Luka and Embiid’s 70-Point Games Are Part of a High-Scoring NBA Trend

This is the best era for monster scoring games since the early 1960s.

Before last season, the 70-point barrier had been shattered by an NBA player in a game 11 times overall, and just four times since 1963 — by David Thompson (1978), David Robinson (1994), Kobe Bryant (2006) and Devin Booker (2017). But the total number of 70+ point games in NBA history has grown by 36% in the past 55 weeks… and by 15% in the past four days, after Joel Embiid and Luka Dončić each poured in 70+ this week.

Clearly, we are back in a golden era of mega-high scoring games. In addition to Embiid and Dončić, three other players have cracked 60 points this season (including Booker, who scored 62 on Friday as Dončić was dropping 73), bringing the total number of 60+ point games to five and counting so far in 2023-24. That’s the most 60+ point games in any season since the league saw nine of those in 1962-63:

We’ve also seen at least three 60+ point games in each of the past six seasons except for 2021-22 — the longest extended stretch of NBA history in which these kinds of games were so common. (While 1962 and ‘63 saw a combined 26 total 60+ point games, none of the surrounding seasons saw any more than a couple of games with so many points.) While Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game from 1962 may remain safe, it would surprise nobody if Kobe’s 81 from 2006 gets matched soon.

There are implications to this — least of all being a sense of numbness to some truly impressive feats. Dončić literally produced the second-highest Game Score in a game in league history, but I could see fans giving it the ho-hum treatment because Embiid’s 70-point outing had just happened. There’s also the risk that this gets perceived as a sort of “juiced-ball era” for NBA stat lines, like MLB home runs in the late 2010s.

Certainly, NBA defenses are having trouble keeping up this season. The league is currently averaging its most points per game since the 1969-70 season:

Combine this modern high-water mark for scoring with far more teams playing far more games than in the 1960s, and it makes sense that we might see more players threaten to put up ridiculous scoring numbers on any given night. It’s not quite the early ‘60s — I wrote long ago about the many reasons for so many eye-popping stat lines in that era — but it might not be too far off before long.

But at the same time, we’re also seeing the full potential of a generation of players whose ability to fill up baskets is unparalleled, relative to the previous history of the sport. Embiid is a hypermodern big man whose varied skills as a shooter and scorer make him, statistically, better at producing points than Michael Jordan. Dončić, with his deep bag of step-back jumpers, moves and counter-moves, is in that conversation too.

It’s fitting that both are headlining this explosion of massive scoring games right now, even if the league’s rule changes and prevailing style of play have also created an environment ripe for such great players to take advantage of.

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