The NBA's blowout problem keeps getting worse

There's more to the record number of lopsided games than just tanking.

Luka Doncic’s Lakers have racked up blowout wins recently. They’re not alone.

The Los Angeles Lakers are peaking at the moment.

This week, I watched Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Austin Reaves, and company dismantle the Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers at Crypto.com Arena. The team’s vibes are the best they’ve been in five years. The home crowds on both nights were electric, up on their feet early and often. The prospect of a deep playoff run powered by Doncic, who just joined Michael Jordan as the only NBA players to score 600 points in March, is crystallizing.

But I encountered a familiar problem despite this building euphoria: Neither of the games was competitive, and many of the same fans who hollered for the highlight dunks left midway through the fourth quarter to beat traffic.

Nothing is more exhilarating to me than a high-level basketball game, and the Lakers held up their end of the bargain with crisp offense and energetic defense. Unfortunately, Anthony Davis, Trae Young, and Alex Sarr were among the many Wizards sidelined by injury, and the Cavaliers sat their starters for the entire fourth quarter because the game was already out of reach. The Lakers beat the Wizards by 19 points and the Cavaliers by 14 points, and the final margin easily could have been worse on both nights.

Thanks to increases in the pace of play and three-point attempts, the NBA is in the midst of an ongoing scoring boom that has produced a string of milestones in recent years: Doncic’s magic March, Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game, Nikola Jokic’s triple-double average, and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s record point differential, among many others.

At the same time, all this extra scoring has fueled an increase in lopsided games like the two I saw this week. On Wednesday night alone, the Philadelphia 76ers topped 150 points, the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers topped 140 points, and the Atlanta Hawks, New York Knicks, Denver Nuggets, and Washington Wizards all topped 130 points. The Wizards did so while losing again in blowout fashion.

Your eyes aren’t deceiving you: There has been a record number of blowouts in the NBA this season. Let’s survey the damage.