slothrop8 wrote:Curmudgeon wrote:And now that we have debunked the idea that today's athletes run so much faster, or jump so much higher or longer than athletes in the 1960s, let's talk about skills. I'll advance this hypothesis: skill at basketball is a good thing when you are playing basketball.
Let's take free throw shooting, a skill that has little or nothing to do with athleticism.
The 1965-66 Celtics shot 73.9% from the line, as a team. The Sixers shot 67.6%, no improvement there.
As a rough approximation of passing ability, The 1965-66 Celtics had 1795 assists in 80 games; the Sixers had 1683 in 82 games. No improvement there, either.
The 1965-66 Celtics got off 8367 shots (all two pointers since there was no three point shot). The Sixers got off 4617 two pointers and and 2160 three pointers, for a total of 6777. That means the Celtics got off nearly 1,600 more shots even though they played two fewer games. Obviously the Celtics played with more pace, which is obvious when you consider that the 1965-66 Celtics averaged 112 points per game while last year's Sixers averaged 92 points per game.
Funny how those crappy athletes with only 12 men on the roster played so much faster that today's supermen.
What are these arguments? Free throw%? Basketball is not a free throw shooting contest. But fine, that 73.7% by the 65 Celtics would have good for 30th in the 2014 NCAA men's ranks and 39th in NCAA women's ball. It would sit dead last in the WNBA.
Assists and shots taken are pace of play metrics and relative to your competition - they have no bearing comparing play across eras - other than to point out teams played fast with no D in the 60s.
No time or distance achieved by the 1964 Olympic Gold Medalists in Track and Field would have medalled at the most recent 2013 World Championships. In most cases they would be nowhere close. However, the time posted by the winner of 2013 women's 100m would have made it through the first round of heats in 1964 men's and been good for about a 30th place finish.
In swimming, the times posted by all women winners at the 2015 Worlds would all have been good for Gold in the Men's events at the 1964 Olympics. Literally every event would have been wom by a woman if today's women went back in time to compete. Katie Ledecky would have won the 1964 men's 1500m by almost 2 full minutes. She would have literally lapped the field. And no, swim suit aerodynamics do not play a significant role in that discrepancy.
No pro sports team in any sport from the 1960s would have any chance against a pro sports team from today. It would be an unbelievable destruction. It doesn't mean the greats of the 60s weren't great relative to their era - it's just not viable for them to compete now.
Wouldn't medal? I don't think that's the point. The fact that you could magically transplant a top track athlete from 40 or 60 years ago into the present age and they'd immediately qualify for the freaking Olympics speaks volumes in and of itself. You describe modern athletes as if athletic trainers have turned them into Marvel superheroes. "Unbelievable destruction?" Please, Charles Greene or Carl Lewis wouldn't look one bit out of place today. Wouldn't win either but they'd be competent against the field.
And that's in track and field, where pure gains matter. The sport has spent over half a century throwing everything it can think of into strength training to eek out a precious few tenths of a second among a handful of people. That's a razor-thin advantage at best.
In basketball, pure athletics are meaningless without supporting basketball skills, so the slim margin of generational improvement is effectively neutered. Players aren't training to max out their sprint times. A lot of the greats were never hyper-athletic to begin with, and a lot have actively avoided excessive strength training to stay lean and prolong their careers. There just isn't a huge gap between guys like Nate Thurmond or Bill Russell and modern players. We're not comparing a late Twentieth-Century Olympic weightlifter to some pre-War mountaineer swinging kettledrums while he takes his morning constitution.
Athleticism wouldn't be a problem for what was essentially an All-Star/All-World team like Russell's Celtics. The rule and philosophical changes in the game would be the linchpin. If they play using 60s rules--no three pointers, man defense, palming, carrying, travelling, etc...--I think Bill murders the 76ers. If they play the modern game, well then, do they get time to practice the modern rules, how long, and how well can they adapt? You'd never know without conducting the actual experiment, which is clearly impossible.
