Basketball History

History here is a data question: what actually changed, and where can you see it in the numbers? Rule changes get the most attention — the 2001 legalization of the zone, the 2004 hand-check crackdown, the 2021 restriction on foul-baiting — because each one left a mark on scoring, shot selection, or free-throw rate that you can point at. The rest revisits things everyone thinks they remember: what the ABA really left behind, the slow disappearance of fixed positions, the mid-range shot's fall from staple to specialty, and five famous trades re-graded with the win shares the players actually went on to produce. The recurring discipline is causal restraint. A rule change almost always arrives alongside two other shifts, and saying so is more useful than crediting the one that makes the better story.