Each Thursday of the NBA season, we’re analyzing a grab bag of topics from around the league. This week, it’s a special NBA All-Star Weekend edition, with analyses of the best creators in the league, Steph Curry’s outrageous shooting, the lack of stardom in the dunk contest, and more. This is the Kram Session.

Under Review: The NBA’s 2023-24 Points-Created Leaderboard

All-Star Weekend fills many roles in the NBA ecosystem: It’s simultaneously a gathering place for media members, a resting point for exhausted players amid a grueling schedule, and, above all, a showcase for fans that puts all the NBA’s best players on one court.

And what do fans love? Points. Which happen to be pouring forth at the highest rate in more than half a century.

So this stopping point seems like as good a time as any to take stock of the NBA’s leaders in point production this season, using our points-created metric, which, in most recent seasons, has predicted the MVP winner. This stat combines three sources into one number: (1) the points a player scores, (2) the points a player assists, and (3) the points a player adds via a screen assist. (Yes, a screen assist, which might sound silly, but it has all the same flaws as a regular old passing assist.) We add up those three totals for each player and set the sum to a per-36-minute denominator to get the points-created leaderboard.

Here are the top 15 players (minimum 1,000 minutes) in points created per 36 minutes this season, through Tuesday’s games—starting with an extremely close race for the top spot.

Nikola Jokic is the king of points creation, as he contributes in all three parts of the stat—so much so that he edges up to Joel Embiid’s level, even as the injured 76ers big scores at a historic pace and sets a career high in assists.

If Jokic and Embiid are the two best offensive players in the NBA, then Tyrese Haliburton and Luka Doncic, who rank third and fourth on this leaderboard, respectively, aren’t far behind. Haliburton is creating more points via assists than any other player in the past decade, per NBA Advanced Stats, while Doncic seems poised to win the scoring title with Embiid unlikely to qualify.

All four of those points producers were rightly named not just All-Stars, but All-Star starters, as were Giannis Antetokounmpo (in sixth place) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (in eighth). Which suggests that Domantas Sabonis, in fifth place, was absolutely robbed of an All-Star nod. Sure, Karl-Anthony Towns, who grabbed a Western All-Star spot over the Sacramento center, is scoring with great efficiency on the West’s top team, but he’s in 69th place with only 34.6 points created per 36 minutes—21.5 below Sabonis’s average.

A player’s points-created average naturally flows from their usage, and Towns is both a less frequent screener than Rudy Gobert and a less frequent creator than Anthony Edwards (who’s 24th on the list, at 41.6 points created per 36 minutes). But Sabonis is clearly an offensive hub for his team in a way that Towns isn’t.

Broadly, though, analyzing All-Stars’ points creation this season points to a growing trend: The league’s best players are contributing to offensive production in multiple ways, not just via their own scoring. Of the 10 players voted to start the All-Star Game, nine are averaging at least 5.7 assists per game, and Jayson Tatum is at 4.7. 

Of the 26 All-Stars overall—starters, reserves, or injury replacements—25 are averaging at least 3.6 assists per game. Only Towns, at 2.9, is below that number. A decade ago, for comparison, seven 2013-14 All-Stars were averaging fewer than three assists per game. Two decades ago, nine 2003-04 All-Stars were. As this chart shows, current All-Stars are collectively averaging more assists than ever.

The trend is even more pronounced when looking at the five lowest-assist All-Stars in every season of the 3-point era. This next chart reveals a dramatic uptick in recent seasons, showing that just about every All-Star is now, to some extent, both a scorer and a playmaker for others. (Note: Dirk Nowitzki and Dwyane Wade were excluded from 2018-19, when they were honorary All-Stars in their final season.)

The league’s higher point totals mean more assists overall, but that’s not the main reason for this trend—I adjusted these figures based on the leaguewide pace, points, and assist rates, and the graphs looked basically the same no matter what.

Instead, the explanation is that as a group, the NBA’s best players have the ball more than ever before. Regardless of position, teams hand their stars more creative responsibilities rather than turning to traditional, pass-first point guards to set up the offense. This shift is especially pronounced among big men, as Jokic, Embiid, and Anthony Davis have a lot more assists now than the likes of Dwight Howard, Roy Hibbert, and the younger version of Davis did a decade ago. Modern All-Stars aren’t specialized, but rather well-rounded engines of offensive success.

Zacht of the Week: Yet Another Ridiculous Steph Curry Shooting Stat

Remember when Curry was stuck in a slump? Over a nine-game stretch during Draymond Green’s suspension, the two-time MVP averaged only 22 points and shot just 39 percent from the field (31 percent from distance); the Warriors went 3-6 in those games.

But that’s over now. Curry is currently trailing fire behind him when he walks, averaging 33 points and making 48 percent of his 3s since Green’s return. He’ll now try to carry that hot streak into his special 3-point competition against WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu on Saturday night.

Over the whole season, Curry is making 5.1 3-pointers per game. He is the only player in NBA history to reach that threshold; he also did it in 2020-21, 2018-19, and 2015-16. He now has six of the seven seasons in NBA history with at least 4.5 triples per game.

As that chart shows, Curry’s remarkable shooting season isn’t new—for him, at least. But one by-product of it might be.

In many of his previous seasons, injuries prevented Curry from reaching 70 games, so even though he excelled on a per-game basis, he never challenged his own overall 3-point record. In his unanimous MVP campaign of 2015-16, when Curry stayed healthy enough to play 79 games, he made a jaw-dropping 402 3-pointers—absolutely shattering the previous record of 286, which he’d set the prior year.

In 2023-24, however, he has missed only three games, so he has a chance to challenge that much higher record. If Curry plays every remaining Warriors game and continues to make 3s at his current clip, he’ll reach 403 3s for the season—setting a new record by one single 3-pointer. His current pace might even accelerate, given recent trends: He’s attempting 13.8 per game since Green’s return, up from 11.4 per game until that point. 

These charts are amazing. Even in his mid-30s, even after inspiring an entire generation of players to take more 3s, Steph still stands alone.

Take That for Data: Has the Dunk Contest Lost Its Luster?

Unlike the 3-point contest, which includes seven current or recent All-Stars among its eight participants (and that group excludes Curry), the slam dunk contest this weekend won’t exactly be studded with stars. Jaylen Brown is an All-Star, and Jaime Jaquez Jr. has impressed as a rookie—but Jacob Toppin and the G League’s Mac McClung have combined for two total NBA points this season.

That’s not a specific knock against Toppin, whose brother, Obi, is a dunk contest winner, or McClung, the defending champion. (I also saw McClung play in a G League game last week, and he was fantastic, scoring 27 points and dishing nine assists.) But they’re not exactly household names, and they continue a recent trend in which relatively anonymous participants take the Saturday night spotlight at All-Star Weekend.

A dynamic dunker doesn’t necessarily need a broad NBA skill set to put on a show. But stardom undoubtedly helps with hype, and I wanted to see if the perception that the dunk contest is losing its luster matches the reality. Spoiler: It does. Dunk contest fields really are getting worse.

The simple way I tested this theory was by averaging each player’s win shares in the season in which they appeared in the dunk contest and then comparing the different years. The best dunk contest field by this metric is the one from 1988; this contest ended in controversy and featured Michael Jordan, Dominique Wilkins, and Clyde Drexler. 

Other strong classes came in:

• 1985, when Jordan, Wilkins, and Drexler were joined by late-career Julius Erving and inaugural dunk contest champion Larry Nance
• 2009, when Dwight Howard won Defensive Player of the Year and J.R. Smith and Nate Robinson finished second and third, respectively, in Sixth Man award voting
• 2014, when All-Stars Damian Lillard, Paul George, and John Wall competed

On the other end of the spectrum, the good news for recent fields is that none of them is the worst in the contest’s history. That dishonor belongs to 1995’s contestants: J.R. Rider, Jamie Watson, Antonio Harvey, Tony Dumas, Tim Perry, and Harold Miner. No, I didn’t make any of those names up.

But as a multi-season group, recent dunk contest fields indeed register as the worst ever, with only the groups of the 1990s coming close. (For this graph, stats collected over shorter seasons were prorated to 82 games.)

It’s probably not a great sign for the 2020s that the mid-’90s dunk contests grew so stale that the NBA outright canceled the contest in 1998. The league eventually brought it back in 2000 (after the lockout canceled All-Star Weekend in 1999), when Vince Carter’s legendary performance reinvigorated the flagging franchise. For the sake of the dunk contest going forward, the NBA might need to tap into magic like Carter’s again.

A Graph Is Worth a Thousand Words

All-Star Game scoring inflation is apparent to anyone watching, and it’s even more obvious in a graph.

Fast Breaks

1. Nix the skills challenge. Bring back shooting stars!

Here’s another All-Star thought: The skills challenge in its current incarnation is a disaster. It’s hard to follow. The scoring is inscrutable. The team formations often don’t make sense. (“Team Pacers” in Indiana? Sure. “Team All-Stars” just sounds like the NBA couldn’t find enough people willing to participate in the event.)

My suggestion: Bring back the shooting stars competition instead! This contest ran from 2004 through 2015 and involved teams of three: one active NBA player, one retired NBA player, and one WNBA player, all from the same city. (In the last few years of the competition, the “same city” part was dropped.) Winning trios included Derek Fisher, Magic Johnson, and Lisa Leslie from Los Angeles; Tim Duncan, David Robinson, and Becky Hammon from San Antonio; and Chauncey Billups, Bill Laimbeer, and Swin Cash from Detroit.

This wasn’t the most exciting event on the All-Star docket, but it was a perfectly acceptable appetizer to get the Saturday slate started. It at least made sense, unlike the current skills setup. And especially if the NBA wants to incorporate more WNBA participation throughout the weekend, as this year’s Ionescu special suggests, a shooting stars revival would represent an excellent opportunity. Let’s see a team of Ionescu, Jalen Brunson, and Carmelo Anthony represent New York, or a hometown Indiana trio of Tyrese Haliburton, Reggie Miller, and WNBA Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston.

2. A modest proposal for a block contest at NBA All-Star Weekend

It’s not just my idea for a shooting stars revival; everyone has ideas for new events to spice up All-Star Weekend. H-O-R-S-E could be fun, even if it came and went without much fanfare in 2009 and 2010. A one-on-one competition would be ideal, though a logistical challenge. What about a big game of knockout with all the All-Stars? 

Here’s another idea, which came to me as I watched Victor Wembanyama collect 10 blocks in a triple-double this week. What about a block contest, showcasing another discrete skill alongside 3-point shooting and dunking? 

A block contest would probably never happen due to injury concerns, but if done right, it could have incredible potential. Just like a home run robbery in baseball is sometimes cooler than a home run, a resounding block sometimes inspires more awe than a highlight dunk. And a block contest would lend itself well to different mini-events, all of which could combine to produce a winner:

• Chasedown block, in which the blocker has to start at half court and sprint to pin a layup against the glass
• 3-point swat, which would be judged by distance, like the pole vault—how far away could the blocker start and still get out to the perimeter in time to get a hand on a 3?
• Dunk rejection, in which the blocker has to stuff a full-speed dunk attempt at the rim

3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s unbreakable All-Star record

Finally, I’ll wrap up this special All-Star edition of the Kram Session with a new entry in the competition for the most unbreakable NBA stat. You can have Wilt’s 50-points-per-game average and the Warriors’ 73 wins—I’ll take Abdul-Jabbar’s 31 blocks in All-Star Games.

Why is this record so unbreakable? In part, it’s because Kareem played in so many All-Star Games (18, behind only LeBron James, who will play in his 20th this weekend). But it’s more because the lack of defensive effort in the All-Star Game’s modern form means nobody records a lot of blocks anymore. Last year’s game included only three blocks.

Not a single active player is even in double digits over their career.

LeBron leads among active players with only eight blocks in All-Star Games. Next is Antetokounmpo with six, Kevin Durant with five, Embiid with four, and James Harden and Anthony Davis with three apiece. Add up all those players’ totals, spread across 56 different All-Star appearances, and they’re still short of Kareem’s career tally.

Zach Kram

Zach writes about basketball, baseball, and assorted pop culture topics.