Inside the numbers: Blowouts are common, close games rare so far in this NBA season

MIAMI (AP) — The blowouts keep coming in the NBA, like never before.

Entering Wednesday, with 13% of the season played, the average winning margin in the NBA has been 13.8 points per game. It's the most lopsided start to a season in league history; the average margin through the comparative point in the 1949-50 season was 13.4 points per game.

At this rate, the NBA would set a victory-margin record for a fourth consecutive season. And so far, the league has seen more games decided by 30 or more points (15) than it has games decided by three points or less (13).

“We got our (butt) kicked. No other way to put it,” New Orleans coach Jamahl Mosley said earlier this week after the Pelicans lost by 51 points earlier this week to Golden State — the biggest blowout in the league so far this season. “They came in and punched us in the mouth.”

This will be no consolation to Mosley, but there's a lot of that going around.

— Chicago enters Wednesday being outscored by 16.7 points per game, which would be the worst margin in league history (though, in fairness, it is way too early to declare that mark in jeopardy). Dallas, in 1992-93, was outscored by 15.2 points per game for the league-worst mark.

— Charlotte has already lost three games by at least 33 points this season; the Hornets didn't have even one such loss last season.

— Milwaukee is getting outscored by nearly 15 points per game, with three losses of 25 or more.

“It's part of our journey,” Milwaukee coach Taylor Jenkins said. “It's our opportunity. Not going to call it a challenge; it's an opportunity. I think we've got a lot of guys that have got to continue to try different things. What we're doing right now is not working.”

The flip side to there being so many blowouts is that there have been few close games.

Like, very few.

The 13 games decided by three points or less is the fewest at this point in a season in 60 years. There were 25 such games at this point last season, 38 such games at this point in 2024-25.

Almost half the league — 14 of the 30 teams — has yet to have a game end with a margin of three points or less this season. Atlanta is 2-0 in those games; no other team has won more than one. New Orleans (1-2) and Brooklyn (0-2) are the only teams to lose more than one of those contests to this point.

Michael Jordan never did it. Kobe Bryant and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar never did either. LeBron James and Kevin Durant also haven't pulled it off.

Elite scorers, all of them, but they never averaged a point per minute for a full season.

And that's another layer of what makes the flying starts for the NBA's three leading scorers so far this season — the Los Angeles Lakers' Luka Doncic, Golden State's Stephen Curry and San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama — even more impressive.

They're scoring a ton, and they're doing it quickly. Very quickly.

“There's a lot of good going on,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said after Wembanyama had a 40-point effort — along with 11 rebounds and nine blocked shots — in just 25 minutes of a win over Phoenix earlier this week.

The Lakers, Warriors and Spurs all play Wednesday night, and it's still early enough in the season where one “off” night can skew numbers considerably. But Doncic, Curry and Wembanyama got through the first three weeks of the season averaging more than 1 point per minute. That's a pace almost unheard of in NBA history.

Among players with at least 1,500 points in a season, only one player has pulled off the point-per-minute feat: Wilt Chamberlain in 1961-62, his 50.4-point-per-game year.

Chamberlain was at 1.04 points per minute that season, while logging an average — yes, an average — of more than 48 minutes per game, thanks to overtimes. He was off the floor for a total of eight minutes that season in Philadelphia's 80 games; an ejection in the fourth quarter of a game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Jan. 3, 1962 marked his only off-court stint all season.

Entering Wednesday, Wembanyama is averaging 1.01 points per minute, Doncic is at 1.09 and Curry is at 1.07.

“He's one of one,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Curry — who enters Wednesday with six straight games of at least one point per minute.

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