The Ten Most Influential Trends of the 2010’s

I began this decade as a fifth grader and will exit it as a college junior. When I’m old, I will look back on my childhood and point to right now: the 2010’s. The 2010’s established my sports fandom and will forever shape the way I view the world. I often recall the series finale of The Office when Andy talks about wishing you could know when you’re in the “good old days”. Here’s my attempt to remember the good ol’ days of sports while I’m living in them.

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The world is changing faster than ever; so fast we can barely keep up. There’s no way to know what’s coming next — is this the peak or merely the starting point? It’s impossible to say, but we can still take note of how things have changed and estimate where we’re going. Here are the most influential trends in sports of the 2010’s:

The Increased Awareness for Injuries

The old cliches “walk it off” or “tough it out” seemed to dissipate this decade, and for good reason. There are cases when athletes could play through an injury, but in this decade, we finally realized that there are instances when athletes should not play under any circumstances.

Early in the decade, concussion awareness started gaining traction and came to the forefront of the conversation when Concussion released in 2015. From the NFL all the way down to Pop Warner, the significance of head trauma and potentially devastating long-term effects took priority over playing. In 2015, Chris Borland retired after just one professional season because he was worried about the long-term effects of playing football.

In basically every contact sport, some form of “load management” has taken hold. The term is most often used to describe NBA players resting during the regular season, but the concept isn’t specific to basketball. Baseball pitchers are on more strict pitch counts, rarely topping 100 pitches. The duration and physicality of practices have been dramatically reduced, in football especially; veterans commonly take rest days during the week.

The older generations tend to think sports have gotten “soft” or “weak”. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Scientific and medical advancements have allowed for a greater understanding of the levels of physical punishment the human body can absorb. While professional athletes sometimes seem like freaks of nature, they are all human. Nobody is invincible.

The Magnification Effect of Social Media

The effect of social media has rippled across all facets of society, sports included. Twitter exploded at the beginning of the 2010’s; then, Instagram and Snapchat stormed onto the scene. These platforms enabled everyone in the world to follow any event in real time. For the first time ever, people could watch the same game and discuss it with the world simultaneously.

Professional athletes are world famous — social media enabled us to get to know them outside of their day job. Social media essentially broke down the barrier between athletes and regular people.

Social media created a 24/7 news cycle and, thus, sports coverage has grown exponentially. For better or worse, Twitter has given everyone a platform to voice their opinions and be heard. There’s plenty of positives and negatives from the growth of social media; regardless, it has become a staple of modern culture that isn’t going away anytime soon.

College Basketball’s One-and-Done Era

The one-and-done era technically began in 2006, when a new rule in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement required players to be at least 19 years of age and one year removed from high school. However, it’s impossible to describe college basketball in the 2010’s without the phrase “one and done”.

John Calipari pioneered the movement in college basketball during the late 2000’s at Memphis. He made the national championship with Derrick Rose, who later went first overall in the 2008 NBA draft. 

However, other coaches were slower to adapt the one-and-done recruiting model. When Calipari took the job at Kentucky in 2010, the one-and-done model became the norm in college basketball. Calipari had at least one freshman get drafted in the top ten of the NBA draft from 2008 through 2018. Calipari had plenty of collegiate success as well during the early 2010’s. Kentucky won the national championship in 2012, made the national championship game in 2014 and lost in the Final Four in 2015.

The other bluebloods starting embracing the one-and-done model themselves by the mid-2010’s. Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid went to Kansas for a single season before becoming top three picks in the 2014 draft. Duke won the national championship in 2015 led by three freshmen (pictured above) and has produced at least one freshman lottery pick in each NBA draft since. Duke’s 2018 recruiting class featured the number one, two and three recruits in the country (RJ Barrett, Zion Williamson and Cam Reddish), and were drafted in the top ten of the 2019 draft.

Though a one-and-done player has been the top overall pick in every single draft since 2007, the one-and-done era is likely coming to a close by the mid-2020’s. Adam Silver said during the 2017 NBA Finals that it is time for a change. The NBA appears to be targeting 2023, but the logistics are complex. While the one-and-done model didn’t lead to as many NCAA titles as many perhaps anticipated, it undoubtedly defined this era of college basketball during this decade.

Rebirth of Historically Terrible Franchises

Perhaps this type of thing happens every decade, but the 2010’s were good to quite a few perennial losers. Brace yourselves: you will read the word “drought” a lot in the following paragraphs.

The New Orleans Saints won their first Super Bowl in 2010, as did the Seattle Seahawks in 2013 and the Philadelphia Eagles in 2018. In 2017, the Bills made the playoffs for the first in seventeen years; at the time, it was the longest playoff drought in any of the four major sports.

In baseball, the Kansas City Royals made their first playoff appearance in 29 years in 2014, then won their first championship in thirty years in 2015. The Chicago Cubs infamously ended their 108-year title drought in 2016. The Houston Astros won their first World Series title in franchise history in 2017, while the Washington Nationals did the same in 2019 after unsuccessfully flirting with the ultimate victory basically the entire decade.

In eerily similar fashion, the Washington Capitals claimed their first Stanley Cup championship in 2018. The Los Angeles Kings won their first Stanley Cup in 2012 and won again in 2014. In January of 2019, the St. Louis Blues found themselves at the bottom of the NHL standings before executing one of the most improbable runs of all-time en route to their first championship in franchise history.

Dirk Nowitzki led the Dallas Mavericks to their first NBA championship in 2011. Before entering one of the most dominant runs in NBA history from 2015-2019, the Golden State Warriors hadn’t won a championship since 1975. In 2016, the Cleveland Cavaliers ended their city-wide, 52-year title drought when the hometown hero, LeBron James, led them to a historic 3-1 comeback in the Finals. The Toronto Raptors broke through with the franchise’s first NBA championship in 2019 after toiling in postseason mediocrity for most of the decade.

Despite not winning a championship, the Los Angeles Clippers arguably made the most drastic improvement as a franchise this decade. At the start of the decade, the Clippers were notoriously owned by Donald Sterling, unequivocally the worst owner in professional sports. A leaked phone call in April 2014 by his mistress started a chain reaction that led to his lifetime ban and the sale of the team. Steve Ballmer purchased the franchise just four months later for a record-setting $2 billion. He has since remodeled every single aspect of the franchise and turned the Clippers from the laughing stock of the league into one that convinced perhaps the league’s best player, Kawhi Leonard, to choose them over the NBA’s crown jewel: the Los Angeles Lakers.

The MLB’s Second Analytics Movement: Astroball

The most influential trend in baseball last decade was, of course, Moneyball. The Oakland A’s did not have the financial pocket to compete with the big spenders, so general manager, Billy Beane, devised a new way to win. He embraced analytics to an unprecedented level and broke team-building down to a science. Beane’s A’s were always competitive, but never won a World Series.

This decade, we witnessed the sequel to Moneyball: Astroball. The name comes from Ben Reiter’s book, Astroball, in which he chronicled the Astros rise from the league’s worst team to its best. Both philosophies rely heavily on analytics, but Astroball better factors in the human element of professional sports. For example, the Astros understood a championship team needed a veteran leader, not just a bunch of kids with high on base percentages.

The main reason Beane never built a true contender with Oakland was the franchise’s small payroll. That’s the other half of Astroball — the big spenders like the Astros, Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, and Red Sox improved upon Beane’s analytics models and continued to outspend everyone else. These franchise built super-teams loaded with star players and surrounded them with cheap, but wildly talented young players. Until there’s a change in the MLB’s collective bargaining agreement, Astroball is how to win in professional baseball.

The NFL’s Cheap Quarterback Cheat Code

The NFL introduced a new collective bargaining agreement in 2011. Whenever this happens, teams have to make subtle adaptations in order to capitalize on the new rule changes. The CBA significantly reduced the rookie wage scale, creating an exploitable inefficiency in the NFL’s new economy: a cheap quarterback. 

The first team to do so was the Seattle Seahawks, though they didn’t exactly plan on it. They drafted Russell Wilson in the third round of the 2012 NFL Draft. Wilson won the starting job outright during training camp and led Seattle to the Super Bowl in 2013 and 2014, while making about $681,000. That’s less than 0.5% percent of the salary cap, which enabled Seattle to spend the extra money on star defensive players.

Seattle accidentally discovered the blueprint to winning the Super Bowl in this era. Teams quickly realized the quickest path to contention is finding a franchise quarterback in the draft and capitalizing during their rookie contracts. The 2018 Eagles and 2019 Rams copied this formula and each made the Super Bowl, though only the Eagles won.

The Patriots found a loophole to this strategy: having a quarterback whose wife earns more money than him. Tom Brady intentionally takes a discount to allow the Patriots to sign more talent. It’s the same basic philosophy.

The NBA’s Position-less Metamorphosis

Throughout the history of basketball, there were always five positions: point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward and center. Over time, the game has evolved and versatility is more important than ever. Centers now shoot three-pointers and guards can average double-digit rebounds. Thus, an update in the basketball dictionary was necessary.

Back in 2017, Celtics coach Brad Stevens said he no longer uses five positions, just three: ball-handler, wing and big. In reality, even those three positions often blend together. Giannis Antetokounmpo plays all three of those positions at various times. In the “pace and space” era, players are more like Swiss Army knives, capable of doing just about everything on the court, rather than unmalleable tools.

The NBA’s Three-Point Revolution

Try watching any NBA game from the 2000’s — it’s literally a different sport. We all know teams shoot more three-pointers than ever, but here’s a stat that puts the rapid evolution of basketball into perspective: During the 2009-10 season, the Magic led the league with 27.2 three-point attempts; in 2018-19, only four teams shot less than 27.2 threes per game. That tells you everything you need to know about how the game has changed.

The face of the three-point explosion is, of course, Steph Curry. Before 2010, only two players had ever made more than 260 three-pointers in a single season and neither made more than 270. In this decade alone (technically, since 2012-13), there have been fourteen seasons in which a player has made more than 260; four in which a player made over 300 and one made over 400 three-pointers. Five of those fourteen seasons are Curry’s, including three of 300+ and his record-setting 2015-16 season in which he splashed 402 made threes. Four hundred and two!

Similar to baseball’s three true outcomes (home run, strikeout, walk), basketball developed its own: three-point shot, dunk, free throw. The midrange game isn’t in danger of extinct — just watch Kawhi Leonard in the 2019 playoffs — but it is certainly an endangered offensive tool.

The NFL’s Passing Boom

The NFL passing boom technically began with the 2007 Patriots when Tom Brady threw for 4,806 yards and a record 50 touchdowns. It took a few years for the rest of the league to catch on — a notoriously common theme in NFL history. 

Before this decade, there had only been one player to top 5,000 passing yards in a season (Dan Marino in 1984); it’s happened ten times this decade alone (an additional nine players came within 100 yards). In fact, from 2011 through 2016, Drew Brees averaged 5,140 passing yards per season.

Tom Brady and Brees briefly broke the single season record in 2011, before Peyton Manning edged out Brees by a single yard while shattering Brady’s record with 55 touchdowns in during his legendary 2013 season. No player has threatened either of Manning’s records, but Patrick Mahomes became the second member of the 5,000/50 club in 2018, his first season as a starter. Essentially, it is easier than ever to play quarterback in the NFL.

There are several factors that have attributed to decreasing the difficulty of the most valuable position in sports. The first — the lesson from the 2007 Patriots — is the Air Raid style schemes now found abundant across the league. Teams finally realized that it’s easier to find open receivers if you just spread them out. Additionally, the younger generation of quarterbacks grew up with modern styles of coaching; they quickly grasped the new NFL because that’s how they’ve always played. 

While baseball’s analytical revolution began at the turn of the century, the NFL is just starting to enter theirs at the end of the 2010’s. (Again, the NFL is always a late-mover, never a trend-setter.) Analytics gurus figured out that many football cliches (establishing the run to set up the pass, wearing down the opposing defense with runs up the middle) have no statistical bearing. Play action is effective regardless of an effective running game and doesn’t appear to have diminishing returns yet. The NFL is only at the tip of the iceberg in 2019. By 2029 (if football even exists), we could potentially see some one like Mahomes approaching 6,000 yards and 60 touchdowns. Who knows?

The NBA’s Player Empowerment Era

We’re living in the player empowerment era in the #NBA. @JonathanTjarks explains where it came from and where it goes from here. #RingerPhD pic.twitter.com/lGPfCcr5wu

— The Ringer (@ringer) December 19, 2019

“The Decision” truly revolutionized professional sports. Star players almost never left their respective teams in their prime; the notable exception is when Shaquille O’Neal signed with the Lakers in 1996. LeBron bucked all historical norms by signing with Miami (for less than a max salary). Then, he did it again when he returned to Cleveland in 2014. Kevin Durant didn’t exactly follow LeBron’s footsteps when he left Oklahoma City for the 73-win Warriors in 2016, but he certainly followed an adjacent path.

2019 is a microcosm of the “player empowerment” era. Anthony Davis signed with Klutch Sports Group before the 2018-19 season, which has strong ties to the Lakers’ LeBron James. Midseason, Davis decided he was tired of losing with the Pelicans and demanded a trade. Davis and his agent, LeBron’s close friend, made it clear the Lakers were their desired destination. In the past, the Pelicans would have simply held onto Davis, who had another season and a half on his contract; or, if the Pelicans did decide to trade him, they would have taken the best offer, regardless of Davis’ preferences. Instead, Davis created his own leverage — why would another team trade assets for him if he’s only going to leave in free agency? The Lakers acquired Davis during the 2019 offseason.

On the other end of the spectrum, Kawhi Leonard led the Raptors to a championship, but still was unsatisfied in Toronto. Leonard wanted to play in his hometown of Los Angeles, where two premier destinations had space for him: the Lakers with LeBron and Davis, or the Clippers, who lacked a co-superstar. Leonard told the Clippers he would sign with them, provided they traded for another star player of his choosing. He convinced Paul George to demand a trade out of Oklahoma City, just one season after signing an extension. Meanwhile, while recruiting George and conspiring with the Clippers, Leonard strung the Lakers along. He held the entire basketball world in his palm. The Clippers traded for George and signed Leonard during the 2019 offseason.

Star players leave their teams seemingly every single year, via free agency or trade. The rapid roster shuffling across the league has created a generation of fans who follow players, not teams. Perhaps more importantly, athletes are embracing that they are “more than an athlete” and capable of helping impact the world outside of sports. The craziest part of the player empowerment era: this might only be the tip of the iceberg.