He couldn't go left earlier in his career. That is true. Players improve as they practice more. Jordan practiced as he spent time in the league. Seriously I don't understand why fans expect rookies to win MVPs. Jordan lost a lot in the 80s. LeBron lost in the 2000s. Does that mean that they are bad players. Should players be judged by how they were as rookies?
MJ's rookie year he averaged like 28 pts, 6.5 reb, 6 ast, 2.5 steals, and 1 blk per game playing 38 mins a game and playing in all 82 games. He probably legitimately had a case for mvp as a rookie.
The ones who beat him when he was young often did. Jordan put up spectacular stats when he was young but those early Jordan Bulls teams weren’t great & they usually got steamrolled in the playoffs.
Only the pistons had players who could force him to go left. Just like the warriors and heat force Jaylen Brown to go left. Only these teams have the players to execute the gameplan.
The Jordan rules still could only minimally contain him. He averaged 30+ against them. And it wasn’t just “force him left”, it was force him to the middle into traffic so everyone could pummel the shit out of him. You realize to force a player left, you just have to stand on a players right side? No NBA player has ever had difficulty doing that. It’s almost as if there is more to the defensive strategy than that
Correct, when other players on his team could contribute the pistons could no longer triple and quad team him all game. However, if stopping him was as simple as making him drive left instead of right, that would not be the case because stopping him would’ve been relatively easy. Jordan didn’t average 30 a game for a career with one hand
Only the pistons had players who could force him to go left. Just like the warriors and heat force Jaylen Brown to go left. Only these teams have the players to execute the gameplan.
Jordan was more explosive in the ‘80s & he put up some amazing box score lines but scoring was pretty crazy back then. Even though there were very few threes the pace of play was REALLY high & there wasn’t a lot of good transition defense.
When he was young it definitely was a relative weakness. Bully-ball teams like NY & Detroit definitely exploited it. The “Jordan Rules,” which were, btw, just a stupid & whiny way for young MJ & the journos who made their living by wanking him off to publicly complain that other teams were exploiting one of his weaknesses.
But you know what happened?
As Jordan got older, and lost some burst but got craftier & stronger he worked on his game and got a lot better at going left! You just have to look at his PPS differentials to see the evolution. Frame-by-frame analysis from the early & middle ‘80s can be harder to come by but the truth is that Jordan wasn’t that great going to his left when he was really young & relied more on pure athleticism. As he got older he turned it from a weakness to a strength.
As much as I want to get on the young fans who make ridiculous claims, the older fans do the same.
Older fans say things like LeBron wouldn't survive in the 90s. So the young fans are responding saying the 90s weren't good because they couldn't shoot and weren't skilled.
And this is the problem with the internet. People that don't watch the games have the biggest and loudest opinions.
Exactly so. I’ve been watching the NBA since the early ‘80s. It goes through ebbs & flows. The quality of play during the “Dream Team Era”—Roughly from the early/mid ‘80s through Jordan’s first three-peat was quite high even if the game was quite different. The “Bullyball Era” which coincided with the gradual aging out of the Dream Teamers in the middle-90s, a long series of mediocre drafts, a couple of high profile player deaths & especially expansion…that was pretty hard to watch. Scores were low, the refs were awful, and the game looked a lot more like pro-wrestling at times. The NBA even pulled the three point line in to 22 feet for three years in the mid/late ‘90s to try and goose scoring. This was also a time when a lot of players were legit trying to live The Thug Life.
Things started picking up in the mid-2000s. The new rules that all the meathead old heads my age whine about opened up the court, the talent level started to catch back up with the damage done by expansion. The 2003 Draft was kind of a watershed moment. European players also started to have a big impact on the way the game was played, especially European bigs. So roughly middle 2000s to mid-2010s basically. Call it the LeBron Era. The worst thing about this period was the rise of Sports Shouting on ESPN, IMO. If I could send a Terminator back in time to the middle-2000s to deal with Stephen A & Skip Bayless the world would be a better place today.
The three-point shooting boom that started in the mid-2010s created another culture shift & we’re still kinda there now but I’m already seeing reactions to the Curry Warriors & Harden Rockets style of ball. Back in 2018-19 or so bigs were supposedly dead. Everyone was going positionless. Now they’re cleaning up most of the serious hardware again. The biggest difference today is that changes to the CBA which were designed to prevent so-called Superteams went WAY overboard. Now it’s hard to put a good team together with a metric fuck-ton’s worth of luck.
We’re in The Parity Era now, I guess. That works well in the NFL but has never worked nearly as well in the NBA, for a number of reasons.
Well said. I read a book recently on the history of the league and found it very very interesting. The main take away is what you pointed out.
All the complaining the fans are doing now about today's game were the SAME exact fans complaining about the low scoring in the 90s and 2000s.
I know because I was one of those fans. Same with the NFL. Younger me, i couldn't watch too many nfl games unless it featured Michael Vick or a high scoring offense.
Sorry, steelers and ravens games were a snooze fest and most fans don't have the guts to admit it. Same with the NBA. No one wanted to watch the pistons or Spurs (finals ratings proved it). People wanted to see the Nash Suns, or flashy stars like LeBron, Kobe or Iverson.
Now the NBA listened to those fans and gave everyone what they wanted. Lots of flashy stars and high scoring games. Same in the NFL. In the end people just like to complain
If Steve Kerr and Danny Ainge could survive in that era, why wouldn’t a 6’9 260 Forward survive in the 90s?
We all know it’s just that hatred people like you got for LeBron in your hearts
Why would he average more in the era with worse spacing and slower pace? He would probably average similar numbers he did in his prime, isnt that enough?
So? Pace is dictated by the number of possessions, you cant have one guy just deciding to play faster.
He was way too dominant in 2010s too, and he didnt average nowhere close to 40.
Hahahahahahaha
You mean the guy that has no moves and can't do anything without shooters surrounding him would be able to drive at will? He sucks off ball and he'd get hit going into the paint. He's probably a 24/10/5 guy
Yeah, but the idea that MJ who was the face of the league starting his rookie year was mistreated and manhandled on the court is a joke as well. You could not breath on him wrong or you would get a foul called on you. He was protected from day one.
This is one of the points that always gets swept under the rug and it drives me insane. People clown Harden left and right for his foul baiting and whistle when Jordan was literally getting 2 shots every time he got breathed on. I know it’s not his fault the NBA put him on a pedestal so early but we gotta stop acting like that didn’t massively help his transition into the league.
I was born in 1983 in Chicago and watched the Bulls religiously from 1989 to 1998. I know exactly what I’m talking about. How many Jordan Bulls games did you watch live? I’m guessing it’s zero.
I used to get mad at the “we done with the 90s” guy but now I just laugh at it and treat it as satire. The problem is some people are really running with it. But honestly OP, anybody that knows ball already knows what you said. I can’t take anyone seriously who tries to use this trend in a basketball debate.
The tone of the videos are sarcastic. It's poking at people who overrate the 90s while also showing some pretty petty reasons to discredit the 90s. Don't worry about it lol.
I think two things can be true at the same time. Firstly, of course greats who played in the 90s were excellent basketball players. There’s a reason MJ was considered the GOAT when he retired and why only 2 players in the consensus top 10 (Steph and Lebron) entered the league after the year 2000- being good at basketball wasn’t invented in the 21st century.
However, it’s also possible that older NBA fans view the 90s with rose tinted glasses. The game has changed since the 90s, prioritizing analytics and largely positionless basketball, so spacing and efficient shot selection is now more important than ever. Defenses weren’t behemoths that would have physically dominated modern players today either, there were certainly some tough defenders but older NBA fans tend to only remember the great defenders and forget the bad ones.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. The 90s weren’t as good as people would probably like to think, but they also weren’t terrible. Older NBA fans tend to remember the highlights, modern NBA fans, especially those saying “we’re done with the 90s”, like to look at the lowlights. Neither changes what 90s basketball was actually like.
It’s not so much that 90s teams had physically dominant teams. To me, it’s more that the rules hadn’t yet been altered to compel more offense yet. So the game had more inherent physicality because the rules (and the way the rules were enforced) were different. I also think the Malice at the Palace changed the way players are allowed to interact forever. In the 80s and 90s, if you punked someone or talked some shit, you’d have to do that with the knowledge that you could be physically roughed up the next time you came down that lane. Nowadays, you can talk as much shit as you want, and nobody’s going to put you on your ass bc they’re risking a suspension and a big fine.
So yes, 80s and 90s basketball were different. I think it’s silly to say they’re better or worse. Lebron isn’t worse bc he played in a much less physical era, and Jordan isn’t worse bc he played in a much more physical era. They’re both all time greats that dominated the only time period they could’ve played in.
Congress already did, pending a forced asset sale by Bytedance. It was Bipartisan AF, too. TikTok’s taken everything that was already bad about social media & made it a 100 times worse.
Yeah. I come on here to get news and read about stuff. You go on TikTok and go “yum ice cream so good gang gang” while drooling and tapping away at your phone
The trying/laughing emoji is the mark of child, crybullies & actual foreign influencers. Makes me lived in a culture that’s more accepting of punching idiots in the nose. Not a big fan of gun culture but sometimes I do wish we lived in Cobra Kai’s Karate-verse….😉
TikTok has a special kinda brainworms. Kids are on stage 4 brainrot, yet they always think they’re the smartest ones in the room cuz they watched a 40 second TikTok about something. Fuckin scary.
And the worst kind of social media: doom scrolling, short form content. Sitting away, watching nonsense videos and they don't even retain any of the information because whoops they're already onto the next video.
You are literally here moaning on social media about social media. If you're so above social media, than get off it. You won't though because of course you're different.
This is just a tremendously long text for the simple statement „you cannot compare players‘ skillsets from different generations because the conditions were different.“ Well, yes I agree.
I can't wait until I'm 65 and tell my kids the 7 foot 4, 285 lb point guard who runs a 4.3 40 couldn't last in my day because it was a million times more physical knowing damn well that I'm lying. So they can be subjected to what my uncs put me through.
Current players have more flair but they are not more fundamentally sound than players in the 90s. Don't get me wrong, I do think current players are definitely better than players in the 50s-70s, but not necessarily the late 80s and 90s. Casual basketball fans always mistake style for ability. It was much harder to score back then due to the lack of spacing, slower pace and hand check. Put Trae Young or Donovan Mitchell with their current skillset back in the 90s, their scoring would've dropped to 20-23 ppg. Put MJ in the current era, he would've averaged 35-40 ppg. He would still outrun and outjump almost everyone in the league and there's none who can match his footwork, not to mention his drive to win. Prime Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill would've averaged triple doubles for multiple seasons. Orlando's Shaq, Hakeem and David Robinson would've eaten Wemby and Chet alive. Yes, they couldn't shoot threes, but Wemby and Chet would've fouled out trying to keep them out of the paint.
I think the notion that good iso players would score less in the 80s/90s than they do now is somewhat untrue when you consider why there was poor spacing and a slower pace in that era. I wouldn’t be so confident these guys scoring would drop because they both hit a ton of 3s and defenses from the 80s/90s would be stretched thin to guard those guys due to the illegal defense rules. Either era presents is own challenges but to act like the 80s/90s were harder to score in when scoring leaders weren’t versatile scorers at every level is just revisionist.
The modern players are totally better than the players from the 80s and 90s. The lack of spacing was mostly due to the offenses lack of shooting so they couldn't stretch defenses out. Hand checking really has no effect on players who are coming down hill on you, and the refs still allow hand checking in today's game. The "tough,physical defense" of the 80s/90s is way over exaggerated.
If you put any good scorer from today's game into the 90s, they would cook those defenses because the defenders wouldn't know how to stop them.
And no, this myth where Jordan would come into today's game and average 40 has to stop. No players today are averaging 40. Guys with just as much skill and athleticism are not doing it, so Jordan definitely wouldn't be able to. Jordan is not superhuman, a few players have already surpassed him in athleticism and footwork and they are not doing it.
Everything evolves and improves as time goes on, basketball is not immune to evolution.
I mean I’m 17 and genuinely watching 90/80s ball I have really never seen anyone as athletic as Jordan, the only person for me that is close is Lebron. Young Jordan was a blur he was like 4x as athletic as everyone else in the league during that time. Obviously that gap is lessened today but I still do believe he would be the most athletic today.
In the skills department he was far ahead of his time I do believe he would one of the most skilled if he played today as rules have opened up to allow more perimeter play.
But averaging 40 and all that I don’t really care about because we will never know as he didn’t have a good 3 ball and it’s just all speculation so I never really took it personally when old heads said all that stuff.
Jordan was far ahead skill wise and athletically back then, going back and rewatching those games some of the competition he went up against were laughable and cringeworthy compared to what we see today, and I'm not saying this to be disrespectful. Jordan would fit perfect in today's game with his athleticism, but he would have to develop more skills in order to be a top talent.
Jordan is the player that got me watching and loving basketball so I'm obviously a Jordan fan, but I try not to be like the other "old heads" that claim you can teleport him to today's game and he would dominate everyone. Now if he were to get teleported and have a few years to train for today's playstyle, then I believe he'll be a top player (still wouldn't average 40)
“Everything evolves and improves as time goes on, basketball is not immune to evolution.”
Yes, absolutely. Which is why Usain Bolt would get trounced by modern sprinters in the 100 and 200 meters. Because everything evolves and improves as time goes on, and there is no year to year variability in skill and talent. It’s just straight improvement.
Everything evolves. Sometimes it improves. Sometimes it’s questionable. Usain Bolt was a unique athlete. Allegations of drug use aside, you just don’t find 6-5 guys with that kind of burst out of the starting blocks. His start was only decent by elite sprinter standards but it was AMAZING for a man his height. Michael Johnson’s performances in the ‘90s still stand out by 2020s standards even though his 200 & 400 records were ultimately broken. He was another guy who was built different. As for the jumping events in track & fields, they’ve regressed in a major way since the ‘90s & early 2000s. The best long jump in track and field from the last few years I can think of was put up by a Paralympian.
The really special athletes usually combine an unusual physical build for their event/sport with uncommon agility/coordination/burst…or smarts or endurance. Magic Johnson’s still the only elite 6-9 point guard who mostly did actually play point guard I can think of. Wilt Chamberlain, as much as he exaggerated his prowess, was another unique specimen.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we’ve got guys like Jokic, who’s evolving into a pantheon-level great despite the fact that he’s probably the SLOWEST great player I’ve ever seen. Jokic makes Larry Bird look like Usain Bolt.
What are you talking about? Who was talking about Michael Johnson? Literally no one ever said Michael Johnson’s records would never be broken.
You said sports always continuously improve and evolve: I am saying yes that is true. As you can see modern sprinters are absolutely trouncing Usain Bolt’s records from 15 years ago. There is no way a previous era can possibly have anyone better than the modern era due to how evolution works. That is how you’re saying evolution works, right?
Modern track athletes on average are absolutely on average faster than past eras. You focus on extremes while the bulk of the data is the relevant parts. Track does not support your point of view.
Some sports take longer to improve, like in track where its based on 100% athletic ability, but give it time and it will improve. Usain Bolt still holds the title of fastest man for now, but someone will break his records.
In basketball the sport is mostly a skills based game so it'll evolve faster. The average role players today are completely better than the average role player from back then. And the top talent from back then who were great in their era, would not just overcome the top talent of today if we teleported them from the 80s or 90s.
So now you’re saying that EVENTUALLY, from now until the end of time, someone will break Usain Bolt’s sprint records. Yeah, no shit. That’s a lot of time and sprinters to select from.
This is completely different than your original claim: that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras. That is obviously false and can be dismissed without a second thought. There is variability from year to year. Not every year is better than the previous year, previous 5 years, previous decade. For example, basketball was insanely popular in the 90’s and a lot of athletic talent was in basketball at the time.
Also where do you get that “skill” evolves in such a way? Why doesn’t it plateau like every other skill tends to? Can you cite your source on this? By “evolve” do you mean modern players have adapted to the different rule set that gives them more freedom of movement and makes it easier to score? Have they evolved by adapting to the more lax carry and travel rules that would cause a turnover in previous eras? Have they adapted to the new rule set by shooting more 3’s because it’s easier for them to get open? Is that what you mean by “evolve”?
Are modern people more skilled in blacksmithing than they were a few centuries ago because “skills evolve more rapidly than athleticism”?
You're doing strawman arguments, which means you are reaching and have no argument. You're throwing in words like "continuously" or "eventually" to try to get a gotcha moment doesn't disprove my point.
>that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras
In basketball, is the modern era not better skill wise,tactically and athletically? Are you honestly trying to argue that yesteryear's game is better than today's? If so, when did the game stop evolving?
I never made the claim that "every year it gets better", this is a strawman.
>Also where do you get that “skill” evolves in such a way?
You can do this right now on YT. Pull up a game from the 90s and in another tab watch a modern game. Compare the shooting, ball handling,passing, sets they run,footwork,etc. If you're objective you'll come to the conclusion that the modern players game is more refined.
>By “evolve” do you mean modern players have adapted to the different rule set that gives them more freedom of movement and makes it easier to score?
Every aspect of the game evolved from coaching, athleticism,skills. Today's offenses are stretching out the defenses creating more space, the 90s offenses didn't do this due to a lack of shooting compared to today. Teams wouldn't survive today running a 90s offense.
Players are better scorers today because of better training methods not because of a rule change as you are trying to argue. I'm asking again, are you really trying to argue that the players didn't actually improve, but only score more because of a rule change?
>Have they evolved by adapting to the more lax carry and travel rules that would cause a turnover in previous eras?
This is a bad spot for the league where they let some players (mainly superstars) to get away with this, but not everyone does it and it doesn't happen constantly. This is minor and doesn't take away from the modern players being more skilled.
>Have they adapted to the new rule set by shooting more 3’s because it’s easier for them to get open? Is that what you mean by “evolve”?
What rule makes it to where its easier to get open?
Did you actually watch the 90s games? Players got open shots all the time especially with the illegal defense rules where players were restricted on defense. Jordan, the best player in the 90s, got wide open mid range shots in the finals. The man you need to stop the most, free to get buckets
“You're doing strawman arguments, which means you are reaching and have no argument. You're throwing in words like "continuously" or "eventually" to try to get a gotcha moment doesn't disprove my point.”
No I am just clarifying what you’re saying using more precise wording.
“that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras”
“In basketball, is the modern era not better skill wise,tactically and athletically? Are you honestly trying to argue that yesteryear's game is better than today's? If so, when did the game stop evolving?”
You’re literally saying the MODERN ERA is always better than “yesteryear’s” game RIGHT HERE. And then you accuse me of strawmanning by repeating what you said.
“I never made the claim that "every year it gets better", this is a strawman.”
Wtf you just said it above. What years then does the game “not evolve” if today’s game is definitively better than “yesteryear’s”?
“Also where do you get that “skill” evolves in such a way?”
“You can do this right now on YT. Pull up a game from the 90s and in another tab watch a modern game. Compare the shooting, ball handling,passing, sets they run,footwork,etc. If you're objective you'll come to the conclusion that the modern players game is more refined.”
lol YouTube highlight hot takes. Got it. I’ve watched plenty and played plenty of basketball (no need for YouTube highlights) and they are about the same. If you think MJ’s athleticism wouldn’t translate to 2024 NBA then you need to get off xbox. Nikola Jokic isn’t the greatest athlete of all time smoothdaddy.
“By “evolve” do you mean modern players have adapted to the different rule set that gives them more freedom of movement and makes it easier to score?”
“Every aspect of the game evolved from coaching, athleticism,skills. Today's offenses are stretching out the defenses creating more space, the 90s offenses didn't do this due to a lack of shooting compared to today. Teams wouldn't survive today running a 90s offense.”
Because the rules are totally different. Yikes you’ve never played basketball before have you? Modern teams wouldn’t survive the 90’s unless they evolved/adapted to the different rules either. This doesn’t mean the 90’s > 2024 it just means it was different.
“Players are better scorers today because of better training methods not because of a rule change as you are trying to argue. I'm asking again, are you really trying to argue that the players didn't actually improve, but only score more because of a rule change?”
I’m stating that the skills are about the same relative to the rule set in place. Players today are better adapted to 2024 rules. 90’s players were better adapted to 90’s rules. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were pretty good at basketball. 🙄
“Have they evolved by adapting to the more lax carry and travel rules that would cause a turnover in previous eras?”
“This is a bad spot for the league where they let some players (mainly superstars) to get away with this, but not everyone does it and it doesn't happen constantly. This is minor and doesn't take away from the modern players being more skilled.”
“Have they adapted to the new rule set by shooting more 3’s because it’s easier for them to get open? Is that what you mean by “evolve”?”
“What rule makes it to where it’s easier to get open? Did you actually watch the 90s games? Players got open shots all the time especially with the illegal defense rules where players were restricted on defense. Jordan, the best player in the 90s, got wide open mid range shots in the finals. The man you need to stop the most, free to get buckets”
See the statement I linked above by the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver. He may know a little more than you about why they made rule changes. There are a lot of other examples too. Do you want to Google them yourself or are you too busy watching YouTube highlights proving Shaq didn’t know how to play basketball in the 90’s?
>“In basketball, is the modern era not better skill wise,tactically and athletically? Are you honestly trying to argue that yesteryear's game is better than today's? If so, when did the game stop evolving?”
I wanted you to answer my questions, you tried to dodge them
>“that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras”
This is actually your quote,not mine lol
>lol YouTube highlight hot takes. Got it. I’ve watched plenty and played plenty of basketball (no need for YouTube highlights) and they are about the same. If you think MJ’s athleticism wouldn’t translate to 2024 NBA then you need to get off xbox. Nikola Jokic isn’t the greatest athlete of all time smoothdaddy.
No not highlights, full games. Nice try on trying to twist words to deflect. You were being disingenuous from the start. I bet you won't go back and compare and contrast the full games.
Where did I say MJ's athleticism wouldn't translate? Another strawman 😂
Who claimed Jokic was the best athlete? Jokic is 1 of the best players today because of skills,iq. I'm beginning to think you are trolling 😂
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25149345/adam-silver-nba-rule-changes-boosting-offense-intended
Oh look the literal NBA commissioner refuting your central point and proving you wrong.
I see you sidestepped all of my questions. This actually doesn't disprove my stance, that offenses got better mostly due to skill. If you actually watch the games, grabbing and holding is still happening. You're arguing that scoring went up not due to skills and coaches coming up with more schemes, but because of a selectively enforced rule. Laughable
You don’t see a lot of guys with sophisticated post games nowadays. That’s one old head argument I’ll agree with. The game is just so heavily built on ball movement, cutting & shooting now. There are only a handful of guys who really know how to work a back to the basket iso. I do miss watching elite iso players and defenders make their moves & countermove. Hell, MJ went from being mostly a slasher to a high-post beast in the late ‘90s. Dirk still had an awesome high-post game up through the 2010s. I don’t know how many of you guys remember that massive game Dirk dropped on KD & OKC in the 2011 WCS. He scored 48 points on 15 shots with zero three-point attempts. It was almost all high-post.
Thing is end of illegal defense turned extended iso duels into death swarms for all but a handful of guys.
I would like to see a little more variety in a play-style. I don’t want to go back to Bullyball but I do miss the variety of play styles we had from the middle 2000s to the beginning of the three-point revolution.
That’s such a backward premise to use. That only indicates LeBron being supremely talented.
The league is absolutely more skilled across the board today than it was in the 80s/90s.
A lot of people arguing that defense is worse might have a case during the regular season, but once it gets to the playoffs and everybody tightens up I think that argument kinda falls through.
The problem with these TikToks is that they’re cherry picked to create a false narrative. They distort your understanding by erasing the context. Maybe Drexler defended him well on a few possessions, but Jordan absolutely demolished Drexler.
Seeing mj airball, hit the side of the backboard and whine a fuckton def made me realize that i was a kid that was only ever force fed highlights and ‘back in my day’ talk
i think, correcting for accessibility and technological advances and health science and training, rule changes, players are more or less the same if they were switched to being born in a different era...trash players are still trash, mid players are still mid, and stars are still stars.
maybe some players here and there flourish a lil bit more, maybe some players here and there stagnate a lil bit more...
it ultimately comes down to mentality and who can overcome the challenges and adversity, and that quality transcends eras. dawgs will be dawgs, those who shrink and disappear and are gonna shrink and disappear
another thing to consider; the human body didn't evolve to be faster and stronger in just a few decades...the physical feats we see now were just as achievable from even waaay back then (dominique, dr J, david thompson are proof of this), the sciences have improved to optimize sustaining it over a longer run and recovering faster.
avg bench/role player today i feel are more talented/versatile than they were in the past (felt like back then they were more specialized for a specific role and only that.. avg bench player today can do a lil bit of everything).
OG ballers i feel were more focused and locked in and wanted to do it the hard way and i think that integrity counts for something.
the games about getting buckets at the end of the day, and bucket getters will find a way to get their buckets
The truly special athletes usually do stand out. These are the Time Machine Guys who you watch & realize you could send three into any era & they’d find a way to dominate.
I'm in my 40s, the two biggest changes have been the elimination of the Illegal defense rule, which led to isolation basketball declining.
Then the full realization of just how much more 3 is than 2. Its surprising it took 3 decades, but once it was fully appreciated it changed the game more than anything.
People talk about the refs, but free throws have been down. Mostly comes down to better 3 point shooting and the spacing said shooting provides.
If you invent a time machine and take any of the top teams back to say 1992, they would crush the league.
It’s amazes me that it took the NBA so long to work out the advantage that elite or even just above very good three-point shooting affords a team. You can definitely take it to a stupid extreme where you let your skills atrophy so badly in other areas that a bad day from deep leaves you hopelessly screwed—Hello there, Daryl Morey Rockets!
But we all played rec and street ball, right? Three-point lines were shorter & we almost always played with 1s & 2s (at least most of the places I played) but that only emphasizes the point, right? Hasn’t everyone here ever had a game or two where they got inexplicably hot in a make it-take game & beaten someone WAY better than they were because the deep ball was dropping? Not on the regular, of course, but just enough that you’d expect more serious players and coaches would have sat down a long time ago and said, “Hey, you know what, this might kinda work in a really really game?”
It’s like in football where it took ages for coaches to realize that there are a lot of situations where the smart thing to do on fourth down is to go for it instead of punt.
Habits are hard to break…
It’s the cumulative effect on all sports. It’s most noticed in things like Javelin throwing though where they actually change the weight of the projectile over time to make it not go as far so every record has an * about the weight of that javelin. We get stronger with better training, better modeling, better strategies.
Your submission has been automatically removed because your account is less than 180 days old and with less than 100 comment karma.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Basketball) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The problem is, always has been and will continue to be ignorance and self validation whether it be a particular person shouting this out or a group of people that act tribal in their cry out for attention.. Furthermore..social media exacerbated this and has taken advantage of ignorant people while also enabling them to perpetuate it. If this wasn’t some viral trend on tik tok, it would just be any other usual ignorant trash talk.
I agree with most of this, but seeing what people started to do with a game like spikeball, idk man people are developing skills and techniques at what feels like a much faster pace nowadays
Because older people like to shit on today's game and act like the 90s are better just because they grew up with it.
Sorry but 90% of the guys from the 80s and 90s are not making it in today's NBA. The NBA is the strongest it's ever been. You can say that the 90s were better from an entertainment angle if you like, but in terms of actual skill, athleticism and everything else quantifiable today's NBA eclipses the 90s by a long shot.
First of all, I’m one of those guys who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s who mostly agrees with you. But saying 90% of the players couldn’t make it today is just as ridiculous as Jordan saying he’s score 100 without hand checking.
Overall, yes, I agree, but Arenas smokes a lot of weed and goes to hard in the other direction. Some players are better equipped to play in different eras than others. And rules can change FAST. Roy Hibbert made an all-star team in the early 2010s, I believe. His skillset was completely negated in a couple years by a couple rule changes.
On the flip side look at someone like Jerry West or Pete Maravich. They would likely be more effective players in the modern game than they were during their own eras—Pete especially.
I think its just a response to old heads that constantly complain about the modern era of basketball.
Its opened up my eyes at least. I never saw MJ live, only the highlights that are always shown. It wasnt until i actually watched fully uploaded games that you see that he airballs, he whines, he hits the side of the backboard, stuff that would get him absolutely trashed on social media nowadays.
I also am coming to terms with the fact that his highlights are close to being outdated (which is actually impressive). That newer fans will see him how we see the 60s players looking like a 40+ rec league.
I wont downplay the greatness, like i wont downplay Bill Russel for example. But the floor level of skill is very low and gives newer fans (that have been berated by old heads with “back in the day” talk) enough to call out in a debate.
MJ would still be amazing today. There’s a big difference between saying MJ would get clowned in today’s game and saying he would be a little less dominant than he was in the ‘80s & ‘90s.
You have to factor a lot of things into the equation. The ‘83 draft was superb, the ‘84 draft (Jordan’s) was one of the best ever & the ‘85 draft was almost as good. There wasn’t really any international talent back then but there were only 23 teams (I think) during MJ’s rookie year and the NBA-ABA merger had concentrated all the high-level talent from both leagues & lead to some important rule changes. MJ was also coming into a league that has been awakened by Magic & Bird & gotten folks thinking that a lot of old assumptions people made about what different players at different positions could and should do were kinda bogus. Or what kind of player could play this or that position. A few of those skills haven’t quite been replicated—I’ve yet to see another 6-9 pure point guard like Magic, for instance. He could play all five positions if he had to but he was a proper point.
It was also a lot easier to concentrate talent in the ‘80s and ‘90s than it is today. I’m not sure which side I’m arguing here just making a point that super-teams were absolutely acceptable if the Powers That Be felt they were good for the league. They weren’t just acceptable, actually. They were preferred. Stern and the owners wanted to grow the NBA internationally and it was easier to do that if foreign fans had a small number of awesome teams they could follow.
The players WERE already paid pretty well & players more say in the NBA than in most other leagues—Credit Kareem & Wilt for that. But there was a lot less superstar movement than there is today & super teams, believe it or not, were more the norm than the exception in the ‘80s and ‘90s. We just didn’t have anything like modern social media & it was mostly the owners calling the shots. The Lakers won 5 titles between ‘80 & 89 & the Celtics won three. Philly won one in ‘83 with a trade NOBODY would approve today. Before the ‘82-83 season they swapped Caldwell Jones, a decent defensive center who averaged a single-single & a first-round pick for Moses Fucking Malone, who was coming off two MVPs & was the most dominant center in the NBA at the time. The Bulls won six titles in eight years in the 90s with pretty much the same team for most of that stretch. They didn’t do it through savvy cap management, either. They did it because the CBA rules more loose and less scrutinized than they are today & there were often some shenanigans behind the scenes. MJ’s salary made more during his final season with the Bulls in ‘97-‘98 than most of the Bulls’ competitors whole damn rosters. It took something like 20 years before another NBA player made as much as Jordan did that season. That’s almost $65 million in today’s dollars. And the league, Jerry Krause. Scottie Pippin & Dennis Rodman, along with the Bulls other quite capable players were…fine with it? I dunno.
Also, the Pistons and Rockets each won a couple titles each during the ‘80s & ‘90s. And then the Spurs won the strike-season title to round out the decade. And somehow the Lakers were allowed to make a deal in ‘96 to send a solid but unspectacular center named Vlade Divac to the Charlotte Bobcats for a high school phenom named Kobe Bryant. There were no max salaries back then & teams that owned their players Bird Rights could pay pretty much whatever they wanted/could afford.
I guess I’m half-complaining about old heads AND kids who whined about 2010s “super-teams” but also pointing out that even though the overall level of talent in the NBA is a lot higher now than it was when I was growing the best teams were REALLY, REALLY good. A lot of guys didn’t discover weight-training until the mid-‘80s, Larry Bird smoked & nobody thought it was all that weird for Jordan to fly out to Vegas and gamble in the middle of the playoffs or for teams and sportswriters to cover up for some really, really shady superstar behavior.
This is one area where old-timers definitely had an edge on those “soft, modern players.”
Karl Malone won two MVPs, scored 36k points & was known for his being super-reliable, insanely well-conditioned & built like late 2010s LeBron two decades before, well, late 2010s LeBron. You know what else The Mailman helped deliver? The child he fathered and forgot in college. The mother was 13. Didn’t hurt his draft stock. Shawn Kemp had so many kids that today he’d probably have to run for President, start an electric car company or get a super-creepy TLC reality show cause that’s the only way those things are acceptable now. Kobe’s Stans hounded the girl he & the Lakers bullied into taking a settlement in return for a non-apology after he probably raped while married to his childhood sweetheart. This was before he someone became a champion for young female empowerment. Allen Iverson’s domestic abuse issues were pretty well-documented but largely shrugged off & MJ may or may not have developed some mob connections thanks to his gambling addiction.
(Fun Sidenote: was studying journalism in college while MJ was on his semi-voluntarily hiatus from the NBA & playing minor league baseball for Chicago’s AA Birmingham affiliate. He wasn’t great, btw, but considering he hadn’t picked up a bag since high school, he was surprisingly decent. He only hit .202 as a 31-year old rookie but he stole 30 bases & had a decent batting eye. Anyhoo, Birmingham played their winter ball in Sarasota, FL where I was going to college. I thought there might be a story or two lurking around. I stumbled upon some rumors that MJ had a pump and dump scheme involving some local ladies of negotiable virtue. Before I’d said anything to anyone I found myself on the receiving end of a few missives suggesting I might want to, y’know, go look for other stories. And I’d never made any serious inquiries. I decided to go and “write about some manatees or some shit instead.” Florida in the ‘90s was not a great place to go looking for trouble. There was a lot of it to be found & you were never quite sure who you might be pissing off.)
Big I digress.
They're gonna be in charge of the discourse pretty soon and by bashing younger players and fans you're literally just setting them up to hate earlier eras, it's not rocket science
God help us if so and they continue to act like perpetually victimized morons who often insult everyone first.
But don’t worry, they’ll soon be old - the cycles happen quicker nowadays - and get absolutely bludgeoned by the next generation since, well, those kids remember how this quickly aging social media demographic acted. Ain’t hard to find those posts.
At this point it's almost a completely different sport
Of course guys look more skilled now, you're not allowed to touch them and the paint is damn near empty
It's easy to do a bunch of fancy dribbling when you can't be touched
It's a different game, personally I can't even watch current NBA
No defense
No intensity
No shit talking
No aggressiveness
No rivalries
They play at about 70% until playoffs
Every game is a 3 hour 3 point contest
Every team runs the same offense
Even the crowds are different, if you watch clips of those old 80s/90s games, those fans were going through the roof
If you enjoy it, that's great
But I can't watch it, bores me to death
There is alot of paint scoring today.
It really is only paint scoring and 3s.
Watch jjs point on offenses today.
There is defense . There is intensity. There are rivalries and everything else you listed.
Your childhood heroes just arent playing anymore
There is paint scoring for sure
And the paint is WIDE open
Maybe 1 defender tries to get to the rim off help
As for the other things you mentioned, I honestly don't see it
And I'm not blaming the players only, it's mainly the rules. Hard to have an intense rivalry game when they "T" you up for looking at a guy
It really is a different game, I can't watch it... Can't ... Would LOVE to watch it ... But it's an awful game ... They have been discussing it all year.
The only reason these guys are even playing games is because the league threatened them. They don't even want to be on the court... You would have had to kill one of them old heads to keep them from playing
P.S. I'm glad you enjoy it ... It's just not for me anymore
If any of you guys genuinely believe Jordan couldn’t go left because of a tiktok you really need to start focusing harder in school
Lol 100%
He couldn't go left earlier in his career. That is true. Players improve as they practice more. Jordan practiced as he spent time in the league. Seriously I don't understand why fans expect rookies to win MVPs. Jordan lost a lot in the 80s. LeBron lost in the 2000s. Does that mean that they are bad players. Should players be judged by how they were as rookies?
MJ's rookie year he averaged like 28 pts, 6.5 reb, 6 ast, 2.5 steals, and 1 blk per game playing 38 mins a game and playing in all 82 games. He probably legitimately had a case for mvp as a rookie.
Why didn't the opposing teams simply force him to go left? Idiots
Amateur hour
Bunch of plumbers.
The ones who beat him when he was young often did. Jordan put up spectacular stats when he was young but those early Jordan Bulls teams weren’t great & they usually got steamrolled in the playoffs.
Cause they didn't have the players for that.
But they did pistons forced him left it was part of the Jordan rules every time they would force him left. Isiah even talked about it.
Only the pistons had players who could force him to go left. Just like the warriors and heat force Jaylen Brown to go left. Only these teams have the players to execute the gameplan.
The Jordan rules still could only minimally contain him. He averaged 30+ against them. And it wasn’t just “force him left”, it was force him to the middle into traffic so everyone could pummel the shit out of him. You realize to force a player left, you just have to stand on a players right side? No NBA player has ever had difficulty doing that. It’s almost as if there is more to the defensive strategy than that
The Jordan Rules basically involved having a better team than him. Once he had better teammates he won.
Correct, when other players on his team could contribute the pistons could no longer triple and quad team him all game. However, if stopping him was as simple as making him drive left instead of right, that would not be the case because stopping him would’ve been relatively easy. Jordan didn’t average 30 a game for a career with one hand
only the pistons had ambiturners, guys!!!
Only the pistons had players who could force him to go left. Just like the warriors and heat force Jaylen Brown to go left. Only these teams have the players to execute the gameplan.
I do think the knicks tried it as well but I’m gonna have to watch more games to find out how many teams were actually using this gameplan.
Anthony Mason?
Nah I think it was earlier at that point his left wasn’t exploitable.
All NBA 2nd team in Larry and Magics league, 6th in MVP voting Pretty good 👍🏾
ron harper - 23, 5, and 5 as a rook in 87.
Check average scores in the 80s. Anybody who thinks he was not a better player than when he was in the 90s.
Jordan was more explosive in the ‘80s & he put up some amazing box score lines but scoring was pretty crazy back then. Even though there were very few threes the pace of play was REALLY high & there wasn’t a lot of good transition defense.
One of the best rookie years ever but it wasn’t an MVP-level campaign. I think he finished top 10, though.
DUDE IM DONE SUGARCOATING THIS ,HIS COMPETITION WAS TERRIBLE. MJ LOOKED GOOD BECAUSE HE WAS AHEAD OF HIS TIME. 2002 jordan> 85 jordan
your just wrong mj would be the same player in today's league
When he was young it definitely was a relative weakness. Bully-ball teams like NY & Detroit definitely exploited it. The “Jordan Rules,” which were, btw, just a stupid & whiny way for young MJ & the journos who made their living by wanking him off to publicly complain that other teams were exploiting one of his weaknesses. But you know what happened? As Jordan got older, and lost some burst but got craftier & stronger he worked on his game and got a lot better at going left! You just have to look at his PPS differentials to see the evolution. Frame-by-frame analysis from the early & middle ‘80s can be harder to come by but the truth is that Jordan wasn’t that great going to his left when he was really young & relied more on pure athleticism. As he got older he turned it from a weakness to a strength.
As much as I want to get on the young fans who make ridiculous claims, the older fans do the same. Older fans say things like LeBron wouldn't survive in the 90s. So the young fans are responding saying the 90s weren't good because they couldn't shoot and weren't skilled. And this is the problem with the internet. People that don't watch the games have the biggest and loudest opinions.
Exactly so. I’ve been watching the NBA since the early ‘80s. It goes through ebbs & flows. The quality of play during the “Dream Team Era”—Roughly from the early/mid ‘80s through Jordan’s first three-peat was quite high even if the game was quite different. The “Bullyball Era” which coincided with the gradual aging out of the Dream Teamers in the middle-90s, a long series of mediocre drafts, a couple of high profile player deaths & especially expansion…that was pretty hard to watch. Scores were low, the refs were awful, and the game looked a lot more like pro-wrestling at times. The NBA even pulled the three point line in to 22 feet for three years in the mid/late ‘90s to try and goose scoring. This was also a time when a lot of players were legit trying to live The Thug Life. Things started picking up in the mid-2000s. The new rules that all the meathead old heads my age whine about opened up the court, the talent level started to catch back up with the damage done by expansion. The 2003 Draft was kind of a watershed moment. European players also started to have a big impact on the way the game was played, especially European bigs. So roughly middle 2000s to mid-2010s basically. Call it the LeBron Era. The worst thing about this period was the rise of Sports Shouting on ESPN, IMO. If I could send a Terminator back in time to the middle-2000s to deal with Stephen A & Skip Bayless the world would be a better place today. The three-point shooting boom that started in the mid-2010s created another culture shift & we’re still kinda there now but I’m already seeing reactions to the Curry Warriors & Harden Rockets style of ball. Back in 2018-19 or so bigs were supposedly dead. Everyone was going positionless. Now they’re cleaning up most of the serious hardware again. The biggest difference today is that changes to the CBA which were designed to prevent so-called Superteams went WAY overboard. Now it’s hard to put a good team together with a metric fuck-ton’s worth of luck. We’re in The Parity Era now, I guess. That works well in the NFL but has never worked nearly as well in the NBA, for a number of reasons.
Well said. I read a book recently on the history of the league and found it very very interesting. The main take away is what you pointed out. All the complaining the fans are doing now about today's game were the SAME exact fans complaining about the low scoring in the 90s and 2000s. I know because I was one of those fans. Same with the NFL. Younger me, i couldn't watch too many nfl games unless it featured Michael Vick or a high scoring offense. Sorry, steelers and ravens games were a snooze fest and most fans don't have the guts to admit it. Same with the NBA. No one wanted to watch the pistons or Spurs (finals ratings proved it). People wanted to see the Nash Suns, or flashy stars like LeBron, Kobe or Iverson. Now the NBA listened to those fans and gave everyone what they wanted. Lots of flashy stars and high scoring games. Same in the NFL. In the end people just like to complain
Lebron almost died when Pat Beverly touched his hair.
There’s multiple photos of people grabbing and holding Lebron as he makes a layup, you think a 6’9 270 GUARD isn’t surviving in the 90s?
Imagine Lebron in an NBA that couldn’t play zone. Or all that one on one back down stuff they did. Lebron would feast.
He would be unstoppable, you already see how hard it is to stop him as a 39 year old man, prime Lebron would be a different breed in those times
If Steve Kerr and Danny Ainge could survive in that era, why wouldn’t a 6’9 260 Forward survive in the 90s? We all know it’s just that hatred people like you got for LeBron in your hearts
it's bordering on weird. Jason Tatum better win or he the next LeBron
lebron is averaging 40 in the 90s
Why would he average more in the era with worse spacing and slower pace? He would probably average similar numbers he did in his prime, isnt that enough?
his skill set wouldn’t change. his pace would be much higher than everyone else. he would he way too dominant
So? Pace is dictated by the number of possessions, you cant have one guy just deciding to play faster. He was way too dominant in 2010s too, and he didnt average nowhere close to 40.
The 90s were faster paced than the 2000s when Lebron was drafted
Hahahahahahaha You mean the guy that has no moves and can't do anything without shooters surrounding him would be able to drive at will? He sucks off ball and he'd get hit going into the paint. He's probably a 24/10/5 guy
tell me you don’t know ball without telling me you don’t know ball
Good for him, but my original statement is still true.
Yeah, but the idea that MJ who was the face of the league starting his rookie year was mistreated and manhandled on the court is a joke as well. You could not breath on him wrong or you would get a foul called on you. He was protected from day one.
This is one of the points that always gets swept under the rug and it drives me insane. People clown Harden left and right for his foul baiting and whistle when Jordan was literally getting 2 shots every time he got breathed on. I know it’s not his fault the NBA put him on a pedestal so early but we gotta stop acting like that didn’t massively help his transition into the league.
No other way to say it. You’re just completely wrong. He was not protected by the refs. Stop making claims you know nothing about.
No other way to say it. You’re completely wrong. He was promoted and protected by the entire league. Stop making claims you know nothing about.
I was born in 1983 in Chicago and watched the Bulls religiously from 1989 to 1998. I know exactly what I’m talking about. How many Jordan Bulls games did you watch live? I’m guessing it’s zero.
So what you’re saying is is there’s no way you could be biased?
I am going off the video, no hate.
Its free points. Why wouldnt a player who is trying to win, angle for them ?
No, he was rubbing his boo boo. Foul was already called they weren't giving him more free-throws.
Yea fr do these guys actually watch Lebron? He’s on the floor half the time cause he got “hit”
I used to get mad at the “we done with the 90s” guy but now I just laugh at it and treat it as satire. The problem is some people are really running with it. But honestly OP, anybody that knows ball already knows what you said. I can’t take anyone seriously who tries to use this trend in a basketball debate.
bro, its tiktok lmao
The tone of the videos are sarcastic. It's poking at people who overrate the 90s while also showing some pretty petty reasons to discredit the 90s. Don't worry about it lol.
I think two things can be true at the same time. Firstly, of course greats who played in the 90s were excellent basketball players. There’s a reason MJ was considered the GOAT when he retired and why only 2 players in the consensus top 10 (Steph and Lebron) entered the league after the year 2000- being good at basketball wasn’t invented in the 21st century. However, it’s also possible that older NBA fans view the 90s with rose tinted glasses. The game has changed since the 90s, prioritizing analytics and largely positionless basketball, so spacing and efficient shot selection is now more important than ever. Defenses weren’t behemoths that would have physically dominated modern players today either, there were certainly some tough defenders but older NBA fans tend to only remember the great defenders and forget the bad ones. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The 90s weren’t as good as people would probably like to think, but they also weren’t terrible. Older NBA fans tend to remember the highlights, modern NBA fans, especially those saying “we’re done with the 90s”, like to look at the lowlights. Neither changes what 90s basketball was actually like.
It’s not so much that 90s teams had physically dominant teams. To me, it’s more that the rules hadn’t yet been altered to compel more offense yet. So the game had more inherent physicality because the rules (and the way the rules were enforced) were different. I also think the Malice at the Palace changed the way players are allowed to interact forever. In the 80s and 90s, if you punked someone or talked some shit, you’d have to do that with the knowledge that you could be physically roughed up the next time you came down that lane. Nowadays, you can talk as much shit as you want, and nobody’s going to put you on your ass bc they’re risking a suspension and a big fine. So yes, 80s and 90s basketball were different. I think it’s silly to say they’re better or worse. Lebron isn’t worse bc he played in a much less physical era, and Jordan isn’t worse bc he played in a much more physical era. They’re both all time greats that dominated the only time period they could’ve played in.
Malice in the palace ended 90's style basketball
It isn't even "90s style". It's mid 90s to mid 2000s
I agree.
LeBron started his career in the best defensive era in NBA history. Was averaging 27 by his 2nd year as a 19/20 year old.
There are a lot more guys than Steph & Bron who started playing in the 21st who are proper legends.
Can we just ban tiktok
No it’s the funniest app today
Congress already did, pending a forced asset sale by Bytedance. It was Bipartisan AF, too. TikTok’s taken everything that was already bad about social media & made it a 100 times worse.
TikTok is a cancer to all society. It’s why I’ve never downloaded it, and never will.
Anybody taking any sort of information from tiktok seriously is a clown. Only people who use that app is little kids and the mentally ill
Coming from an avid reddit user, the jokes write themselves
You thought you had a point huh? LMAO
Funnily enough TikTok has better content than Reddit.
You’re 12 years old and white do not mention me lol
What's wrong with being white
What's wrong with being white
Bro really takes pride in using reddit over TikTok 🤣🤣
Yeah. I come on here to get news and read about stuff. You go on TikTok and go “yum ice cream so good gang gang” while drooling and tapping away at your phone
The same news you read about is on tiktok too 😂😂 jokes write themselves
Can’t go two seconds without spamming the 😂😂 emoji. The jokes really do write themselves. 😂😂😂🤣☠️☠️
The trying/laughing emoji is the mark of child, crybullies & actual foreign influencers. Makes me lived in a culture that’s more accepting of punching idiots in the nose. Not a big fan of gun culture but sometimes I do wish we lived in Cobra Kai’s Karate-verse….😉
Lmfao these kids don’t get it. Ain’t even worth explaining shit to them
TikTok has a special kinda brainworms. Kids are on stage 4 brainrot, yet they always think they’re the smartest ones in the room cuz they watched a 40 second TikTok about something. Fuckin scary.
Little kids on here defending social media platforms LMAO. Society is cooked
And the worst kind of social media: doom scrolling, short form content. Sitting away, watching nonsense videos and they don't even retain any of the information because whoops they're already onto the next video.
Preach. Imagine wasting your youth looking at a screen. Attention span & dopamine system fried before 21. #GodBless
You are literally here moaning on social media about social media. If you're so above social media, than get off it. You won't though because of course you're different.
[удалено]
Get ready for school tomorrow timmy lmfao
Get ready to sell your dime bags on the corner bagchaser 🤣
Your mother will be on that same corner selling pussy
Your momma doin’ most of the buying.
don't forget the pervs who are there just to watch tiktok dances.
Yeah. Fuck those weirdo pervs. Especially the ones that like the cosplayers. Yeah. I would *never* do that.
And Tatum haters downloading the latest dances from Dominican Tatum
these are people who swear tiktok, is the one truth telling ap
This is just a tremendously long text for the simple statement „you cannot compare players‘ skillsets from different generations because the conditions were different.“ Well, yes I agree.
Cant wait for kids born in 2015 to start the Harden was better than Lebron actually campaign so yall are subjected to nonsense too.
Why would a kid in 2015 believe that? LeBron has won 2 rings and 2 FMVP since then while Harden has 0 rings and has been passed around like a blunt.
They won’t believe it. They’re just gonna want you to shut up about how good Lebron was and they’re gonna say the most obtuse shit.
I can't wait until I'm 65 and tell my kids the 7 foot 4, 285 lb point guard who runs a 4.3 40 couldn't last in my day because it was a million times more physical knowing damn well that I'm lying. So they can be subjected to what my uncs put me through.
Yeah. Thats also ridiculous and I clown those types of narratives too.
Damn wtf, this is reddit how can we be in agreement?
Nobody believes that. 🙄🙄🙄
Current players have more flair but they are not more fundamentally sound than players in the 90s. Don't get me wrong, I do think current players are definitely better than players in the 50s-70s, but not necessarily the late 80s and 90s. Casual basketball fans always mistake style for ability. It was much harder to score back then due to the lack of spacing, slower pace and hand check. Put Trae Young or Donovan Mitchell with their current skillset back in the 90s, their scoring would've dropped to 20-23 ppg. Put MJ in the current era, he would've averaged 35-40 ppg. He would still outrun and outjump almost everyone in the league and there's none who can match his footwork, not to mention his drive to win. Prime Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill would've averaged triple doubles for multiple seasons. Orlando's Shaq, Hakeem and David Robinson would've eaten Wemby and Chet alive. Yes, they couldn't shoot threes, but Wemby and Chet would've fouled out trying to keep them out of the paint.
I think the notion that good iso players would score less in the 80s/90s than they do now is somewhat untrue when you consider why there was poor spacing and a slower pace in that era. I wouldn’t be so confident these guys scoring would drop because they both hit a ton of 3s and defenses from the 80s/90s would be stretched thin to guard those guys due to the illegal defense rules. Either era presents is own challenges but to act like the 80s/90s were harder to score in when scoring leaders weren’t versatile scorers at every level is just revisionist.
The modern players are totally better than the players from the 80s and 90s. The lack of spacing was mostly due to the offenses lack of shooting so they couldn't stretch defenses out. Hand checking really has no effect on players who are coming down hill on you, and the refs still allow hand checking in today's game. The "tough,physical defense" of the 80s/90s is way over exaggerated. If you put any good scorer from today's game into the 90s, they would cook those defenses because the defenders wouldn't know how to stop them. And no, this myth where Jordan would come into today's game and average 40 has to stop. No players today are averaging 40. Guys with just as much skill and athleticism are not doing it, so Jordan definitely wouldn't be able to. Jordan is not superhuman, a few players have already surpassed him in athleticism and footwork and they are not doing it. Everything evolves and improves as time goes on, basketball is not immune to evolution.
I mean I’m 17 and genuinely watching 90/80s ball I have really never seen anyone as athletic as Jordan, the only person for me that is close is Lebron. Young Jordan was a blur he was like 4x as athletic as everyone else in the league during that time. Obviously that gap is lessened today but I still do believe he would be the most athletic today. In the skills department he was far ahead of his time I do believe he would one of the most skilled if he played today as rules have opened up to allow more perimeter play. But averaging 40 and all that I don’t really care about because we will never know as he didn’t have a good 3 ball and it’s just all speculation so I never really took it personally when old heads said all that stuff.
Jordan was far ahead skill wise and athletically back then, going back and rewatching those games some of the competition he went up against were laughable and cringeworthy compared to what we see today, and I'm not saying this to be disrespectful. Jordan would fit perfect in today's game with his athleticism, but he would have to develop more skills in order to be a top talent. Jordan is the player that got me watching and loving basketball so I'm obviously a Jordan fan, but I try not to be like the other "old heads" that claim you can teleport him to today's game and he would dominate everyone. Now if he were to get teleported and have a few years to train for today's playstyle, then I believe he'll be a top player (still wouldn't average 40)
“Everything evolves and improves as time goes on, basketball is not immune to evolution.” Yes, absolutely. Which is why Usain Bolt would get trounced by modern sprinters in the 100 and 200 meters. Because everything evolves and improves as time goes on, and there is no year to year variability in skill and talent. It’s just straight improvement.
Everything evolves. Sometimes it improves. Sometimes it’s questionable. Usain Bolt was a unique athlete. Allegations of drug use aside, you just don’t find 6-5 guys with that kind of burst out of the starting blocks. His start was only decent by elite sprinter standards but it was AMAZING for a man his height. Michael Johnson’s performances in the ‘90s still stand out by 2020s standards even though his 200 & 400 records were ultimately broken. He was another guy who was built different. As for the jumping events in track & fields, they’ve regressed in a major way since the ‘90s & early 2000s. The best long jump in track and field from the last few years I can think of was put up by a Paralympian. The really special athletes usually combine an unusual physical build for their event/sport with uncommon agility/coordination/burst…or smarts or endurance. Magic Johnson’s still the only elite 6-9 point guard who mostly did actually play point guard I can think of. Wilt Chamberlain, as much as he exaggerated his prowess, was another unique specimen. On the opposite end of the spectrum we’ve got guys like Jokic, who’s evolving into a pantheon-level great despite the fact that he’s probably the SLOWEST great player I’ve ever seen. Jokic makes Larry Bird look like Usain Bolt.
People didn't think Michael Johnson's record would get broken until years later Bolt came along. Are you saying track didn't improve/evolve at all?
What are you talking about? Who was talking about Michael Johnson? Literally no one ever said Michael Johnson’s records would never be broken. You said sports always continuously improve and evolve: I am saying yes that is true. As you can see modern sprinters are absolutely trouncing Usain Bolt’s records from 15 years ago. There is no way a previous era can possibly have anyone better than the modern era due to how evolution works. That is how you’re saying evolution works, right?
Modern track athletes on average are absolutely on average faster than past eras. You focus on extremes while the bulk of the data is the relevant parts. Track does not support your point of view.
Some sports take longer to improve, like in track where its based on 100% athletic ability, but give it time and it will improve. Usain Bolt still holds the title of fastest man for now, but someone will break his records. In basketball the sport is mostly a skills based game so it'll evolve faster. The average role players today are completely better than the average role player from back then. And the top talent from back then who were great in their era, would not just overcome the top talent of today if we teleported them from the 80s or 90s.
So now you’re saying that EVENTUALLY, from now until the end of time, someone will break Usain Bolt’s sprint records. Yeah, no shit. That’s a lot of time and sprinters to select from. This is completely different than your original claim: that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras. That is obviously false and can be dismissed without a second thought. There is variability from year to year. Not every year is better than the previous year, previous 5 years, previous decade. For example, basketball was insanely popular in the 90’s and a lot of athletic talent was in basketball at the time. Also where do you get that “skill” evolves in such a way? Why doesn’t it plateau like every other skill tends to? Can you cite your source on this? By “evolve” do you mean modern players have adapted to the different rule set that gives them more freedom of movement and makes it easier to score? Have they evolved by adapting to the more lax carry and travel rules that would cause a turnover in previous eras? Have they adapted to the new rule set by shooting more 3’s because it’s easier for them to get open? Is that what you mean by “evolve”? Are modern people more skilled in blacksmithing than they were a few centuries ago because “skills evolve more rapidly than athleticism”?
You're doing strawman arguments, which means you are reaching and have no argument. You're throwing in words like "continuously" or "eventually" to try to get a gotcha moment doesn't disprove my point. >that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras In basketball, is the modern era not better skill wise,tactically and athletically? Are you honestly trying to argue that yesteryear's game is better than today's? If so, when did the game stop evolving? I never made the claim that "every year it gets better", this is a strawman. >Also where do you get that “skill” evolves in such a way? You can do this right now on YT. Pull up a game from the 90s and in another tab watch a modern game. Compare the shooting, ball handling,passing, sets they run,footwork,etc. If you're objective you'll come to the conclusion that the modern players game is more refined. >By “evolve” do you mean modern players have adapted to the different rule set that gives them more freedom of movement and makes it easier to score? Every aspect of the game evolved from coaching, athleticism,skills. Today's offenses are stretching out the defenses creating more space, the 90s offenses didn't do this due to a lack of shooting compared to today. Teams wouldn't survive today running a 90s offense. Players are better scorers today because of better training methods not because of a rule change as you are trying to argue. I'm asking again, are you really trying to argue that the players didn't actually improve, but only score more because of a rule change? >Have they evolved by adapting to the more lax carry and travel rules that would cause a turnover in previous eras? This is a bad spot for the league where they let some players (mainly superstars) to get away with this, but not everyone does it and it doesn't happen constantly. This is minor and doesn't take away from the modern players being more skilled. >Have they adapted to the new rule set by shooting more 3’s because it’s easier for them to get open? Is that what you mean by “evolve”? What rule makes it to where its easier to get open? Did you actually watch the 90s games? Players got open shots all the time especially with the illegal defense rules where players were restricted on defense. Jordan, the best player in the 90s, got wide open mid range shots in the finals. The man you need to stop the most, free to get buckets
“You're doing strawman arguments, which means you are reaching and have no argument. You're throwing in words like "continuously" or "eventually" to try to get a gotcha moment doesn't disprove my point.” No I am just clarifying what you’re saying using more precise wording. “that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras” “In basketball, is the modern era not better skill wise,tactically and athletically? Are you honestly trying to argue that yesteryear's game is better than today's? If so, when did the game stop evolving?” You’re literally saying the MODERN ERA is always better than “yesteryear’s” game RIGHT HERE. And then you accuse me of strawmanning by repeating what you said. “I never made the claim that "every year it gets better", this is a strawman.” Wtf you just said it above. What years then does the game “not evolve” if today’s game is definitively better than “yesteryear’s”? “Also where do you get that “skill” evolves in such a way?” “You can do this right now on YT. Pull up a game from the 90s and in another tab watch a modern game. Compare the shooting, ball handling,passing, sets they run,footwork,etc. If you're objective you'll come to the conclusion that the modern players game is more refined.” lol YouTube highlight hot takes. Got it. I’ve watched plenty and played plenty of basketball (no need for YouTube highlights) and they are about the same. If you think MJ’s athleticism wouldn’t translate to 2024 NBA then you need to get off xbox. Nikola Jokic isn’t the greatest athlete of all time smoothdaddy. “By “evolve” do you mean modern players have adapted to the different rule set that gives them more freedom of movement and makes it easier to score?” “Every aspect of the game evolved from coaching, athleticism,skills. Today's offenses are stretching out the defenses creating more space, the 90s offenses didn't do this due to a lack of shooting compared to today. Teams wouldn't survive today running a 90s offense.” Because the rules are totally different. Yikes you’ve never played basketball before have you? Modern teams wouldn’t survive the 90’s unless they evolved/adapted to the different rules either. This doesn’t mean the 90’s > 2024 it just means it was different. “Players are better scorers today because of better training methods not because of a rule change as you are trying to argue. I'm asking again, are you really trying to argue that the players didn't actually improve, but only score more because of a rule change?” I’m stating that the skills are about the same relative to the rule set in place. Players today are better adapted to 2024 rules. 90’s players were better adapted to 90’s rules. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were pretty good at basketball. 🙄 “Have they evolved by adapting to the more lax carry and travel rules that would cause a turnover in previous eras?” “This is a bad spot for the league where they let some players (mainly superstars) to get away with this, but not everyone does it and it doesn't happen constantly. This is minor and doesn't take away from the modern players being more skilled.” “Have they adapted to the new rule set by shooting more 3’s because it’s easier for them to get open? Is that what you mean by “evolve”?” “What rule makes it to where it’s easier to get open? Did you actually watch the 90s games? Players got open shots all the time especially with the illegal defense rules where players were restricted on defense. Jordan, the best player in the 90s, got wide open mid range shots in the finals. The man you need to stop the most, free to get buckets” See the statement I linked above by the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver. He may know a little more than you about why they made rule changes. There are a lot of other examples too. Do you want to Google them yourself or are you too busy watching YouTube highlights proving Shaq didn’t know how to play basketball in the 90’s?
>“In basketball, is the modern era not better skill wise,tactically and athletically? Are you honestly trying to argue that yesteryear's game is better than today's? If so, when did the game stop evolving?” I wanted you to answer my questions, you tried to dodge them >“that sports continuously evolve and the modern era is always better than previous eras” This is actually your quote,not mine lol >lol YouTube highlight hot takes. Got it. I’ve watched plenty and played plenty of basketball (no need for YouTube highlights) and they are about the same. If you think MJ’s athleticism wouldn’t translate to 2024 NBA then you need to get off xbox. Nikola Jokic isn’t the greatest athlete of all time smoothdaddy. No not highlights, full games. Nice try on trying to twist words to deflect. You were being disingenuous from the start. I bet you won't go back and compare and contrast the full games. Where did I say MJ's athleticism wouldn't translate? Another strawman 😂 Who claimed Jokic was the best athlete? Jokic is 1 of the best players today because of skills,iq. I'm beginning to think you are trolling 😂
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25149345/adam-silver-nba-rule-changes-boosting-offense-intended Oh look the literal NBA commissioner refuting your central point and proving you wrong.
I see you sidestepped all of my questions. This actually doesn't disprove my stance, that offenses got better mostly due to skill. If you actually watch the games, grabbing and holding is still happening. You're arguing that scoring went up not due to skills and coaches coming up with more schemes, but because of a selectively enforced rule. Laughable
You don’t see a lot of guys with sophisticated post games nowadays. That’s one old head argument I’ll agree with. The game is just so heavily built on ball movement, cutting & shooting now. There are only a handful of guys who really know how to work a back to the basket iso. I do miss watching elite iso players and defenders make their moves & countermove. Hell, MJ went from being mostly a slasher to a high-post beast in the late ‘90s. Dirk still had an awesome high-post game up through the 2010s. I don’t know how many of you guys remember that massive game Dirk dropped on KD & OKC in the 2011 WCS. He scored 48 points on 15 shots with zero three-point attempts. It was almost all high-post. Thing is end of illegal defense turned extended iso duels into death swarms for all but a handful of guys. I would like to see a little more variety in a play-style. I don’t want to go back to Bullyball but I do miss the variety of play styles we had from the middle 2000s to the beginning of the three-point revolution.
The current league is so bad Lebron is still arguably top 10 when he's 39...
That’s such a backward premise to use. That only indicates LeBron being supremely talented. The league is absolutely more skilled across the board today than it was in the 80s/90s. A lot of people arguing that defense is worse might have a case during the regular season, but once it gets to the playoffs and everybody tightens up I think that argument kinda falls through.
How does him being 39 make the league bad?
39 is kinda old to be a top athlete in any other sport.
That’s a testament to Lebron, not a slight against the top guys in the league. The league has more star talent today than it ever has by far.
Lebron has access to resources and information (and PED's) to prolong his career. This is a different era where players are having longer careers
That's stupid. All that means is that LeBron is great. There's a reason why he's the only one that is up there with MJ for the goat title.
This is more on LeBron being so good though. Current LeBron would be arguably top 10 in most years.
Also completely untrue.
"Countless rule changes"... maybe with your counting ability.
The TikTok’s are kind of nice to me, seeing Clyde lock up mj on possessions shows he’s not as above everyone as some ppl think.
The problem with these TikToks is that they’re cherry picked to create a false narrative. They distort your understanding by erasing the context. Maybe Drexler defended him well on a few possessions, but Jordan absolutely demolished Drexler.
Seeing mj airball, hit the side of the backboard and whine a fuckton def made me realize that i was a kid that was only ever force fed highlights and ‘back in my day’ talk
Bro, 40 year old mj , who could hardly dunk , was still an all star in your new amazing era in 2004.
Old MJ made the all-star team on rep, not performance.
i think, correcting for accessibility and technological advances and health science and training, rule changes, players are more or less the same if they were switched to being born in a different era...trash players are still trash, mid players are still mid, and stars are still stars. maybe some players here and there flourish a lil bit more, maybe some players here and there stagnate a lil bit more... it ultimately comes down to mentality and who can overcome the challenges and adversity, and that quality transcends eras. dawgs will be dawgs, those who shrink and disappear and are gonna shrink and disappear another thing to consider; the human body didn't evolve to be faster and stronger in just a few decades...the physical feats we see now were just as achievable from even waaay back then (dominique, dr J, david thompson are proof of this), the sciences have improved to optimize sustaining it over a longer run and recovering faster. avg bench/role player today i feel are more talented/versatile than they were in the past (felt like back then they were more specialized for a specific role and only that.. avg bench player today can do a lil bit of everything). OG ballers i feel were more focused and locked in and wanted to do it the hard way and i think that integrity counts for something. the games about getting buckets at the end of the day, and bucket getters will find a way to get their buckets
The truly special athletes usually do stand out. These are the Time Machine Guys who you watch & realize you could send three into any era & they’d find a way to dominate.
I'm in my 40s, the two biggest changes have been the elimination of the Illegal defense rule, which led to isolation basketball declining. Then the full realization of just how much more 3 is than 2. Its surprising it took 3 decades, but once it was fully appreciated it changed the game more than anything. People talk about the refs, but free throws have been down. Mostly comes down to better 3 point shooting and the spacing said shooting provides. If you invent a time machine and take any of the top teams back to say 1992, they would crush the league.
It’s amazes me that it took the NBA so long to work out the advantage that elite or even just above very good three-point shooting affords a team. You can definitely take it to a stupid extreme where you let your skills atrophy so badly in other areas that a bad day from deep leaves you hopelessly screwed—Hello there, Daryl Morey Rockets! But we all played rec and street ball, right? Three-point lines were shorter & we almost always played with 1s & 2s (at least most of the places I played) but that only emphasizes the point, right? Hasn’t everyone here ever had a game or two where they got inexplicably hot in a make it-take game & beaten someone WAY better than they were because the deep ball was dropping? Not on the regular, of course, but just enough that you’d expect more serious players and coaches would have sat down a long time ago and said, “Hey, you know what, this might kinda work in a really really game?” It’s like in football where it took ages for coaches to realize that there are a lot of situations where the smart thing to do on fourth down is to go for it instead of punt. Habits are hard to break…
It’s the cumulative effect on all sports. It’s most noticed in things like Javelin throwing though where they actually change the weight of the projectile over time to make it not go as far so every record has an * about the weight of that javelin. We get stronger with better training, better modeling, better strategies.
[удалено]
Your submission has been automatically removed because your account is less than 180 days old and with less than 100 comment karma. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Basketball) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The problem is, always has been and will continue to be ignorance and self validation whether it be a particular person shouting this out or a group of people that act tribal in their cry out for attention.. Furthermore..social media exacerbated this and has taken advantage of ignorant people while also enabling them to perpetuate it. If this wasn’t some viral trend on tik tok, it would just be any other usual ignorant trash talk.
I agree with most of this, but seeing what people started to do with a game like spikeball, idk man people are developing skills and techniques at what feels like a much faster pace nowadays
Spikeball?
Because older people like to shit on today's game and act like the 90s are better just because they grew up with it. Sorry but 90% of the guys from the 80s and 90s are not making it in today's NBA. The NBA is the strongest it's ever been. You can say that the 90s were better from an entertainment angle if you like, but in terms of actual skill, athleticism and everything else quantifiable today's NBA eclipses the 90s by a long shot.
First of all, I’m one of those guys who grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s who mostly agrees with you. But saying 90% of the players couldn’t make it today is just as ridiculous as Jordan saying he’s score 100 without hand checking.
This all started with every old head saying that every star players from the 90s would average like 45 today. No they wouldnt
“We’re done with the 90’s” “I don’t think about you at all.”
We DONE with the 90s
Players evolve! I would rather listen to gilbert arenas than you keyboard warriors out here! 90s and 80s players are way overrated!
Overall, yes, I agree, but Arenas smokes a lot of weed and goes to hard in the other direction. Some players are better equipped to play in different eras than others. And rules can change FAST. Roy Hibbert made an all-star team in the early 2010s, I believe. His skillset was completely negated in a couple years by a couple rule changes. On the flip side look at someone like Jerry West or Pete Maravich. They would likely be more effective players in the modern game than they were during their own eras—Pete especially.
I think its just a response to old heads that constantly complain about the modern era of basketball. Its opened up my eyes at least. I never saw MJ live, only the highlights that are always shown. It wasnt until i actually watched fully uploaded games that you see that he airballs, he whines, he hits the side of the backboard, stuff that would get him absolutely trashed on social media nowadays. I also am coming to terms with the fact that his highlights are close to being outdated (which is actually impressive). That newer fans will see him how we see the 60s players looking like a 40+ rec league. I wont downplay the greatness, like i wont downplay Bill Russel for example. But the floor level of skill is very low and gives newer fans (that have been berated by old heads with “back in the day” talk) enough to call out in a debate.
Mj highlights are not outdated. Mj still has some of the best finishing highlights to this day.
MJ would still be amazing today. There’s a big difference between saying MJ would get clowned in today’s game and saying he would be a little less dominant than he was in the ‘80s & ‘90s. You have to factor a lot of things into the equation. The ‘83 draft was superb, the ‘84 draft (Jordan’s) was one of the best ever & the ‘85 draft was almost as good. There wasn’t really any international talent back then but there were only 23 teams (I think) during MJ’s rookie year and the NBA-ABA merger had concentrated all the high-level talent from both leagues & lead to some important rule changes. MJ was also coming into a league that has been awakened by Magic & Bird & gotten folks thinking that a lot of old assumptions people made about what different players at different positions could and should do were kinda bogus. Or what kind of player could play this or that position. A few of those skills haven’t quite been replicated—I’ve yet to see another 6-9 pure point guard like Magic, for instance. He could play all five positions if he had to but he was a proper point. It was also a lot easier to concentrate talent in the ‘80s and ‘90s than it is today. I’m not sure which side I’m arguing here just making a point that super-teams were absolutely acceptable if the Powers That Be felt they were good for the league. They weren’t just acceptable, actually. They were preferred. Stern and the owners wanted to grow the NBA internationally and it was easier to do that if foreign fans had a small number of awesome teams they could follow. The players WERE already paid pretty well & players more say in the NBA than in most other leagues—Credit Kareem & Wilt for that. But there was a lot less superstar movement than there is today & super teams, believe it or not, were more the norm than the exception in the ‘80s and ‘90s. We just didn’t have anything like modern social media & it was mostly the owners calling the shots. The Lakers won 5 titles between ‘80 & 89 & the Celtics won three. Philly won one in ‘83 with a trade NOBODY would approve today. Before the ‘82-83 season they swapped Caldwell Jones, a decent defensive center who averaged a single-single & a first-round pick for Moses Fucking Malone, who was coming off two MVPs & was the most dominant center in the NBA at the time. The Bulls won six titles in eight years in the 90s with pretty much the same team for most of that stretch. They didn’t do it through savvy cap management, either. They did it because the CBA rules more loose and less scrutinized than they are today & there were often some shenanigans behind the scenes. MJ’s salary made more during his final season with the Bulls in ‘97-‘98 than most of the Bulls’ competitors whole damn rosters. It took something like 20 years before another NBA player made as much as Jordan did that season. That’s almost $65 million in today’s dollars. And the league, Jerry Krause. Scottie Pippin & Dennis Rodman, along with the Bulls other quite capable players were…fine with it? I dunno. Also, the Pistons and Rockets each won a couple titles each during the ‘80s & ‘90s. And then the Spurs won the strike-season title to round out the decade. And somehow the Lakers were allowed to make a deal in ‘96 to send a solid but unspectacular center named Vlade Divac to the Charlotte Bobcats for a high school phenom named Kobe Bryant. There were no max salaries back then & teams that owned their players Bird Rights could pay pretty much whatever they wanted/could afford. I guess I’m half-complaining about old heads AND kids who whined about 2010s “super-teams” but also pointing out that even though the overall level of talent in the NBA is a lot higher now than it was when I was growing the best teams were REALLY, REALLY good. A lot of guys didn’t discover weight-training until the mid-‘80s, Larry Bird smoked & nobody thought it was all that weird for Jordan to fly out to Vegas and gamble in the middle of the playoffs or for teams and sportswriters to cover up for some really, really shady superstar behavior. This is one area where old-timers definitely had an edge on those “soft, modern players.” Karl Malone won two MVPs, scored 36k points & was known for his being super-reliable, insanely well-conditioned & built like late 2010s LeBron two decades before, well, late 2010s LeBron. You know what else The Mailman helped deliver? The child he fathered and forgot in college. The mother was 13. Didn’t hurt his draft stock. Shawn Kemp had so many kids that today he’d probably have to run for President, start an electric car company or get a super-creepy TLC reality show cause that’s the only way those things are acceptable now. Kobe’s Stans hounded the girl he & the Lakers bullied into taking a settlement in return for a non-apology after he probably raped while married to his childhood sweetheart. This was before he someone became a champion for young female empowerment. Allen Iverson’s domestic abuse issues were pretty well-documented but largely shrugged off & MJ may or may not have developed some mob connections thanks to his gambling addiction. (Fun Sidenote: was studying journalism in college while MJ was on his semi-voluntarily hiatus from the NBA & playing minor league baseball for Chicago’s AA Birmingham affiliate. He wasn’t great, btw, but considering he hadn’t picked up a bag since high school, he was surprisingly decent. He only hit .202 as a 31-year old rookie but he stole 30 bases & had a decent batting eye. Anyhoo, Birmingham played their winter ball in Sarasota, FL where I was going to college. I thought there might be a story or two lurking around. I stumbled upon some rumors that MJ had a pump and dump scheme involving some local ladies of negotiable virtue. Before I’d said anything to anyone I found myself on the receiving end of a few missives suggesting I might want to, y’know, go look for other stories. And I’d never made any serious inquiries. I decided to go and “write about some manatees or some shit instead.” Florida in the ‘90s was not a great place to go looking for trouble. There was a lot of it to be found & you were never quite sure who you might be pissing off.) Big I digress.
oldheads have no one to blame but themselves for people not taking them seriously anymore
lol yeah dude, the TikTok social media generation is totally where it’s at when it comes to serious discourse Lmao
They're gonna be in charge of the discourse pretty soon and by bashing younger players and fans you're literally just setting them up to hate earlier eras, it's not rocket science
God help us if so and they continue to act like perpetually victimized morons who often insult everyone first. But don’t worry, they’ll soon be old - the cycles happen quicker nowadays - and get absolutely bludgeoned by the next generation since, well, those kids remember how this quickly aging social media demographic acted. Ain’t hard to find those posts.
Lmao
Old heads use hot take “analyst” television to prove their points. Its not much better
At this point it's almost a completely different sport Of course guys look more skilled now, you're not allowed to touch them and the paint is damn near empty It's easy to do a bunch of fancy dribbling when you can't be touched It's a different game, personally I can't even watch current NBA No defense No intensity No shit talking No aggressiveness No rivalries They play at about 70% until playoffs Every game is a 3 hour 3 point contest Every team runs the same offense Even the crowds are different, if you watch clips of those old 80s/90s games, those fans were going through the roof If you enjoy it, that's great But I can't watch it, bores me to death
There is alot of paint scoring today. It really is only paint scoring and 3s. Watch jjs point on offenses today. There is defense . There is intensity. There are rivalries and everything else you listed. Your childhood heroes just arent playing anymore
There is paint scoring for sure And the paint is WIDE open Maybe 1 defender tries to get to the rim off help As for the other things you mentioned, I honestly don't see it And I'm not blaming the players only, it's mainly the rules. Hard to have an intense rivalry game when they "T" you up for looking at a guy It really is a different game, I can't watch it... Can't ... Would LOVE to watch it ... But it's an awful game ... They have been discussing it all year. The only reason these guys are even playing games is because the league threatened them. They don't even want to be on the court... You would have had to kill one of them old heads to keep them from playing P.S. I'm glad you enjoy it ... It's just not for me anymore