The 2026-27 Liga Endesa season has got underway in a scoring frenzy, in keeping with the increasingly fast-paced style of basketball that is taking hold in Spain and, from there, across Europe. Short possessions, early-clock offense, aggressive defense designed to generate transition opportunities and a heavy reliance on three-point shooting are increasingly becoming the norm for teams both in Spain and across the continent.
In keeping with that trend, the opening round of Spain’s top-flight competition produced a scoring bonanza: 1,706 points across nine games, averaging 94.8 points per team per game. It is the highest-scoring opening round in the history of the competition. The figure not only eclipses every previous opening-round mark, but also puts this start to the season among the most prolific offensive rounds of the ACB era — dating back to September 1983, when the ACB took over the running of professional basketball in Spain.
The historical context puts the record into perspective. Until now, the highest-scoring opening round had come in the 1986-87 season, when teams averaged 90.9 points. That campaign set the standard for offensive production and, remarkably, it still holds the record for the highest scoring average per team over an entire ACB season, at 89.6 points. Nearly four decades later, the opening round of 2026-27 has gone even further.
The gap with more recent benchmarks is also significant. In 2023-24, another particularly high-scoring opening round reached 87.2 points per team, the highest figure in 37 years. A total of 1,569 points were scored over nine games that season, with five players scoring at least 20 points. That opening weekend already looked exceptional. Three years later, the new record has surpassed it by more than seven points per team.
The collective record also hides a remarkable collection of individual performances and unusual scorelines. Seven teams scored 100 or more points, something that had never happened in a single round under the current 18-team format. The all-time record for 100-point teams in one round remains eight, set on the 17th round of the 1988-89 season, when the ACB featured 24 teams.
Even more remarkable was what happened in three of the nine games. Barça defeated Leyma Coruña 119-101, Río Breogán beat Asisa Joventut 110-104, while Valencia Basket fell to iLERNA Lleida 105-100. It is the first time in the ACB era that three games in the same round have seen both teams score at least 100 points. Until now, the maximum had been two.
Barça also recorded the third-highest scoring total by a team in an ACB opening round, with its 119 points against the Galician side. Río Breogán, meanwhile, reached 110 points to set a new club record for scoring in an opening-day game.
All of this fits into a trend that has been building for some time. Average scoring in the Liga Endesa has risen steadily over the past few seasons, from 81.5 points per team in 2022-23 to 83.2 in 2023-24, 86.2 in 2024-25 and 88.2 in 2025-26. Last season was already the second-highest-scoring in the competition’s history, behind only the extraordinary 1986-87 campaign.
Spanish basketball, then, appears to have fully embraced the fast lane. More possessions, quicker attacks and the growing importance of the three-point shot are producing increasingly high-scoring games — much to the delight of fans, who generally have little reason to complain when the points keep piling up.
And this is not simply a trend driven by younger coaches or a new generation of tacticians. Veteran coaches such as Luis Casimiro at Breogán and Moncho Fernández at Girona have also embraced the unstoppable wave, reflecting the clear influence of the NBA and the direction in which European basketball appears to be heading.
Ultimately, the opening round of the 2026-27 season has taken that evolution into uncharted territory: 94.8 points per team, 1,706 points overall and three games featuring more than 200 combined points.
The season has barely begun, but it has already issued a warning. To find an opening round this offensively productive, you have to go back almost four decades. This time, history has begun with a number that once seemed to belong to another era.
Perhaps it is a sign of a season set to become a scoring frenzy.
