When the smoke cleared, Jimmy Butler had scored 52 points, 17 of them in the game’s final four minutes. On Monday night, the now-unquestionable leader of the Chicago Bulls had the biggest game of his NBA career, practically willing his team to a 118-113 win over the Charlotte Hornets. It was a remarkable individual performance, yet it might not have been the most impressive game a player has had this NBA season, or even in the last week.



On Friday, the Boston Celtics’ Isaiah Thomas scored 52 points in a 117-114 win over the Miami Heat. Like Butler, Thomas was even deadlier come crunch time, scoring a ridiculous 29 points in the game’s final quarter. Unfortunately for Thomas, his performance was almost immediately eclipsed by the Houston Rockets’ James Harden who put up a line for the ages in Saturday’s 129-122 win over the New York Knicks: 53 points, 16 rebounds, 17 assists. “He didn’t even let me get 24 hours of shine,” Thomas noted, in half-joking awe.



If it feels like there’s some inflation going on in the NBA right now, you might not be wrong. On Monday, Butler became the eighth different player to score at least 50 in a game this season, equalling a NBA record. Heading into Friday, the New Orleans Pelicans’ Anthony Davis, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook, the Washington Wizards’ John Wall, the Sacramento Kings’ DeMarcus Cousins and the Golden State Warriors’ Klay Thompson all had 50+ point games. With the season not even halfway over, it’s almost certain that this record will be broken soon.

Why are 50+ point games becoming not just common, but practically everyday occurrences? It starts with the players. There’s an argument the talent level in the league has never been greater. Nearly every team has at least one player capable of torching the opponent’s defense on any given night. If you wanted to argue that the level of competition in the NBA has never been higher, you could point to the individual performances over the last few days as evidence.

You wouldn’t, however, be telling the whole story. Yes, the current crop of NBA players could be, as a whole, better athletes than those from previous generations, but it’s certainly true they’re playing in an era that encourages high scoring. For one, the game is played at a much higher pace than it was in the past, and more attempts mean more made attempts. Then there’s the Steph Curry effect, where players and teams have followed the Warriors’ lead by exploiting the three-point line to an unprecedented degree.

A major reason long distance shooting has become so big in the modern NBA is that changes in how the game is called have made the game far less physical. This is particularly notable on the defensive end. Sports Illustrated’s Jeremy Wood points out that this year “no team has a defensive rating below 100 points per 100 possessions, which means every team in the league scores a point for every other trip down the court.” It becomes more difficult to stop opposing players from scoring when your efforts are more likely to result in free throws, something which new-school players like Harden have learned to exploit.



In other words, there’s a certain amount of inflation at work here. 2015-16 was the highest scoring season in league history and this year could very well eclipse it. Not that everyone is happy with the current state of the league. Player-turned-analysis Charles Barkley made news last week by bemoaning the current state of the league by claiming the NBA is “the worst it’s ever been” and that “there are two, three or four good teams, and the rest of these teams stink.”

As usual when it comes to his commentary, Barkley was being deliberately contrarian in a way that only fleetingly resembled the truth. By nearly any objective standpoint, the game is as popular now as it has been at any point since the Michael Jordan era. It’s almost embarrassing how many memorable NBA games we’ve gotten in the last few seasons. He isn’t wrong, however, in pointing out that there are only a few genuinely great teams out there, which also could help explain why we’re seeing so many impressive individual performances.



With the exception of Thompson, the players who have had 50+ point games this season were those most often tasked with carrying the majority of their team’s offense. Butler put up 52 points, 12 rebounds, six assists, three steals and a block on Monday because he basically had to have that kind of game in order to give his increasingly dysfunctional Bulls team a chance to win. Harden plays a similar role with the Rockets. On his 52-point night, Thomas didn’t rack up a single assist, because there wasn’t really any situation where he had the ball and wasn’t the Celtics’ best scoring option.



Meanwhile the league’s last three MVPs, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and LeBron James, are conspicuously absent from that list. Obviously that’s not because they aren’t capable of taking over a game in the same way that Wall or Cousins were able to, it’s more that their teams haven’t really required them to do so. There is some truth that we’re seeing phenomenal individual games at the expense of memorable team wins, and that might not be ideal.



Where Barkley goes wrong is when he turns this criticism into a blanket condemnation of the league. Just because the current NBA situation isn’t perfect – and when has it ever been? – doesn’t mean that it hasn’t also been highly enjoyable. For now, we should appreciate this unprecedented stretch of individual performances for what they are, and not be too hung up on what they might mean.

