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- Thread starter Ziyad
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Nostradamus
That's why one shouldn't take the NBA seriously anymore.
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the game has changed. Before you didn't have that many players that can shoot threes and the shot clock also now resets to 14 seconds after a missed shot, instead of 24, which leads to faster offense and more shots being taken. Also the scoring average for a team from the 50's to 95 was 106 points per game, which is 5 points more than the scoring average from the last 10 years... The players have just evolved.
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Nostradamus
The rules have also evolved to make everything easier, cheesier and less competitive.
It's become unwatchable. Late 2000s you could catch a rivalry RS game and the playoffs were solid.
Early 2010s, the playoffs mattered for all teams so that was watchable.
Mid 2010s, the RS ceased to matter for everyone and the Playoffs were barely watchable.
Nowadays you can barely watch the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals without cringing.
It's not about evolution, it's about decline of a sport just because people prefer the video game experience of dunks, threes and FTs.
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Wait has football become worse because the game has become a lot softer and faster?
Not saying your not right but the exact same thing happened in football..
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Nostradamus
Football became more mechanical, it's not a matter of pace. It always had cycles with high pace (ie 70s).
It is far softer though and this causes "inflation", in the good sense. So players can play more years etc, which inflates their numbers and gives them better stats.
The problem with football inflation is not what you get on the pitch per se, but in terms of team building. So football is less competitive now because all the top players are taken by a handful of teams and they aren't spread around in a number of leagues and tens of teams. This also has the effect of inflating numbers for top players as they're teammates with possible rivals nowadays.
You can see this from international football in Europe. Ever since more nations emerged you have a lot more games, a heck of a lot easier games and all the scoring records are being broken by modern players (post-1996 careers).
Another issue with football, which is inversely correlated with the NBA but has the same result, is the academy setup. They're all joining football academies now and the end result is the same. It's endurance, strength and teamwork over individual skill, technical skill and even tactical knowledge. In the NBA you can see that players are becoming more of the same, at least from Americans, and you have the silly AAU system which breeds bad sportsmen who are selfish and only care about scoring. There's limited knowledge of the game. And then you have the European derived players taking over in what seems like an unimpressive generation apart from maybe Luka Doncic. Guys like Jokic and Giannis shouldn't be dominating the NBA. They wouldn't have in a previous generation.
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Potato potato.............
fact is both sports got faster in both sports the refs became more lenniant towards the big stars and both sports have become way softer...
Also in both sports the average player has become better and more versatile...
Also i dont really care about scoring numbers in either sports everybody with eyes can tell you that scoring 30 now vs scoring 30 in the 90s are two different beasts does not mean that 90s Basketball was better.
Imho what you are describin is just you liking 80s/90s basketball better than todays which is absolutely legitimate i too get annoyed by the travels that dont get called and by the weak defenses. That being said i still think overall we re seeing a better basketball than we saw bak in the 90s atleast on average.
Also while i think the 90s bulls is the greates BB team ever and MJ the GOAT i m not sure they would win against the current GSW... I think it would all come down wether they play with 90s or with todays rules.
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I don't think ak47 is forgotten lol
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Only thing that has ruined football is var. That can be sorted by speeding up decisions. NBA changes have been for the very worse.
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Nostradamus
It's an interesting thing actually and there's no real correlation to prove that.
In fact, athleticism levels peaked in the 80s in the NBA and have remained rather constant. What changes a bit is that the players are becoming lighter (thus faster) at the expense of strength. And also endurance.
Players cannot keep up with the 82 game system anymore and they are also advised against that. Despite having better medicinal technology and diet to recover faster. Fitness coaches advise against playing so many games yet we still see this being the case at the top international tournaments, so it's not really that big of a thing. Players should be able to play more nowadays but they do not.
As for "better", when it comes to football I may agree because the players are drilled from an earlier age, but the previous peak isn't reached anymore. Talent is suppressed at the expense of mechanical players that follow a specific set play. Creativity is drained from these kids which is why you see more Gagliardinis (ie physical ability) and less Lautaros (ie talent & heart). The game has changed so technical ability is overall higher, but you don't have as many sublime players anymore because many are casted out early on. Even goalkeepers have higher technical level than older generations' full backs, so there's definitely some improvement but it comes at an overall expense.
Fouls are far more soft now, which is due to the televised nature. In both sports. In the NBA they've grown far softer than their FIBA equivalent since the turn of the millennium, so there's also that.
But as for a better basketball player nowadays? In Europe, probably. In the USA? Not really. Average US players are focusing on a couple of skillsets and that's it. Europeans/internationals are more all around and I can't say that the top players are better than their predecessors. The most hyped European players tend to fail at the stage where it matters the most for them, which is the international tournaments. Only Doncic has done stuff but he was mostly second fiddle as a teen to Goran Dragic when they won it.
You can be a very good shooter and/or a very good man defender and/or a very good passer and make in the NBA [as an American player] when every other skill you possess is subpar. They even picked up a baseball term for players that can play on both ends
The so called "two way player", a concept that was alien in the NBA until the late 90s but was reserved for a few special players that were elite on both ends. Now you're a "two way player" if you're decent enough on both ends.You used to have to be elite at something in order to get to be a role player. Now you can get a max contract if you're great at one thing, and you can definitely get a roster spot if you're a good shooter, you don't even have to be very good.
As I mentioned earlier, the US basketball mentality is watering down their previously enormous talent pool. You'll still get elite talent because how can you not. But the setup is making things extremely easy so the judgement isn't or shouldn't be equal to previous eras.
That's coz you're not stupid. Most people unfortunately are either that, or are not really thinking in enough depth to realize some things and just follow the narratives.
Lebron scored 50 a night, wow. He must be the best. But no one checks how those 50 came to be. They just follow the narrative.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored 50 a season for a few years, he must be the best scorer ever. No one cares that he played in the era of stacked top teams and in the CL he featured mostly in the post-Platini rules system.
People are dumbing down everything by simply looking at numbers. Heck it's happening in football still. You've been here for years so you must remember how players were judged in the past. Now it's all about goals + assists because the Fantasy mindset took over, even for players that were never meant to be part of the attacking phase.
While I loved those NBA eras, my favorite was the post-Jordan early 2000s because it was proper basketball and the spotlight was shared amongst various players.
Shaq, Iverson, Tmac, Duncan, Garnett, Kidd, Kobe, Webber, Vince Carter etc and you still had players that were leaving their prime (Payton, Reggie Miller, D Robinson, Karl Malone) and new blood entering theirs (Nowitzki, Ray Allen, Marbury, Pierce etc) and obviously a ton of other great players. And still, the best European players couldn't cut it and to an extent it was due to lack of trust by the coaches. But even when given a chance, the previous generation in the 90s struggled to leave their mark. Very few were important players for playoff teams and superstars like Dino Radja were playing for bad teams with limited prospect of trading up.
Yeah that's fair. It's a different game.
I don't think they're the greatest team ever though because that's very hard to judge. Maybe the greatest starting five in a Finals appearance, but team is a concept that involves the bench as well and they weren't as great there apart from the 96-98 years with Kukoc and Harper on the team.
For best team ever candidates I like the early 80s Sixers a lot, obviously the mid 80s Celtics and the mid 80s Lakers as well, who are a tricky one because the Kareem/Magic balance changed over time and their depth increased when Kareem was out of his prime (but still more than good enough).
From recent teams, the GSW with Durant deserve to be mentioned there obviously and I'd put the 2005 Spurs and 2001 Lakers there, too. Not too sold on the Heat with Lebron and Bosh, I consider them failures.
And of course you have to include the 60s Celtics there, but from the 70s I don't think any team should be rated as high. I'd say you can find teams that didn't win during their year that are scarier than those Lakers, Knicks and Bucks teams that dominated the early 70s and late 70s it was pretty much like the late 2010s/early 2020s.
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Lol.
In other news my man John Konchar with career high last night. There was opportunity to bring him in our NT but we had incompetent people. Funny enough,they remind me of brehme cause they are constantly talking how NBA was better before and they are not watching it now cause it's shit. I think you can see from our awful results that that is true and how wrong they are trying to do things in an old way.
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