The NBA is playing faster but scoring less

The NBA has pushed the pace even higher, but for now, offensive production doesn’t seem to be keeping up. Teams are running more, playing more possessions and still scoring plenty of points. Yet beyond the raw scoring totals, the start of this season reveals a clear decline in offensive efficiency.

At first glance, the numbers don’t look all that different from last season. Teams are averaging 114.6 points per game, just one fewer than in 2025/26. But examining production on individual possessions reveals a very different picture.

The NBA speeds up, but offenses sputter

The most significant number is Offensive Rating (ORTG), which measures how many points a team scores per 100 possessions, allowing offensive efficiency to be compared regardless of pace.

Compared with last season, the league average has fallen from 115.7 to 112.2 points, a drop of 3.5 points per 100 possessions.

Essentially, teams are playing faster but making less of their opportunities.

And it’s more than just an impression. Through the first 86 NBA games, a team has failed to reach 100 points on 9 occasions. Through the same number of games last season, that happened just twice.

Looking more broadly, there have already been 28 team performances below 110 points, another sign of the offensive struggles defining these opening weeks.

Shooting percentages fall and turnovers rise

Shooting percentages make the situation even clearer, dropping by approximately two percentage points both from the field and from three.

The result is a True Shooting Percentage of 52.9%, a measure of overall shooting efficiency that accounts for two-pointers, three-pointers and free throws.

There’s more: teams are averaging 16.8 turnovers per game, contributing to more fragmented, less fluid play.

Fouls and trips to the line have also increased, with an average of 26.5 free throw attempts per game.

And that’s where the paradox of this early season emerges.

More possessions and free throws mask the problem

The NBA’s pace has increased by 2.2 possessions per game compared with last year. That means more opportunities to score, even when teams aren’t shooting particularly well.

Add the increase in free throws, and it becomes easier to understand why scoring averages have remained relatively stable despite the decline in efficiency.

Teams are scoring almost as much as before, but they need more possessions to do it.

Of course, it’s still early in the regular season, and many teams need to find their rhythm, chemistry and offensive timing. Shooting percentages could improve as the weeks go by.

But there’s another interesting factor: these early numbers appear to continue the trend seen in the most recent playoffs, when defenses made a greater impact than they had during the regular season.

For years, we’ve grown accustomed to an increasingly fast and efficient NBA, with offenses capable of finding answers and scoring consistently.

Now the pace keeps rising, but shooting accuracy seems to have taken a break.

It remains to be seen whether teams simply need time to settle in or whether this NBA, at least for a while, will have to get used to running more without necessarily scoring more efficiently.