The Stars of the NBA Couldn’t Stop Scoring. So the NBA Stopped Them.

Midway through this season, the NBA had a strange problem: Its players were too good. Teams were scoring more efficiently than ever, stars were putting up 60 and 70 points in a single game and there was absolutely nothing that defenses could do about it.

So the league set about fixing things.

In early March, basketball fans began to notice a subtle but consequential shift in the sport. Referees forgave a little more contact from defenders. They were more suspicious of star players who flopped and flailed on their way to the rim. And in a mid-March memo to teams, the NBA confirmed that its competition committee “continues to evaluate the state of offensive vs. defensive balance.”

Put simply: The NBA was making defense legal again.

The numbers show just how much tougher it has gotten to score. Between February’s All-Star break and the start of the playoffs, scoring dropped leaguewide by eight points per game. There were six 60-plus point scorers before the break—and there has been only one since.

Saturday’s opening slate of playoff games continued the trend. In the first matchup of the day, the Cleveland Cavaliers held the Orlando Magic to just 83 points—the lowest total for a Cavs opponent all season. Across four games, three teams failed to crack 100 points.

“If the offensive player had the ability to just go off-path, create an ugly play and get to the free-throw line,” said Monty McCutchen, the NBA’s head of referee development, “it’s very hard to compete as a defensive player.”

At the peak of this high-scoring season, NBA basketball could seem like a drastically uncompetitive game. Players already gifted at putting the ball in the basket used the free-throw line to hoist themselves up to ever-more-outrageous stat lines. When Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid scored 70 points in January, he made 21 of 23 free-throws. When Dallas’ Luka Doncic put up 73 of his own four nights later, he made 15 of 16.

Early that month, McCutchen said, “We started to realize we had gotten relaxed,” often whistling legal defensive position as a penalty. The solution wasn’t to change the rules, he said, but to enforce the ones already on the books with greater rigor. Defenders couldn’t barge into the path of an offensive player—but neither could scorers simply veer out of their way to crash into an opponent and earn a foul.

Commissioner Adam Silver, addressing the skyrocketing point totals, repeatedly credited the skill and savvy of his league’s athletes. But behind the scenes, the league office was examining a situation that threatened to tip basketball out of balance.

“If a coach sees something wrong in a game, for him not to call a timeout and address it would be really poor management,” McCutchen said. “We have to live up to the rulebook as it’s currently written.”

As basketball has evolved over the decades, rules have had to evolve with it. When rugged, low-scoring play dominated the game in the 2000s, for example, the league did away with “hand-checking,” allowing offensive players greater freedom of movement. The change helped usher in the fast-paced and free-flowing era the league enjoys today.

Even though this season’s shift didn’t involve any new rules being put on the books, coaches had spent the first part of the year clamoring for the adjustment they have lately seen. In December, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr complained that star players were being allowed to “B.S. their way to the foul line.”

Those coaches got their wish. In an April game, the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks set a mark that seemed unlikely a couple months before. The two teams combined to shoot just two free-throws—a record low in an NBA game.

McCutchen noted that some scorers have been frustrated by the sudden disappearance of a friendly whistle. But over time, he expects that players and coaches will understand that these steps were taken for the overall health of the sport.

“When anyone takes a half-step back, the response we’ve gotten is that everybody has enjoyed the ability to defend legally again,” McCutchen said. “There’s a sense of, now we can compete on a level experience.”

On Saturday, the Minnesota Timberwolves didn’t have many complaints about the new way NBA referees are doing things. Minnesota’s playoff opponent, the Phoenix Suns, had averaged more than 118 points in three regular-season wins over the Wolves. In their Game 1 loss, hounded by a fearless Minnesota defense, they mustered just 95.

Write to Robert O’Connell at [email protected]