the size of the court that the defense has had to cover has basically doubled overnight so I don’t think a lack of defense is really what we should be talking about at all i think what we should be talking about is what defenses can do to slow down these unbelievable offenses [Music] think about what these poor defenses have gone through in the last decade or so the league has made it harder for them to defend coaches have learned from the past players are more skilled than ever they figured out you just set dozens and dozens of screens on and off the ball to punish the advantage that that can create and then they get criticized for not playing any defense u to help stop the bleeding one of the first things they came up with was switching everything because the switch nullifies the power of the screening action take what the Warriors did it nullified great offensive players in the pick and roll like James Harden and LeBron James the Celtics used it to slow down Luca Donuch in the 2024 finals but the problem with that is it becomes difficult for the defense to dictate its matchup it allows offenses to dictate the matchup which then expose slower players out in space and it asks players to remember way more tendencies for all the possible matchups they might have to guard on a switch for players the knowledge of personnel is so much more now because like I said we used to do our personnel stuff okay the wings and the guards and the bigs and you know you you’d have four or five guys you’d have to know if you’re an individual player you know now with all the switching you you better know what’s going on on everybody when older players criticize players today for playing differently it’s because the players and defenses today have to play differently to deal with these offenses so defenders can’t just queue in on a single player and remember a specific tendency don’t let him catch the ball man deny him if he give it up deny him as far as you possibly can and if you do score guess what I do patch on your ass say you good shot and I’m going to try harder the next time and I’m going to figure out okay he did this move no he ain’t going to score he He not going to use that move again nope right never again you won’t use that one again i mean that sounds really good um and Kenyon don’t get mad at me but have you tried chasing Steph Curry 30 feet away from the hoop it’s It’s not possible it’s you can’t defend him like that and furthermore there are players and teams as we’ve seen in these playoffs trying to deny the catch trying to move their pickup point more into the back court to take away the space that these players can create to get the ball in fact this season we’ve seen the average pickup point in the NBA move farther and farther into the back court defenses have busted out a ton of other innovations in the last few years we’ve seen shot blocking centers match up with wings and a wing on a shot blocking center to help nullify more of that pick and roll action the first prominent example of this was Andrew Bogot guarding Tony Allen and that baked in another tactic which was just to ignore non-shooters and roam off them to try to gain back some of the advantage that the defense could if if you’re not going to be able to shoot or another thing you’ll see is teams will pre-switch the pick and roll before the screen is set to prevent that weaker defender from being hunted out into the action and all of this has really been lost in the conversation about what’s happening with defenses these days because here’s the thing you can’t play the way you used to play or you would get destroyed i mean that’s not conjecture we know that because the teams that tried it got destroyed and that’s why they evolved and stopped playing that way twin Towers and slower players went away roy Hibbert and the archetype of you know the stationary shot blocking big man under the basket mostly went away and this is because you cannot use these defensive tactics and survive remember what Badier said about going under the screen against Jamal Murray you know in the old days you would just open and and and gap it and live with that shot but these guys hit that shot at a really really good clip yeah yeah yeah there’s no good answer there in the old days you could do that but the defenses today are getting smoked by going under these screens against all that incredible pull-up shooting so that tactic really isn’t viable anymore and I don’t know what the 2004 Pistons defensive rating would be exactly if they played today but I do know it would be way worse because all of today’s offenses are designed to destroy the tactics that they used they are on the move and it’s much much harder for your defense and in terms of rotations and things like that and that’s another reason Ben I think that all the movement and it’s sort of counterintuitive but some sort of zone or combination defense actually may make it easier to cover the three-point line than chasing those guys around um and we’re going to have to come up defensively with a way to play those guys the so-called peel switch is another tactic that’s becoming more popular where a help defender switches after a breakdown and the original defender takes his man and my favorite one of these is probably the triple switch where this whole thing happens in a coordinated dance these are the hybrid concepts that Stan was alluding to we just saw the Lakers play something that looked like a zone but it wasn’t because good man defense has zone principles and similarly we saw the Nuggets play a matchup zone that tripped up the Thunder by flowing and bending with man principles an active zone should look exactly like active manto man you know in all reality and the only difference is you’re you’re playing areas but like you know this is a good active zone like if you didn’t know it you thought you thought it’d be manto man zone or man what’s happening here is that they start in zone and it’s their call to switch to man yeah i I I love that and that’s something I always thought I wish my teams could do it takes a very high level of either practice or concentration you know now especially against man a man defense it’s it’s brilliant it’s brilliant and it’s done its job so defenses are innovating a ton and the defense that’s on the cutting edge of all these tactics is the 2025 Thunder they start at zone and switch to man in the middle of a possession and they may be the fastest defense in the history of the entire league which might provide a blueprint to use speed not only to contain the ball at the point of attack but to fly around and recover behind the play in all of these sorts of hybrid zone like principles i think we need to catch up as coaches defensively in terms of zones and combination defenses and things like that now you have over the years seen things change like I have never I never when I came in the league saw anybody do what we would call a scram switch you know where you know we switch the pick and roll but now the next biggest guy comes over and we scram the guard out of there been around for a long time now and everybody’s got it but that was something new all of these cutting edge techniques have the Thunder at least statistically in rarified air holding opponents seven points below league average in the regular season and then in the playoffs they’ve held opponents 12 points below their regular season efficiency and at least with OKC’s talent that’s been an incredible recipe for bringing these futuristic offenses back down to earth one final point to note we have seen more physicality allowed in these playoffs and it’s limited offensive efficiency just a little bit which I think goes back to Rick Barry’s point about the other components of the rules it’s such an advantage to let a guy carry the basketball or take an extra step that’s ridiculous so we’ve upped the physicality in the 2025 playoffs but all those other rules haven’t been rolled back to where they were in prior eras and on top of that of course the offenses are still just brilliant so the overall amount of change in the offensive efficiency has been relatively small by comparison the biggest change that we’ve seen has to do with rim field goal attempts where we’re at an all-time low in the playoffs in the last 30 years since we’ve tracked this data and so I think it’s pretty clear that physicality alone hasn’t caused the massive shift we’ve seen in offensive rating and on top of that even rolling back some of those other rules probably isn’t going to get us back to where we were because the offenses have been so brilliant instead I think it’ll take more of these thunderlike defensive tactics to counteract today’s spaced out game the the concentration on three-point shooting um it changes defensive spacing a lot and it and it distorts the defense way more and you have to be I would say a lot smarter and more anticipatory uh to be a good position defender with this increased space so to me defenses aren’t worse than ever they’re actually better than ever it’s just that for the last decade offenses have been like Usain Bolt just leaving everybody behind as they go down the track and so defenses look like they’re losing badly because of how good the offenses are and maybe just maybe they’re finally about to catch up [Music]