From Embiid’s 70 to Luka’s 73, have NBA offenses become too good?

THE NBA IS in the middle of an offensive explosion.

Scoring averages this season are the highest since 1969-70, and the league has set a record for offensive efficiency six times in the past eight seasons.

Stars are churning out eye-popping performances at rates not seen since Wilt Chamberlain‘s prime. In January, four players scored 60-plus points in the span of four days: Joel Embiid (70) and Karl-Anthony Towns (62) on Jan. 22, Luka Doncic (73) and Devin Booker (62) on Jan. 26.

Less than a month later, the Eastern Conference All-Stars became the first team to surpass 200 points in the league’s midseason showcase.

After the game, a dull 211-186 win for the East, Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James was asked about the recent explosion of offensive numbers around the sport.

“This is what a lot of the [regular-season] games are starting to look like too,” James said Feb. 18 inside Indianapolis’ Gainbridge Fieldhouse after his record 20th All-Star appearance.

“We wanted to get more pace into the games. We wanted to get more shots. We wanted the game to be more free flowing. … It’s a deeper dive into a conversation of how we can shore up this game.”

James isn’t the first star to join that conversation. The question of whether offenses have become too overpowering has been driving years of discussion.

Now, the NBA’s leadership is having those discussions too.

Joe Dumars, the league’s executive vice president and head of basketball operations who was a pillar of the defensively elite “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons of the 1980s, told ESPN the league’s competition committee has officially begun reviewing whether the game has tilted too far toward offense and whether changes need to be implemented to achieve better balance.

“It is a topic that we’re monitoring,” Dumars told ESPN earlier this month. “We’re diving in right now to make sure that we’re on the right side of this.”

And while the NBA takes a closer look into the generational shift in defensive and offensive parity, finding a solution — if one is necessary — is going to be a challenging proposition.

“The rules really favor offense, in general, right now,” Rudy Gobert, Minnesota Timberwolves center and front-runner for his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award, told…