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I was just checking out stats on Basketball reference, and found something fairly interesting about that 2005-06 season. Not sure if many of you had realized, but Kobe was not the only player to have his best scoring season that year. In fact, perahps there was something more going on here than Kobe simply showing how talented he could be relative to everyone else- perhaps there was something in the 'water-ed' that year.

All these players appearing on the top 20 scoring list coincidentally also had fairly remarkable scoring years:

Allen Iverson 33 ppg .543 *TS - his best save for season in DEN @ 22ppg

Lebron James 31 (his 3rd season) + .015 jump in TS

Gilbert Arenas 29.3 (4 pt jump) .581 - also his best

Paul Pierce 26.8 .582 - by far his most impressive scoring season & +5.2ppg over previous year (which was the only season prior that he posted a higher TS)

Michael Redd 25.4 - his first year over 25ppg in 6 seasons

Jason Richardson 23.2 .446 - his second highest %, trailing only a 16.8ppg in TO, and by far his highest scoring average

Shawn Marion 21.8 .591(his 2nd highest %)- His only other 21ppg+ season came at a .538 TS

Elton Brand 24.7 .581 -Far and away his highest ppg, and also his 2nd highest TS

Ray Allen 25.1 .590 - His first season (of only 2) over 25ppg surprisingly comes in his 10th year. The only seasons he's shot better he scored no higher than 22ppg

Mike James 20.1 (19.7/36min) his only season over 11.8 ppg. His next highest % is .441 @16.9/36

Dirk Nowitzki 26.6 .589 -Only seasons previous where he eclipsed that TS were when he averaged 21.8 and 23.4

Mike Bibby 21.1 .554 -His only season over 20ppg, and simultaneously he shoots his 3rd highest %. The times he eclipsed it he scored 15.9, 18.4.

A lot of players had huge jumps that year, that was the year after they started implementing the hand check rules and the refs gave the scorers every call.

^ Somethings not letting me scroll beyond that last line. But what I wanted to finish with was somethign like- 'don't know if you guys believe in coincidence, or if like me, you are more cynical and see something beyond the apparent 'uh, they all musta just gotten better over the same season' argument.'

I always felt something was kinda fishy about that year for Kobe. We all knew the league was watered down, but I still relegated myself to believe 'hey, maybe this guy really just is that good a scorer..?' BUT DAMNIT, I knew it just wasn't ~quite~ true. Don't get me wrong, hell of a scorer, and a hell of a player, but in no way did I believe that during that season (with the 81 pts, multiple 40pt stretches, 62 vs Dallas in 3qt..) that it was 110% all-time legit. There was something that just wasn't plausible. -- Maybe this scoring list shows a little into that argument for 'Water-ed gate', or maybe I'm wrong (there's a first for everything) and i'm simply reading something that isn't there..

Here's the link to that season's scoring list
http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... aders.html

The odd thing is that it was a pretty unremarkable year for offense overall...here are the average offensive ratings (pace in parenthesis) for the last seven years:

'08/'09: 108.3 (91.7)
'07/'08: 107.5 (92.4)
'06/'07: 106.5 (91.9)
'05/'06: 106.2 (90.5)
'04/'05: 106.1 (90.9)
'03/'04: 102.9 (90.1)
'02/'03: 103.6 (91.0)

Really, no difference between that year and the ones immediately before and after, and it was the slowest-paced of the three years.

That's pretty interesting. That indeed was a crazy year for scoring, if Arenas was able to crack the 30ppg barrier, that would have meant 4 players that year were scoring over 30ppg, that's frikkin crazy.

The slow pace is probably a good start to something like that. When you slow the pace down, star players tend to get command of the ball and iso a lot. Also, I would think one guy being that relied on would be to a detriment to the teammates rhythm overall in the league.

Either way, doesn't detract from what any of these guys did, and it could be coincidence.

And they actually started implementing the handcheck laws after the 03-04 finals.

Kevin Durant will destroy those numbers in 2010 so this thread is useless.

NO-KG-AI wrote:The slow pace is probably a good start to something like that. When you slow the pace down, star players tend to get command of the ball and iso a lot. Also, I would think one guy being that relied on would be to a detriment to the teammates rhythm overall in the league.

Either way, doesn't detract from what any of these guys did, and it could be coincidence.

And they actually started implementing the handcheck laws after the 03-04 finals.

Hence the big jump....

'04/'05: 106.1 (90.9)
'03/'04: 102.9 (90.1)

Most of those guys were in their primes, that's why it was their best scoring season. League scoring wasn't any higher. And the other guys on your list had certain reasons to score more. Lebron really didn't have much offensive help in 06'. Arenas was actually healthy that year.

On crappy teams, took more shots. nothing more to it.

There were a series of articles on it at the time.

http://hoopshype.com/articles/defense_lazenby.htm

"Winter acknowledges the outgrowth of the new rules interpretation is the rise of the super dominant offensive player, led by Wade’s performance in the NBA Finals and Bryant’s string of 40-, 50, even 60-point games during the regular season.

“It’s brought all these 40-point scorers,” Winter said. “They can’t score 40 points unless they get 15-20 free throws.”

And that’s exactly what they were getting on their big nights.

“They should be protected, but not that much,” Winter said of the current generation of talented offensive players. “I don’t think that just touching a player should be a foul.”

In a recent interview, Thorn said that the NBA had changed the rule to give an advantage to the offensive player.

“It’s more difficult now to guard the quick wing player who can handle the ball,” Thorn said of the change. “I think it helps skilled players over someone who just has strength or toughness. What the NBA is trying to do is promote unimpeded movement for dribblers or cutters.”




It was by far, the easiest year to score as a wing player.

WadeKnicks2010 wrote:A lot of players had huge jumps that year, that was the year after they started implementing the hand check rules and the refs gave the scorers every call.

Wrong. They implemented the new rules after the 03-04 season. The year this topic is about is 05-06 which is a full season later than when they implemented the rules.

You are correct that they gave a lot of calls the first year the rule was implemented, but the refs were not that kind to Kobe during the 35.4 ppg season which the chart under shows. I calculated how many FTAs he had in relation to FGAs and also included 82.games.com's Draw F % stat (they only keep stats back to 02-03). If you compare the 05-06 season to other years, Kobe didn't get any breaks from the officials that year. His draw rates suggest the contrary was the case that year.

tkb wrote:

WadeKnicks2010 wrote:A lot of players had huge jumps that year, that was the year after they started implementing the hand check rules and the refs gave the scorers every call.

Wrong. They implemented the new rules after the 03-04 season. The year this topic is about is 05-06 which is a full season later than when they implemented the rules]

October '06

"New Jersey Nets executive Rod Thorn, a longtime expert on NBA rules, acknowledges that last season the league adopted a dramatic shift in how it interpreted the rules of the game"

Rules change occasionally but rule interpretations change much more often.

Kobe also set career highs in FTA and FTA per 36 minutes.

Career high in FTs is not unreasonable considering he also set career highs in field goal attempts. He was more featured as a scorer than ever before. Of course he's going to get more free throws total.

And btw, an increase in FTA per 36 of 0.1 from the last season (which was his best season at that point) is insignificant and especially if you look at it in relation to him increasing his FGA per 36 from that season by 6.2 per game.

Looking at how many calls he got in relations to how many shots he took, he had a bad year with FTs that year.

Kobe scoring more that year has everything to do with taking more shots, and nothing to do with getting more calls per situation than before. The numbers I provided clearly backs that up.

And when it comes to when those rules were implemented, let's use NBA.com's official list of rules changes which can be found here:

http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html

The new hand check rules were implemented prior to the 2004-05 season. No rule chances were done for the 2005-06 season.

Yeah, really, if you want to look at the calls he was getting, the jump was from 03-04 to 04-05, when the rules were first implemented. He ripped off three straight 10+ FTA/g seasons without ever having reaching 9 FTA/g before, despite twice having taken more shots.

In 05-06, it wasn't such a big deal because he was taking over 27 shots per game.

tsherkin wrote:Yeah, really, if you want to look at the calls he was getting, the jump was from 03-04 to 04-05, when the rules were first implemented. He ripped off three straight 10+ FTA/g seasons without ever having reaching 9 FTA/g before, despite twice having taken more shots.

In 05-06, it wasn't such a big deal because he was taking over 27 shots per game.

Not having Shaq in the paint was the reason for the FT increase. Kobe was simply in the paint more.

With Kobe, one word...usage.

The 2006 Lakers without Kobe were, to put it charitably, medicore to poor in every way. Poor scorers...outside of Kobe, nobody on the team averaged more than 15.1 points per 36. That's horrific. Mediocre on D...Kwame and Mihm took up space and blocked some shots, but weren't good on rotations. Odom was pretty good; this was one of his better years on that end. Not much after that. Mediocre passing...Odom, again had a good year even for him, and he's a very good passer for a big man. Walton and Vujacic were okay. And that is, literally, it. So it comes down to this...who's gonna do everything?

That would be Kobe. Kobe has a career usage rate of over 31. He's been over 30 in every year but one since 2001...but has never had a usage rate over 34. Except in 2006...he was at 38.7. LeBron and Wade--who aren't exactly shy about touches--were 14-20% lower that year. It's the highest usage rate of the decade. In short, Kobe scored more because he got more touches than he ever had, and nobody else on the team was a good (or, really, average) scorer.

An Unbiased Fan wrote:

tsherkin wrote:Yeah, really, if you want to look at the calls he was getting, the jump was from 03-04 to 04-05, when the rules were first implemented. He ripped off three straight 10+ FTA/g seasons without ever having reaching 9 FTA/g before, despite twice having taken more shots.

In 05-06, it wasn't such a big deal because he was taking over 27 shots per game.

Not having Shaq in the paint was the reason for the FT increase. Kobe was simply in the paint more.

Getting to the rim wasn't really Kobe's game. He took 80% of his shots from the perimeter in his 35ppg year. He actually took a lot more shots (percentage-wise) in the paint when Shaq was there, which makes so little sense since the rules gave slashers a huge advantage...yet he started taking more jumpers instead of driving more to the rim.

Kobe's 35,5,4 really doesnt look that remarkable next to Lebrons 31/7/7 and even AI's 33/8.

BallersTalk wrote:

An Unbiased Fan wrote:

tsherkin wrote:Yeah, really, if you want to look at the calls he was getting, the jump was from 03-04 to 04-05, when the rules were first implemented. He ripped off three straight 10+ FTA/g seasons without ever having reaching 9 FTA/g before, despite twice having taken more shots.

In 05-06, it wasn't such a big deal because he was taking over 27 shots per game.

Not having Shaq in the paint was the reason for the FT increase. Kobe was simply in the paint more.

Getting to the rim wasn't really Kobe's game. He took 80% of his shots from the perimeter in his 35ppg year. He actually took a lot more shots (percentage-wise) in the paint when Shaq was there, which makes so little sense since the rules gave slashers a huge advantage...yet he started taking more jumpers instead of driving more to the rim.

probably bc he isn't as good as Lebron's or Wade's slashing ability