Note: Holidays are not fully over yet, so it’s still time for a post belonging to the “random thoughts” category. For those of you who are not basketball nerds, don’t worry, more serious stuff is coming back starting next week.
The politist Francis Fukuyama is famous for having popularized the thesis, following the fall of Soviet communism, that human History could have reached its end. Fukuyama develops at length the thesis in his book The End of History and the Last Man.[1] The very expression “end of history” is ambiguous and has often been misunderstood. Fukuyama refers to the end of History (note the capital “H”) in the Hegelian sense, i.e., “history understood as a single, coherent, evolutionary process, when taking into account the experience of all people in all times” (p. xii). In this sense, the end of History does not “mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end, that important events would no longer happen, or that the newspapers reporting them would cease to be published. It mean[s], rather, that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled” (p. xii).
Fukuyama’s claim, which has been hotly disputed since then, was that liberal democracy was marking the end of History in this very sense, because there is no progress beyond its principles and institutions, at least as far as human societies are concerned. This does not mean that we’ll live in a utopia. Liberal democracies will remain imperfect because of failures to implement their principles. Strictly speaking, the end of History is even compatible with the temporary resurgence of dictatorships and other forms of authoritarian societies. But if improvements are possible, it is not at the level of principles themselves, only with respect to their implementation.
Needless to say, Fukuyama’s thesis, like every teleological account of history, is contentious. It was already controversial at the time the book was published in 1992, it is even more so now with the political, cultural, and socioeconomic developments of the last two decades.[2] And as Fukuyama himself has acknowledged, it might need a revision. But if human societies are unlikely to see the end of their History, there is another domain of human affairs where I think it could happen: professional American basketball. Let me explain.
Most specialists agree to date the beginning of modern basketball (in the US at least) to the end of 1970s or the beginning of 1980s. There are several good reasons for that. The creation of the draft system and the invention of the three-point line have notably contributed to the emergence of the game as we know it today. Since this period, the practice of the game has evolved roughly along the following lines. In 1980s, the game was played at a relatively fast pace, defenses were relatively loose and most of the shots were taken in the paint or in the small periphery. The 3-point shot was a rarely used weapon, in part because few players were capable of using it efficiently. Many teams were relying offensively on a big man and the play was taking place near the basket. In the 1990s, the style of play started to change. The pace slowed down, and defenses became tighter. Offenses continued to rely on big men, even more in the 1990s than in the 1980s with the emergence of dominant centers like Shaq O’Neal, Pat Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwon, and David Robinson. The 3-point shot was still not widely used, though a significant group of specialists started to emerge (Reggie Miller, Mark Price, Mitch Richmond) The immediate effect was a sharp reduction in the scoring, with above 100-point scoring for a team becoming less and less frequent.[3]
This is at this time that the NBA started to change some rules to favor offenses and higher scoring. The 3-point line was moved closer to the basket (6.75 meters instead of 7.23 meters), the hand-checking rule was revised, virtually forbidding defensive players to touch offensive players when they dribble, zone defense was automatically sanctioned by a free-throw. The effects were not impressive and low scoring continued well into the 2000s despite the arrival of very strong offensive players (Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, and later Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony). Some evolution in the game took place in the game at that time, however. Offenses were far less relying on big men, and partly because of that the pace started to accelerate again. Also, though the best scorers were mostly mid-range shooters, more and more 3-point specialists were given a key role in their teams. An important step toward the end of History is symbolized by the role given to the Spurs forward Bruce Bowen in the 2005-2007 period when the Spurs clinched two NBA titles. Though not a very good scorer and shooter by the NBA standards (though Bowen had been the top scorer in the French league a few years before), Bowen became the main user of a new offensive weapon at that time: the 3-point shot in the corner. The use of this shoot started to change the way offenses proceed, looking for the creation of space to free the shooter in the corner.
This was also at that time that the use of analytics made its appearance, pioneered in particular by the Boston Celtics. The major breakdown came however with the Houston Rockets, James Harden era, around 2013. Based on analytics, the staff of the Rockets concluded that mid-range shoots are significantly less efficient than shoots in the paint and 3-point shoots. The Rockets became the first team to virtually ban mid-range shoots from their playbook. Other teams started to imitate the Rockets, making offenses more and more relying on 3-point shots. The last step is the rise of the Warriors dynasty: fast pace, huge reliance on 3-point shots (including far beyond the 3-point line), and “small ball” offense. The Warriors demonstrated that you can win a lot (provided you have the right players) by playing fast without a big man and by shooting a huge number of 3-pointers.
Since then, the game has uniformly evolved in the same direction. Around 40% of the shots taken in a game are 3-pointers, the in-the-paint style of play that was so important in the 1990s has virtually disappeared (even the best centers play beyond the 3-point line), shots taken early in the possession are now the rule and considered as “good”. Players’ competencies have also evolved to fit this style of play: there are probably a hundred players virtually capable of shooting 3-pointers above 40% over a huge volume of shots, while they were at best a dozen in the 1990s.
As a matter of personal opinion, I think that the game has never been so boring as it has been for the last 5 or 6 years. All teams more or less play the same kind of offense and offenses have completely taken advantage of defenses, even in playoff games where traditionally defenses become tighter. This evolution also makes the game more random as the superiority of a team is more dependent on long-range shots which obviously have a higher variance. That may explain why we have not seen many 62-wins-or-more-teams for several years in the regular season.
The more interesting speculation however is that it is not obvious, judged from today’s perspective, how the game could further evolve without a significant change of rules. We seem to have reached a point where offenses have reached maximal efficiency by limiting mid-range shots. Against the principles of small ball, spacing, and shot-value maximization, it is unclear how defenses will be able to reclaim the upper hand. What we see is the end of History in Fukuyama’s sense: we have found the best principles, the most efficient way to play the game. The implementation of those principles can surely be improved, but the principles in themselves are unlikely to change because we cannot improve on them.
Let me end with some caveats. First, there is a big difference between a game like basketball and human societies. The former is constituted by rules that we can change. The best principles are relative to a set of constitutive rules. If we change the rules (creating a 4-point line or going backward with respect to the hand-checking rule?), then obviously that would affect which are the best principles to play the game. Though human societies are also made of rules determining the political regime and the economic system, there are more fundamental constraints that we cannot change. The best rules are relative to these fundamental constraints. Second, which principles are best in basketball depends a lot on the kind of players you have. Obviously, if the best 3-point shooter was not able to shoot better than 25%, that would make an offense relying on 3-point shots less efficient. If the profile or capacities of the players change in the future, that may change the way the game is played. Note however that there is a self-reinforcing mechanism: young players grow by observing current professional players and are trained along the dominant views about how to play the game. A player like Victor Wembanyama has qualities that fit perfectly with how the game is played today, and this is not a random event. Finally, as with any thesis about the end of History in any domain, this one is fully speculative and unprovable. It only serves as a trigger to stimulate our imagination (or lack, thereof) and to explore new pathways.
[1] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Penguin Books, Limited, 2012[1992]).
[2] Though it may be worth insisting that, as I said just above, authoritarianism is making a comeback is not necessarily a refutation of the end of History thesis. Typically, the problem of teleological accounts of history however is that they are unfalsifiable by their very nature.
[3] I remember the 1994 NBA Finals between the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks, the very first I followed, where all seven games finished with no team above the 100-point mark.