At first I thought that this was proof that defense was dying, especially for orange, yellow, and (kind of) purple players, but then I thought I should break it down by defense and offense.
Hmmm... There really isn't much going on with defense. The orange players look a little worse. The yellow players look a little worse. But these aren't explaining the differences we saw in the first graph. So that must mean...
Players are getting better at offense. Yellow and orange players have been especially good lately. If you squint, you can kind of seek blue and green players ticking up a bit in recent years. Obviously the recent generation of purple players has been really good too. So the next question is obvious. What attributes in particular are higher for new players?
Welp. There you have it. This is one of the most obvious and interesting graphs I have ever generated. The message is clear. The new college generated players have way way waaaaaaay higher inside scoring scores, while everything else has remained fairly constant. Ins has been said to affect all aspects of scoring so that this change has led to a league-wide offensive explosion. Here are the in-game results from these changes for players playing more than 10 minutes a game and more than 60 games a year.
Defense isn't dying. Offenses full of college generated players are just really really good.
