That's why guys like Kerr, Hodges and even JJ later (early in his career before the league changed drastically with the rules) didn't play major minutes or start and if they did they were major liabilities that had to be accounted for.
Then you'd be left with a bunch of defensive liabilities whose advantages (3 pt shooting) have been nullified and coaches wouldn't have them on the floor. All of today's players rely on this in order to get enough separation to get their shots off. All the guards and wings would have to ISO against their positions instead and they wouldn't be able to create just like guys had trouble back then. There'd be no moving screens to force switches onto bigs at the top of the key. They'd be called for carrying the first dribble they took on an inbound. They'd have to completely retrain how they play the game of basketball since even the simple act of dribbling would be vastly different. Conversely, I'm not convinced you could take the players of today and drop them into the 90s and expect the same. All they'd need to do is work on their 3 pt shot. I'm certain that if you took a player from the 90s and put them in today's game with relaxed rules they'd be able to catch up quickly. But that's how players SHOULD look playing within the rules on the books. Guys look like they're almost running in quicksand back then. Their eyes are trained to expect more freedom of movement afforded to current players due to being allowed to break rules. So of course, if they watch highlights or full games from past eras they won't be impressed. They're biased because they've only ever known the current game with its lax rules, no defense, high scoring, etc. The game was tough to watch, sit down and watch a random regular season game from 1992 and you'll come back to reality quickly, the product wasn't good.įarBeyondDriven wrote:people that "weren't there" and lived through that era really shouldn't think people are going to listen to them opine about that era. Maybe it did have more substance back in the day, but those things largely weren't basketball related. You can't even describe why it was more beautiful back in the day, you just list out some broad words to describe a feeling it gave you. You're doing mental gymnastics to avoid using the word nostalgia. Nostalgia is just an affection for the past which is exactly what you are describing. Nostalgia is linked to personal associations, not quality. But for a plethora of reasons, it’s lost the charm, beauty, and substance of the 80s/90s.
The game today is more advanced and it’s definitely more skilled. There’s a charm, beauty, and substance to older movies that is harder to find now. In so many ways, filmmaking has taken an amazing step forward with CGI, special effects, budgets, etc., but they’ve also taken a big step backwards. HomoSapien wrote:Comparing the 80s/90s to today’s era is like comparing today’s movies with movies from the past. But again for context, that would also have made them the 3rd highest 3 point shooting team by rate in 1994 before the shorter line. So much so only 2 teams in the NBA had a 3 point rate less than the league average in 1998, the bulls being on of those two teams all be it by. They were 12.7 in 1998 after 3 years of a shorter line which did increase attempts.īut teams going from 15.9% of their shots being 3's to 22.2% is a pretty massive jump.
If you go back to 94, before the shortened 3 point line for better context attempts were at 9.9 per game vs 18.1 in 2010. The league was transitioning, sure, but it wasn't significantly different yet.ĩ7 when Reggie hit 229 the league had the shorter 3 point line. The previous year, Reggie Miller made 229 threes.Īlso, David Stern is still the commissioner at this point. In 98 (the last full season of the 90s), Wesley Person led the league with 192 made threes. In 2010, Dorrell Wright led the NBA in made three-pointers with 194. Through ten years of the 90s, the league average was 100 ppg. The average points per game was 99.6 in 2010. Average three-point attempts are just up by about 2-5 attempts versus most of the 90s. League-wide pace is comparable if not slower than much of the 90s.
They're comprised of one real three-point shooter (Korver), a blend of traditional big men (Noah, Boozer, Gibson, Kurt Thomas, Asik), and a PG that dictates the show. Record-wise, the best team in the East is the Rose-led Bulls. We're talking a decade removed from the 90s here. The rules changed significantly from the 90's to the 10's, to compare them and deduce they aren't significantly different is very wrong. That's when the game really started to mature. He was a very good player, but wasn’t anywhere close to being an all-star lock.Ģ010 wasn't significantly different from the 90's? That's crazy talk. I mean, Brook Lopez early in his career played in an era that wasn’t significantly different than the 90s.