<\/p>\n
Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) reacts after a three point basket to take the lead against the Orlando Magic during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026, in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Justine Willard\/AP Photo\/Justine Willard<\/p>\n
San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama (1) goes to the basket against Dallas Mavericks’ Daniel Gafford (21) and Caleb Martin during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
Darren Abate\/AP Photo\/Darren Abate<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic reacts after being called for a back court violation during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Sacramento Kings Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, in Sacramento, Calif.<\/p>\n
Scott Marshall\/AP Photo\/Scott Marshall<\/p>\n
MIAMI (AP) \u2014 The blowouts keep coming in the NBA, like never before.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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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).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got our (butt) kicked. No other way to put it,\u201d New Orleans coach Jamahl Mosley said earlier this week after the Pelicans lost by 51 points earlier this week to Golden State \u2014 the biggest blowout in the league so far this season. \u201cThey came in and punched us in the mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n
This will be no consolation to Mosley, but there’s a lot of that going around.<\/p>\n
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\u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Charlotte has already lost three games by at least 33 points this season; the Hornets didn’t have even one such loss last season.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Milwaukee is getting outscored by nearly 15 points per game, with three losses of 25 or more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s part of our journey,\u201d Milwaukee coach Taylor Jenkins said. \u201cIt’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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Where are the close games?<\/p>\n
The flip side to there being so many blowouts is that there have been few close games.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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Almost half the league \u2014 14 of the 30 teams \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
A point per minute?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Elite scorers, all of them, but they never averaged a point per minute for a full season.<\/p>\n
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And that’s another layer of what makes the flying starts for the NBA’s three leading scorers so far this season \u2014 the Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Doncic, Golden State’s Stephen Curry and San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama \u2014 even more impressive.<\/p>\n
They’re scoring a ton, and they’re doing it quickly. Very quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s a lot of good going on,\u201d Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said after Wembanyama had a 40-point effort \u2014 along with 11 rebounds and nine blocked shots \u2014 in just 25 minutes of a win over Phoenix earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The Lakers, Warriors and Spurs all play Wednesday night, and it’s still early enough in the season where one \u201coff\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
Chamberlain was at 1.04 points per minute that season, while logging an average \u2014 yes, an average \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Entering Wednesday, Wembanyama is averaging 1.01 points per minute, Doncic is at 1.09 and Curry is at 1.07.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s one of one,\u201d Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Curry \u2014 who enters Wednesday with six straight games of at least one point per minute.<\/p>\n
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See AP\u2019s full NBA coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) reacts after a three point basket to take the lead against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,919,2684,615,938,185,368,935,3361,6,102775,29499,29496,29494,29497,29498,73117,62649,969,474,4075,4074,534,573,863,4194,693],"class_list":["post-881854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio-spurs","tag-basketball","tag-chicago","tag-jamahl-mosley","tag-kareem-abdul-jabbar","tag-kevin-durant","tag-lebron-james","tag-luka-doncic","tag-michael-jordan","tag-mitch-johnson","tag-nba","tag-nba-blowouts","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32001-ap-online-basketball-news","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40776-ap-california-sports-only","tag-product-40815-ap-texas-sports-only","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sanantonio","tag-sanantoniospurs","tag-spurs","tag-stephen-curry","tag-steve-kerr","tag-taylor-jenkins","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}