'20 is the 12 of old': Why there's no longer a safe lead in the NBA

Victor Wenbanyama took it. His seat was behind a small table inside the Phoenix Suns' visiting media room.

On Nov. 2, the San Antonio Spurs had just given up a 27-point lead to the Suns, but Wenbanyama himself made a ferocious shot in the final four minutes for an 11-point victory.

Two nights ago, against the same Suns in Phoenix, the Spurs trailed by as many as 20 points before clinching a come-from-behind victory on Keldon Johnson's layup with 1.2 seconds left. That was San Antonio's only lead as they won 115-114.

Just five games into his NBA career, Wenbanyama was asked what he learned about the league.

“The biggest thing I learned,” the then-19-year-old phenom said after two wins against the Suns, “is that a 20-point lead means nothing.”

His words proved prescient when the Spurs returned home three days later and jumped out to a 22-point lead against the Toronto Raptors, looking for their third straight win. However, just like in Game 2 against Phoenix, the Spurs lost the lead, this time losing 123-116 in overtime.

The Spurs overcame a 20-point deficit in three games, erased a 27-point deficit, came back to win, then completely erased a 22-point deficit and lost.

It would be easy to chalk this up to San Antonio being the youngest team in the league and one of the worst teams in terms of standings, but the Spurs are the only team this season to break a 20-point lead. Do not mean. In fact, with more than a month left until games, the 2023-24 season has already recorded the second-most 20-point come-from-behind wins in a single season since the 1996-97 season, when play-by-play data began being recorded. . .

It took Wenbanyama two weeks to learn what everyone in the NBA knows: Leads are not safe.

in the finals In the regular season meeting between the Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers held at Crypto.com Arena on February 28th, the Clippers took a 21-point lead 15 seconds into the fourth quarter.

In the past, a lead like this meant a sure victory, but not this night.

LeBron James outscored the Clippers 19-16 in the final 12 minutes to lead the Lakers to a 116-112 victory. The 21-point deficit was the largest James had overcome in the fourth quarter of his 21-year career.

“To lose a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter, I don't think we've ever seen anything like that in my career since I've been a coach,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue told reporters after the game. Ta. “But LeBron got hot.”

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Lakers come from behind by 21 points to beat Clippers for 4th place

Despite trailing by 21 points in the fourth quarter, the Lakers fought their way to a 116-112 victory over the Clippers at Crypto.com Arena.

Whether it's one player or a team effort, there are big upsets happening almost every night.

Twenty years ago, during James' rookie season in 2003-04, the team overcame a 20-point deficit to win just 12 games. After two seasons, that number was reduced to five games.

There have already been 29 games this season in which a team won by a margin of 20 points or more, one shy of the record set last season.

There have been at least 20 20-point comebacks in six of the past seven seasons. That wasn't the case in 2020-21, when the season was shortened due to the coronavirus pandemic, but they still recorded 19 comebacks.

The frequency of 10- and 15-point reversals has also increased. In 1997-98, teams that lost by double digits had a winning percentage of .181. He rose to .250 a season ago and is hitting .233 this season. This means that nearly one out of every four games in which a team leads by double digits ends in a victory for the opposing team.

The year before James entered the league in 2002-03, teams that trailed by 15 points per game had a winning percentage of .060. This season, that mark more than doubled to .133.

“That's what you're going to find out,” Sacramento Kings guard De'Aaron Fox said. “Whenever I get up, I’m like, how do I stay awake, how do I put my foot on their neck, maybe turn a 20-point lead into 30, 30 to 40 points — and that’s it. This may be a difficult part.

“But if you want to be a really good team in this league, you’ve got to find a way to do it.”

Just last week, Fox's Kings overcame a 19-point first-quarter deficit to defeat James' Lakers and watched the Kings retreat after the Wembane Yama-less Spurs erased a 20-point lead. A dramatic victory at the last moment.

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De'Aaron Fox tied career high with 44 points against Lakers

De'Aaron Fox tied a career high with 44 points to lead the Kings to victory over the Lakers.

This game marked the 53rd time this season that a team led by 20 points but was tied or trailing in the second half. This is the second highest number in the live commentary era (after 1996-97) after 55 games in 2016-17. In 1997-98, the number was just 11.

“We better not get below 20 points,” Fox said. “But when you're down 20 points, especially when it's not the fourth quarter, first half or third quarter, how do you find a way to get three or four stops in a row, two or three baskets in a row? ”, call a timeout and turn 20 into 12 and 12 into 8? And now it's a different ballgame. ”

Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle is well aware of how different the NBA is from today's ball game. He has been in the league for almost 40 years, first as a player, then as an assistant coach, and then as a head coach for 22 of the past 23 seasons.

As one of only 12 coaches to have played in 1,750 regular season games, he has seen firsthand how the game has changed over the past 30 years.

“It's a different game,” Carlisle said. “It's become really convincing. Back in the '90s, early 2000s, you could get a 10-point lead six minutes into a game. That's potentially a lot of play calls and a lot of ball pressure. “You could have gotten into the post and held it.” “That's it. You can also play the game a little differently. You can still do these things, but your normal attacks might be ineffective. there is.”

Carlisle's Pacers are at the forefront of a new style of play in the game. The Pacers lead the league in points per game (123.1), which is the eighth-highest single-season point total in NBA history.

Teams are playing faster, the number of possessions per game has jumped from 90.1 in 1996-97 to 98.9 this season, and many of those possessions are ending in 3-point shots, leading to fluctuations in scoring. is getting faster.

In Carlisle's first season as head coach (2001-02), the Boston Celtics led the NBA with 23.7 3-point attempts per game. This season, the Lakers rank at the bottom of this category with 30.7 attempts per game.

“Just about everyone in the league right now has a Pace-like game,” Carlisle said. “So there's a lot of emphasis on playing fast and hitting high-value shots. Shots at the rim, catch-and-shoot threes. You get a 10-point lead and it's gone in four possessions. There is a possibility that it will get lost.”

When Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch coached the then-D League Rio Grande Valley Vipers, an affiliate team of the Houston Rockets, from 2009 to 2011, Finch's team lasted for two years. He led the league in 3-point attempts. In his second season, the Vipers made nearly 200 more threes than the team next door.

He said 3-point shooting and the instability of its results have a big impact on today's NBA leads.

“Regardless of point differential or point differential, you see a lot of unpredictable results where you're like, 'Oh, how did that team beat that team?' He was making threes,” Finch said during the All-Star break.

“There were times when we weren't even making 20 threes a game. It's all about that. Momentum. They came into the league as … offensive players or offensive-minded players. That's when they get hot in the league, it's a spectacle and it's really hard to stop. ”

Steve Kerr is He coached the Golden State Warriors for 10 seasons and has seen the league change in many ways, including the difficulty of holding leads.

When he started, the Warriors had won 114 straight games with a lead of 15 points or more, but that streak stopped in 2016 during a season in which the Warriors set a record with 73 wins.

Eight years later, the longest active winning streak when a team takes a 15-point lead is only 33 for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

“I think teams are a lot smarter now than they were 10 years ago in terms of understanding what's a good shot and what's not,” Kerr said. “We started getting a lot more threes early on. You’re up 12 points and the other team makes two quick stops on you, and they get down and throw it forward and make two threes. I feel like I hit it. It's a six-point game now. 20 is the old 12, 12 is the old 7. So there's definitely a sense on everyone's mind that the lead is not safe.”

Even the best team in the league is not immune to letting a big lead slip away. Last week, on March 5, the Boston Celtics, the East Division leaders with the highest point differential in league history, lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers 105-104, giving up a 22-point lead.

“We could lose any night,” Celtics guard Jaylen Brown told reporters after the game. “It can happen in the league, it can happen in the NBA, it can happen in anything.”

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Dean Wade scored 20 points in the final period, and the Cavaliers erased a 22-point deficit in the fourth quarter, ending the Celtics' winning streak at 11.

The following night, March 6, the Cavaliers faced the Atlanta Hawks in the third quarter and trailed by as many as 21 points, but although they took the lead before the end of the quarter, they stumbled late and Atlanta was down by 11 points. We won by a point difference.

But that night, two other teams in the NBA (Rockets vs. Clippers, Washington Wizards vs. Orlando Magic) blew 20-point leads, and the Philadelphia 76ers lost to the Memphis Grizzlies and lost to another game. team lost a 15 point lead. The Kings ended the night with a 19-point comeback against the Lakers.

This is the fourth time this season that four teams have come from behind to win from 15 points on the same night. It was also the fourth time since the 1997-98 season that there have been three 19-point comebacks in one day, and three of those four have occurred in the past four seasons.

When Wenbangyama spoke to reporters in Phoenix in early November, he had played in just over five games in the NBA, at which point he had been playing internationally for many years representing his native France. And what he saw with his team USA mirrored what he saw in the NBA.

“This is what you see when you play against Team USA in FIBA ​​and when you scout Team USA,” Wenbanyama said. “They go up for about 15 seconds and then go down quickly and I don’t know what happened because they ran fastbreaks like crazy and got a few stops.

“Yes, it's the same in the NBA. I think there are players over 20 years old.” [point] There's nothing like lead. ”