NBA scoring is down 3.8 points a game from last season’s start even as three-point attempts reach a 12-season high of 37.8: the Hornets are 16 points below the league

NBA teams are scoring 113.4 points a game so far this season, 3.8 fewer than at this point last season and the biggest year-over-year drop for a start since 2014-15. They are doing it while taking more three-pointers than in the first games of any of the last 12 seasons, 37.8 a game, and fewer two-pointers, 50.3. Charlotte has taken the pattern to an extreme: the Hornets average 97.4 points, 16.0 below the league, the widest gap of any team through its first eight games in the 12 seasons from 2014-15 through 2025-26.

Through Monday’s games, each team has played five to eight games. We compared the league’s numbers with the first seven games of each of the last 12 seasons, and then looked at what happened to the 27 teams whose scoring fell by eight points or more from the year before.

The numbers that stand out

The league average is 113.4 points a team a game over 214 team-games. The first seven games of 2025-26 averaged 117.2. The previous biggest fall from one year to the next in the first seven games was 3.6 points, from 2020-21 to 2021-22
About 2.2 of the 3.8 points came from pace, 102.4 possessions a game against 104.4, and about 1.6 from efficiency, 110.8 points per 100 possessions against 112.3
Teams are taking 37.8 threes a game, a first-seven-game high. The previous high was 37.2 in 2024-25. They are taking 50.3 twos, the fewest in the 12 seasons, below 51.6 in 2024-25
They are not making them: 34.8 percent from three against 35.7 percent last season at this point, and 54.1 percent on twos against 55.1
Memphis (123.0 points a game), Los Angeles Lakers (122.5) and New Orleans (121.9) score the most. Charlotte (97.4) is last by 8.2 points over Brooklyn (105.6)

Where the points went

Season, first seven games	Points a game	Possessions a game	Points per 100 possessions	Effective FG%	Threes tried	Twos tried	3-point %	Free throws tried
2022-23	113.5	103.5	109.7	53.1%	34.5	54.9	35.5%	24.1
2023-24	113.2	103.4	109.4	53.6%	35.0	54.4	35.5%	22.3
2024-25	113.4	103.0	110.1	53.4%	37.2	51.6	35.7%	24.0
2025-26	117.2	104.4	112.3	54.4%	37.1	51.7	35.7%	26.2
2026-27 (through Monday)	113.4	102.4	110.8	53.3%	37.8	50.3	34.8%	25.2

Possessions are estimated as field goal attempts minus offensive rebounds plus turnovers plus 0.44 times free throw attempts. The 2026-27 row covers every team’s games through Monday, five to eight each.

The drop is mostly slower play and worse shooting, not fewer threes. Free throw attempts are down a point from last year’s start, 25.2 against 26.2, and still above where they were two seasons ago. The league’s turnover rate is about the same, 15.0 percent of possessions against 14.8.

Which teams changed the most

Eight teams are scoring at least five points a game fewer than they did over all of 2025-26. Six are scoring four or more points more.

Team	Record	Points a game	2025-26 points a game	Change	Threes tried a game
Charlotte	3-5	97.4	116.0	-18.6	44.4
Oklahoma City	5-2	108.0	119.0	-11.0	32.1
Utah	1-6	107.0	117.6	-10.6	35.4
Orlando	2-5	105.7	115.7	-10.0	38.3
New York	3-4	106.4	116.5	-10.0	40.0
Denver	3-3	113.3	122.1	-8.7	33.3
Detroit	6-1	111.9	117.8	-5.9	37.1
LA Clippers	1-6	108.1	113.8	-5.6	35.0

Team	Record	Points a game	2025-26 points a game	Change	Threes tried a game
Memphis	6-1	123.0	114.7	+8.3	38.7
New Orleans	3-4	121.9	115.5	+6.3	29.6
LA Lakers	6-2	122.5	116.3	+6.2	37.5
Portland	5-1	120.2	115.5	+4.7	44.2
Toronto	4-3	119.1	114.6	+4.5	35.4
Houston	7-1	119.2	115.2	+4.0	33.2

Points a game in 2026-27 through Monday against each team’s full 2025-26 regular season. Early-season scoring runs a little low in most years, so every team’s change starts slightly negative.

Oklahoma City is down 11.0 points, with Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace among the players out. Utah is down 10.6 and is getting to the line 26.4 times a game, above the league’s 25.2, so its drop is about shooting, 42.8 percent from the field. New York (106.4) and Orlando (105.7) are each down 10.0 points a game.

Charlotte: more threes than anyone, fewer points than anyone

The Hornets scored 97.4 points a game over eight games and are the only team under 100. They were under 100 in four of the eight, with 79, 81, 89 and 91, and lost 124-91 to Detroit on Monday night. They are last or near last in almost everything that goes into scoring:

The #Hornets have failed to score 100 points in four of their eight games to start the season. They're the only team in the #NBA that isn't averaging 100 points per game.
— Nick Carboni (@NickCarboniWCNC) November 3, 2026

Effective field goal percentage of 48.0, last in the league. Chicago is next at 48.2 and the league average is 53.3
Three-pointers attempted: 44.4 a game, the most in the NBA, and 50.9 percent of all their shots. They are making 29.6 percent of them, 29th
Free throws attempted: 16.9 a game, the fewest. Oklahoma City is next lowest at 20.1 and the league average is 25.2
Turnovers: 18.5 a game, second most, and the slowest pace in the league at 98.3 possessions
Points per 100 possessions: 99.1, last. Brooklyn is next at 103.4 and the league is at 110.8

We compared that with every team’s first eight games from 2014-15 through 2025-26, 360 team-starts, measuring each team against the league average for its own season. Charlotte’s 16.0-point gap in scoring is the widest. The previous widest was the 2019-20 Magic at 15.1 points, then the 2017-18 Bulls at 13.5. In points per 100 possessions, Charlotte’s gap of 11.7 is third, behind the 2014-15 76ers (12.7) and the 2017-18 Bulls (12.1).

Charlotte scored 116.0 points a game last season, so the fall of 18.6 is the largest of any team this year. Kon Knueppel has not played and Coby White made his season debut on Monday, in about 16 minutes. Both are listed as probable for Wednesday’s game at Brooklyn.

What history says about scoring slumps

Scoring has been one of the stickier early-season numbers. Measured against each season’s league average, a team’s first seven games and the rest of its season have a correlation of 0.48. Last season’s scoring matters about as much, at 0.49. A team that starts far below its usual level has tended to climb back most of the way.

We found 27 team-seasons since 2015-16 in which a team started at least eight points a game below its previous full season, again measured against the league each year. Those teams had been 2.2 points a game above average the year before. They started 7.5 below, then scored 0.3 below over the rest of the season, which recovered about three-quarters of the gap. Twenty-six of the 27 scored more over the rest of the season than they had at the start. They won 49.4 percent of their remaining games.

Group of 27 team-seasons	Points a game vs league average
Previous full season	+2.2
First seven games	-7.5
Rest of the season	-0.3

The six largest drops, by the same measure, show how that played out:

Team	Previous season points a game	First seven games	Rest of the season	Final record
2019-20 Magic	107.3	93.6	108.7	33-40
2019-20 Kings	114.2	101.1	111.1	31-41
2022-23 Clippers	108.4	99.9	114.9	44-38
2025-26 Cavaliers	121.9	114.1	120.0	52-30
2017-18 Rockets	115.3	103.9	113.1	65-17
2019-20 Jazz	111.7	100.0	112.5	44-28

Regular seasons 2015-16 through 2025-26 against the previous year. The 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons were shortened.

Three teams are in that group this year: Charlotte, Oklahoma City and Utah. New York and Orlando fall just short of eight points. The league as a whole also tends to start slow: in 10 of the last 12 seasons, scoring in the first seven games was below the rest-of-season average, by about a point on average.

What’s next

There were no games Tuesday. Wednesday’s 14-game schedule starts with Philadelphia at Detroit and Atlanta at Washington at 7 p.m. ET. Charlotte plays at Brooklyn at 7:30 p.m. ET, against the team with the second-lowest scoring in the league. Utah is at New Orleans, which has the second-fastest pace in the league (108.0), and Cleveland is at Oklahoma City at 8 p.m. ET.