Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are heading
on to the court to talk about one of the most,
I guess, shiny and often misunderstood awards
in all of pro sports. It's the trophy that answers
that really primal question in basketball. Who
is the most unstoppable force on the planet right
now? We are talking about the NBA scoring title.
It really is the ultimate badge of individual
dominance, isn't it? Because you strip away all
the narratives, the voting fatigue you get with
the MVP award. Right. The scoring title is supposed
to be objective. It's supposed to be cold, hard
math. Either you put the ball in the basket more
than everyone else or you didn't. Exactly. It's
the get out of my way, I'm getting a bucket award.
Yeah. And I think for most of us, you know, watching
the games or just checking the box scores in
the morning, we assume it's pretty straightforward.
Yeah, you'd think so. You just count up all the
points at the end of the year and the person
with the biggest number. takes home the hardware?
But as we look through the... comprehensive historical
records of all the annual scoring leaders. And
we went all the way from the league start in
1946 right up through the 2024 -25 season. We
found the math isn't actually that simple. Not
at all. It's surprisingly messy. Oh, it gets
complicated fast. We're talking about rule changes,
statistical loopholes, and some really, really
weird historical quirks. We are. We're going
to look at how the definition of scoring leader
has actually shifted over the decades and how
that changed the way... the game is played. We'll
look at the myths around the award and the Titans
who hold records that, and I really don't say
this lightly, will likely never be broken. And
here's the hook for you listening right now.
You probably think you know who the best scorers
in history are, but there are seasons where the
guy who scored the most baskets didn't actually
win the title. That's right. Sometimes winning
is just a matter of, you know, reading the fine
print. Okay, let's unpack this. Yeah. Because
this totally blew my mind when we were prepping.
There was a specific year where the definition
of scoring leader completely flipped and it changed
everything. It did. This is section one, the
rules of engagement. If you were playing in the
NBA before the 1969 -70 season, the scoring champion
was just determined by total points. As simple
as that. It was an endurance test. If you played
80 games and scored 2 ,000 points, you beat the
guy who played 60 games and scored 1 ,800, regardless
of who was actually scoring more on a nightly
basis. So volume was king. It didn't matter if
you were efficient. It just mattered that you
showed up and put numbers on the board every
single night. Precisely. But starting in that
69 -70 season, the league pivoted. They switched
the criteria to points per game, your average.
Ah, okay. They wanted to reward dominance over
durability. The logic was, you know, if I'm scoring
35 points a night, but I miss 10 games with a
sprained ankle, am I really a worse scorer than
the guy averaging 25 who never misses a game?
The league decided no. But this pivot created
some fascinating historical ironies. I call it
robbing the bank because you have these technically
correct winners who walked away with a trophy
despite scoring fewer total points. The very
first year of the rule change is the perfect
example. 1969 -70. You had a rookie named Lou
Alcindor, who we all now know as Kareem Abdul
-Jabbar. He was an absolute iron man. He played
almost every game and scored the most total points
in the league that year. 2 ,361. Which is a massive
number. In any era, that's an MVP caliber season.
It is. But he didn't win the scoring title. Jerry
West did. West averaged 31 .2 points per game,
which was just slightly higher than Alcindor's
average. But wait. But here's the kicker. Jerry
West played fewer games and had significantly
fewer total points. So imagine scoring the most
points in the entire league. You're the rookie
sensation and you're told, sorry, your average
is slightly lower because you played more games.
Yeah. That feels like a punishment for being
available. It really does. And this isn't just
some old school quirk. This happens in the modern
era too. Fast forward to 2002 -03. Kobe Bryant.
He was an absolute machine that year. Played
all 82 games and scored 2 ,461 total points.
The most in the NBA. But he didn't win. Nope.
The scoring title went to Tracy McGrady because
TMAC had a higher nightly average despite playing
fewer games and scoring fewer total points. Wow.
And even more recently, LeBron James in 2017
-18. He played all 82 games, the only time in
his career he's ever done that, and had the highest
total. But finished third in the scoring race
based on average. That's crazy. It really highlights
a philosophical shift. The NBA decided that...
Peak performance matters more than total accumulation.
But they realized this creates a danger. Right.
If it's only about average, what stops someone
from playing one game, scoring 50, and then quitting
the season and claiming the title with a 50 -point
average? The I quit while I'm ahead strategy.
I'd try it. Well, they instituted a guardrail.
It's the qualification hurdle. In the modern
NBA, to technically qualify for the scoring title,
a player has to appear in at least 58 of 82 games.
Which seems fair. You have to play about 70 %
of the season. Yeah. But looking at our source
material, there's a loophole here, a kind of
mathematical exception clause that I find fascinating.
It is a very specific, very rare exception. If
a player appears in fewer than 58 games, they
aren't automatically out. The league takes their
total points and divides it by 58. Oh, wow. As
if they had played those missing games and scored
zero points in all of them. So they dilute your
average. They basically treat those missed games
as goose eggs. Exactly. And if that diluted average
is still higher than everyone else's regular
average, you win the title. That sounds incredibly
hard to pull off. Yeah. Has anyone ever actually
survived that math? It's nearly impossible because
the penalty of taking a zero is just so high.
We actually saw how strict these... rules can
be very recently. Look at the 2023 -24 season
with Joel Embiid. Oh, right. He was having a
historic run. I mean, he was averaging a massive
34 .7 points per game. That is a runaway number.
Usually like 30 or 31 wins it comfortably. 34
.7 is a blowout. It absolutely is. But he only
played 39 games because of an injury. So he didn't
meet the 58 game threshold. And the loophole
didn't save him. No. Even if you tried to apply
it. Taking his total points and dividing by 58,
the zeros dragged him way down below the other
leaders. So he was just erased from the leaderboard.
It's brutal. You could be the best scorer when
you're on the floor. But if you aren't on the
floor enough, the record books don't care. Availability
is the best ability, as they say. The rule ensures
that the scoring champ is a fixture of the season,
not just, you know, a guest star. OK, so speaking
of fixtures and just pure, unadulterated dominance.
We have to talk about the Titans, the guys whose
records just look like typos. You can't talk
scoring without talking Wilt. Wilt Chamberlain.
I was reading through the breakdown of his 1961
-62 season and the numbers. I mean, they represent
a level of activity I don't think humans are
capable of anymore. They really don't look real.
We talk about a great season now as like... Averaging
30 points per game? Yeah. In the 1961 -62 season,
Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 .4 points per game.
50 .4. That means he was cutting up a half century
every single night on average. And he scored
4 ,029 total points that season. To give you
some context, even in today's high -scoring,
three -point -heavy seasons, getting to 2 ,500
is rare. 4 ,000 is extraterrestrial. And people
always say, oh, the pace was faster back then.
The pace was faster. That's true. Here's the
stat that just breaks that argument for me. Walt
averaged 48 .5 minutes per game that season.
Wait, there were only 48 minutes in a game? He
played every minute of every game, plus overtime.
He never sat down. So yes, the pace was high,
but the stamina required to run that much for
48 minutes and score 50. That's not just era
inflation. That is a level of physical dominance
we will likely never see again. And it wasn't
a one -off. He won seven consecutive scoring
titles. That feels untouchable. But there is
one other name that matches that consistency.
His airness. Michael Jordan. The GOAT. If Wilt
owns the single season peaks, Jordan owns the
career consistency. Michael Jordan holds the
record for the most scoring titles in NBA history
with 10. 10. 10 scoring titles. That's a full
decade of being the best scorer in the world.
It is. And like Wilt, he won seven of them consecutively.
But what's so fascinating about Jordan is that
he did it at both ends of his career. You know,
we mentioned Wilt's rookie dominance, but Jordan
adapted his game as he aged. In fact, Jordan
is the oldest scoring leader in history. Oh,
really? I would have guessed someone like Curry
recently. Nope, it's Jordan. In the 1997 -98
season, the last dance year, he won the title
at age 35, averaging 28 .7 points. Wow. So you
have Wilt dominating with pure physical force
in his 20s. And then you have Jordan dominating
with skill, footwork, and that mid -range precision
in his mid -30s. That longevity is just incredible.
Most high -volume scorers. Their legs are burned
out by 32. Jordan reinvented how he scored to
keep the trophy. But, you know, sometimes the
scoring title isn't decided by a decade of dominance.
Sometimes it comes down to the very last day
of the season. The photo finishes. The great
shootouts. Yeah. This is my favorite part of
the history. There are these moments where the
math of the average rule just creates incredible
drama. The most famous one has to be 1978. The
duel between George Gervin the Iceman and David
Thompson. This story is wild. So. It's the last
day of the season. The race is neck and neck.
David Thompson plays first. And he clearly decided,
I am not losing this. He went nuclear. He scored
73 points. Which in 1978 was... basically unheard
of. It was. So Girvin plays later that night.
He hears the news. He knows the math. To win
the scoring title, he needs 58 points just to
tie. Right. Now, for most players, if you hear
you need 58, you just congratulate the other
guy and go home. Right. You say, good season,
Dave. Enjoy the trophy. But Girvin, he went out
and scored 63. But the detail that always gets
me is the second quarter. Thompson had set a
record earlier that day by scoring 32 points
in a single quarter. Oh, wow. Girvin, in his
game, scored 33 in the second quarter to break
the record Thompson had set just hours before.
Talk about anything you can do, I can do better.
That is just petty in the absolute best way.
And the final margin. Girvin won the scoring
title by an average of 3 .06 points, the closest
finish ever. That is razor thin. We almost saw
a repeat of that in 2012, didn't we? With Kevin
Durant and Kobe Bryant. We did. It was the second
closest race in history. Going into the final
game, Durant was slightly ahead in the averages.
He finished his season at 28 .03. And Kobe had
one game left. Kobe needed 38 points in that
final game to overtake Durant. Now for Kobe Bryant,
scoring 38 was just a Tuesday. He could have
done it. He probably would have done it if this
was, say, 2006. But he didn't. He chose to sit
out, rested for the playoffs. Durant won the
title, his third in a row at that point. That
shows a massive shift in priorities, doesn't
it? Kobe wanted the ring more than the scoring
trophy. But speaking of Durant, we should mention
he holds a pretty special age -related record,
too. He does. In the 2009 -10 season, Kevin Durant
became the youngest scoring leader in NBA history.
He was just 21 years and 197 days old, averaging
30 .1 points. 21. I was barely figuring out how
to do my laundry at 21, and he's leading the
entire NBA in scoring. It really signaled the
arrival of a new generation. But this brings
us to the big elephant in the room, the empty
calories argument. There's this myth, or maybe
it's not a myth, that if you have the scoring
leader on your team, you're not winning the championship.
Right. That one guy is just taking too many shots
and the team suffers. It's a very persistent
narrative. And when you look at the data, it
kind of holds water. We analyzed the records
from 1947 all the way to 2025, winning the scoring
title and the NBA championship in the same season.
It's incredibly rare. How rare are we talking?
Since 1947, only six players have ever done it.
Six in almost 80 years. Just six. You've got
the early pioneers. Joe Fulks in 47. George Mikan
did it in 49 and 50. Then Kareem Abdul -Jabbar
in 1971. Okay, so the absolute giants of the
game. And then you have a 20 -year gap where
nobody could do it. Until Michael Jordan, he
did it six times, all six of his championship
years. Of course he did. He's the exception to
every single rule. Then Shaquille O 'Neal did
it in 2000. And then... A massive drought. For
a quarter of a century, nobody could pull off
the double. Not Kobe, not Iverson, not Durant,
not Harden. It became known as the scoring champion
curse. The logic being that heliocentric offense
where everything revolves around one star just
doesn't work in the playoffs. But that curse
was finally broken recently. It was. And we have
to shout out the newest member of that exclusive
club, Shy Gilchrist Alexander. Yes. The 2024
-25 season. Shy really broke the quote -unquote
curse. He averaged 32 .7 points to win the scoring
title and led the Oklahoma City Thunder to the
championship in 2025. It's amazing because for
years, the analytics people said, you can't win
if your point guard is scoring 30 a night. Shai
proved them all wrong. He did. He joined Jordan,
Shaq, Kareem, and Mikan. That is the VIP room
of basketball history. Now, you mentioned Shaq
a second ago, and that transitions us perfectly
to how the game itself has physically changed.
Because if you look at how Shaq won his scoring
titles versus how guys win them today, it's practically
a different sport. It really is. We are so deep
in the three -point era. But Shaq stands as...
This massive, incredible anomaly in the history
books. I love this stat from the research. Since
the three -point line was introduced in the 1979
-80 season, Shaquille O 'Neal is the only scoring
leader to go an entire championship season without
making a single three -pointer. Not one. Not
even a heave at the buzzer or anything. Zero.
In his 2000 MVP and scoring title season, he
dominated exclusively from the paint. Now, contrast
that with Stephen Curry in 2015 -16. Revolution.
Curry led the league with 30 .1 points per game,
but the way he did it, he made 402 three -pointers
that season, and he joined the 50 -40 -90 club
shooting 50 % from the field, 40 % from three,
and 90 % from the free -throw line. He was the
first scoring leader ever to do that. It's efficiency
plus volume from a distance. It's the exact opposite
of Shaq. Shaq physically moved you out of the
way. Curry makes you chase him until you're exhausted.
Exactly. And Curry kept doing it. He won another
scoring title in 2020 -21 at age 32, making him
the oldest leader since Jordan. And we can't
talk about volume scoring in the modern era without
mentioning James Harden. The beard. His run in
the late 2010s was historically significant,
specifically that 2018 -19 season. Harden averaged
36 .1 points per game. 36 .1. That's the highest
average we've seen in the modern era. Among the
active players mentioned in our source material,
yes. It's the closest anyone has gotten to those
Jordan or Wilt type numbers in a long, long time.
It showed that with a three -point shot and the
ability to draw fouls, a single player can just
generate an immense amount of offense. But again,
Harden didn't win the championship that year.
He fell victim to that empty calories narrative,
which makes what Shai did in 2025 even more impressive.
he found the balance that Harden couldn't quite
nail down. Yeah, if we connect this to the bigger
picture, the scoring title really tells the story
of basketball's evolution. It started as a game
of total accumulation in the 50s, then it became
about efficiency and average in the 70s, it was
dominated by centers, then by shooting guards
like Jordan and Kobe, and now we see these diverse
scorers winning rings while dropping 32 a night.
It really is the history of the league told through
just one trophy. So let's recap the big takeaways
for everyone listening. Sure. First, the math
isn't simple. That shift from total points to
average in 1969 created a world where you can
score the most points and still lose. Second,
Wilt Chamberlain is a statistical alien with
his 50 -point average, and Michael Jordan is
the king of longevity with 10 trophies. And third...
The rarity of the double winning the scoring
title in the championship in the same year. It's
the Holy Grail, achieved by only six players,
with Shai Gilgis -Alexander being the one to
finally break that 25 -year drought. Exactly.
Which brings us to the end. But before we go,
we need that final thought. What should we be
looking for next? Well, here's what I'm thinking
about. We just saw Shai break that scoring champion
curse. For decades, the logic was if one player
scores too much, the team suffers. But look at
the trends. Embiid, Luka Doncic, Shy, they're
all posting massive scoring numbers, high 30s.
The averages are creeping up across the board.
They are. So the question is, was Shai's championship
an outlier, kind of like Shaq in 2000? Or, with
the skill level in the league today where everyone
can cheat, everyone can pass, are we entering
a new golden age where high -volume individual
scoring is finally compatible with winning championships
again? That is a great question. Are we going
to see another 25 -year drought? Or are the floodgates
open? Can you drop 35 a night and still lift
the Larry O 'Brien trophy? History says it's
hard, but the future might be different. I wouldn't
bet against the talent in the league right now.
Neither would I. Thank you all for listening
to this deep dive into the buckets, the math
and the myths. Always a pleasure. We'll catch
you on the next one.