Current Warriors vs. the 1990 Bad Boy Pistons, 90s rules

[Shock Defeat]

7 Game Series who you got?

I. Thomas
Dumars
Aguirre
Rodman
Lambeer

vs.

Curry
Klay
Barnes
Green
Bogut

A few things to think about:
-90s rules
-Dirty physical Pistons may very well be too overwhelming for the Warriors, would turn it into an NFL game by today's standards, and it'd be legal
-Pistons have never seen a team like the Warriors and their three point shooting style

[Laimbeer]

Oh c'mon make it 1989 so we have Mahorn.

[turk3d]

It'd be pretty bloody, that's all I'd say. I think Isaiah/Curry matchup would be epic.

[JordansBulls]

It'd be pretty bloody, that's all I'd say. I think Isaiah/Curry matchup would be epic.

Yeah they would virtually cancel one another out in that series.

[Quotatious]

Yeah they would virtually cancel one another out in that series.

If Isiah played the same way he did in the 1990 finals against Portland, then he would have a good chance of cancelling Steph out, but if he played the way he did in the 1989-90 regular season, or even in the first three rounds of the 1990 playoffs, Curry would eat him alive, no matter what rules we are using (John Stockton or Mark Price were similar to Curry in terms of size and athleticism, and they were just fine in the 90s...well, Steph might be more athletic than they were).

Isiah was phenomenal in the 1990 finals. That's one of the all-time great finals performances in NBA history. However, he didn't play nearly as well in the regular season or first three playoff rounds that year.

[qm22]

Yeah they would virtually cancel one another out in that series.

If Isiah played the same way he did in the 1990 finals against Portland, then he would have a good chance of cancelling Steph out, but if he played the way he did in the 1989-90 regular season, or even in the first three rounds of the 1990 playoffs, Curry would eat him alive, no matter what rules we are using (John Stockton or Mark Price were similar to Curry in terms of size and athleticism, and they were just fine in the 90s...well, Steph might be more athletic than they are).

Isiah was phenomenal in the 1990 finals. That's one of the all-time great finals performances in NBA history. However, he didn't play nearly as well in the regular season or first three playoff rounds that year.

That point about Isiah has often been held against him. But I think if someone plays bad in the regular season and has a good playoffs, it most likely means the latter is what they can really do. Especially when his team was winning a lot of games (why force it, have high usage, rather than develop the whole team and play for the long run?). Not that I think Thomas's game is designed to do what Curry is for a whole RS, even if he wanted...but there are many good reasons to not have good stats and represent your capabilities in the RS. All accounts say that it was Isiah's purposely selective in how hard he played in the RS, and I imagine it benefited the team development. I don't think there has been evidence shown to the opposite, i.e., where the Pistons needed to run through Isiah more but he couldn't deliver; Thomas always seemed to have elevated performances in those times.

Conversely the major question revolving around all Curry rankings/scenarios is if he can be as spectacular in the post-season.

[kabstah]

Pistons would get destroyed. GSW is almost as good on defense and miles ahead on offense. I would go even farther and say that put into a time machine, GSW would annihilate every team from the 80's and 90's because no one back then was ready for this level of 3 point shooting.

[tsherkin]

Don't think the Pistons could win. Their brand of D was designed specifically to attack interior penetration, and didn't have any kind of real ability to reach out to the perimeter to defend that kind of attack. They had enough trouble with the 87 Celtics, and they only took about 7.3 3PA PER GAME, and Bird was 3/14 from deep. Yeah, in 88 they took them 4-2 because they could go after Bird, but Golden State had too many options and too much perimeter ability. They can literally bomb from 3 at a rate which is quality as overall FG%. Then they've got razor-sharp passing and team play as well as viable defense.

I mean, I'm not saying this one would be 4 straight blow-outs or anything, but the main idea of the Pistons D was designed for an entirely different style of offense. And really, this whole "NFL game" stuff is overblown. They gave a hard foul on the regular, but they also mostly did it at the rim. Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

Detroit was very good defensively in general, but they were geared to stop penetration and didn't really have the right tools to do the same thing to the Warriors that they were able to do to early Chicago or 80s Boston. They had considerable offensive success until the Conference Finals against Chicago, where they sucked, but were back to near-RS levels against the Blazers. Still, the Warriors have interior defense, strong perimeter defense and Isiah wasn't a particularly good scorer most nights even if he was a fantastic and somewhat underrated playmaker and floor general. Short version, their peak defensive dominance is robbed some by matchups and they weren't that amazing offensively while the Warriors are actually quite good defensively and dominant offensively.

I think this one's pretty solidly in favor of the Warriors.

[Frosty]

Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

I disagree on this. A lot of what GS does would be impacted by the hand checking that went on. Hand checking was as much about buying your teammate a bit of time to get into help position as it was shutting down your primary target. The screen and roll often resulted in some slowing down of your man using your hands that gave your team some additional time to react. Curry gets a lot of clean shots off of screens and ball handling to get free of his man long enough to get a quick shot off (which his incredibly quick release makes you pay for). The same rules that have made penetration easier have made getting open for a shot easier. Having a guy slow you down even a little can change that from a wide open to a contested shot. That's the basis of what Cuban took to the NBA after the 2004 Piston's dismantled the Lakers. Team advantages through hand checking guys and slowing them down a bit.

People get too caught up in the one on one view of the hand check but forget about the macro level impacts to a teams defense.

The pick and roll was a common set during the 80's, the Pistons used it heavily themselves so it's not like their defense couldn't deal with it at all. Their defense was excellent at rotating and scrambling. Having the SF version of Rodman would be a huge deal in facing GS as well.

[G35]

Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

I disagree on this. A lot of what GS does would be impacted by the hand checking that went on. Hand checking was as much about buying your teammate a bit of time to get into help position as it was shutting down your primary target. The screen and roll often resulted in some slowing down of your man using your hands that gave your team some additional time to react. Curry gets a lot of clean shots off of screens and ball handling to get free of his man long enough to get a quick shot off (which his incredibly quick release makes you pay for). The same rules that have made penetration easier have made getting open for a shot easier. Having a guy slow you down even a little can change that from a wide open to a contested shot. That's the basis of what Cuban took to the NBA after the 2004 Piston's dismantled the Lakers. Team advantages through hand checking guys and slowing them down a bit.

People get too caught up in the one on one view of the hand check but forget about the macro level impacts to a teams defense.

The pick and roll was a common set during the 80's, the Pistons used it heavily themselves so it's not like their defense couldn't deal with it at all. Their defense was excellent at rotating and scrambling. Having the SF version of Rodman would be a huge deal in facing GS as well.

Yeah I don't think that the difference in rules is being emphasized.

The Warriors secret (not really secret but their go-to move) is going small and allowing Draymond to defend 1-1 vs bigs. Since players can't stay in the passing lanes, dig down and fake double teaming, I don't think Kerr would use that lineup as much. Also, I think the Pistons would own the boards with Draymond being forced to account for Rodman in a way similar that teams try to face guard Tristan Thompson.

Then Laimbeer was one of the pioneering big's in that he was a stretch 5, and he was very good from the 18-22 ft range.....I know...I know...worst shot in the game but to me Laimbeer stretches the defense and any shot that goes in the basket is a good shot. One it forces teams to take the ball out of the net and have to inbound slowing curtailing transition opportunities and getting the Pistons to get into their half-court defense.

I also think that a team that is plucked out of its own era and put in another is at a huge disadvantage. I think the way ref's call the game has evolved so things that were called more often in previous era's are "let go". I think moving picks/screens, travelling, ball handling would benefit the "home era team".

Also I do think Isiah would take Curry as a challenge and a motivated Isiah is as good as any that I have seen in the game. I think he could match Curry in a shootout, particularly when Klay would have to guard Joe Dumars or Vinnie Johnson......

[tsherkin]

I disagree on this. A lot of what GS does would be impacted by the hand checking that went on. Hand checking was as much about buying your teammate a bit of time to get into help position as it was shutting down your primary target. The screen and roll often resulted in some slowing down of your man using your hands that gave your team some additional time to react. Curry gets a lot of clean shots off of screens and ball handling to get free of his man long enough to get a quick shot off (which his incredibly quick release makes you pay for). The same rules that have made penetration easier have made getting open for a shot easier. Having a guy slow you down even a little can change that from a wide open to a contested shot. That's the basis of what Cuban took to the NBA after the 2004 Piston's dismantled the Lakers. Team advantages through hand checking guys and slowing them down a bit.

I think people have a highly romanticized view of what did and did not go on in the league at the time, as is often the case as time passes. We see the same thing with people who watched ball in the 60s... and then you go back and watch, and it's literally nothing like this dreadful slugfest they were talking about, you know? In the 80s and 90s, that's handchecking. It wasn't even until the late 90s when it started to get really consequential and spread beyond the Knicks in the first place, but I mean it's not like there was hand-on-hip the entire time the game was played, and that's how it is often represented. It was illegal then and it's illegal now, but it went through a down period of lax enforcement...

But if you watch Curry, I mean handchecks are gonna do only so much to the guy. Do you know the proportion of his shots which he takes from stupid ranges that no handcheck was ever going to stop? You understand that he's 4/7 from 30-34 feet, that he's 152/325 (46.8%) from 25-29 feet, right? He's 1-2 from 35-39 feet. The NBA 3pt line peaks at 23'9. So here's a guy who has taken the bulk of his shots a foot-and-a-quarter to 5'3 off of the actual line... and is crushing FACES with his efficiency at that range.

The guy will pop on a moment's notice. A dude periodically trying to buy a blink around a screen isn't going to make a difference to that kind of shooting performance. Not for a second does that make any kind of sense.

The pick and roll was a common set during the 80's, the Pistons used it heavily themselves so it's not like their defense couldn't deal with it at all. Their defense was excellent at rotating and scrambling. Having the SF version of Rodman would be a huge deal in facing GS as well.

They wouldn't really be able to do anything about it, though. It's not even that they could or couldn't defend the PnR, which actually wasn't featured as commonly as you're talking about in the 80s. That was more of a Utah thing at the time. It was there, sure, but we saw a lot more post/re-post and clear-out isolation at the time than any kind of major usage of the screen-and-roll play... precisely because we had guys like Kareem, Magic, Barkley, Dantley, Ewing, Olajuwon, Robinson and so forth in the league. Hell, Parish, Bird, Bill Cartwright in New York, JBC with the Warriors, McHale... I mean, post ball was alive and thriving at the time, so PnR was considerably deflated by volume compared to today (although certainly the various bigs with a 17-footer were involved in it, especially as we moved towards the mid-90s).

Meantime, when you watch a Warriors game, it's not about conventional PnR play. Yeah, they get out and set screens and everything, but a lot of what they do is literally just walk it up the court and pass it around the perimeter until Curry takes a three, or they swing it about and hit Klay around pindown... or Curry coming around a baseline screen and stuff. Those are sets that worked to perfection against the handchecking league for guys like Bird and Reggie and Dell Curry, Glen Rice, Dale Ellis... It's total revisionism to suggest that these fundamental sets which worked beautifully against even the most physical of defenses at the time would suddenly not work against the Bad Boys. And that's even ignoring how often the Warriors just pop when they feel like it from 3 without any kind of prelude screen action.

It's just fantasy. It's well and good to respect the Pistons, to acknowledge that they wouldn't get steamrolled, but we do need to put a stop to some of our own nostalgia, lest we become hypocrites for doing that while on the other hand turning around and undercutting earlier generations for doing the same.

I don't mean to platform too much, Frosty; like 40% of that wasn't really directed at you so much as the broader whole of comparison dialog where we hear this stuff, but this one's a button for me. I watched live the nastiest era of defensive basketball in the three-point era. I saw Riles running his Knicks and JVG when he went to make the same of Miami. I watched the Jazz. I watched all the best defenders in that era and the best defensive teams. At the time, I was fascinated by Ewing and the post bigs, by Stacey Augmon being all elastic and super-cool defending the perimeter, Jordan, Cooper, Rodman, all of them. Big fan of the Spurs and Bowen. I even tolerated watching dreadful Indiana ball while they had Artest and Jermaine O'neal at the nadir of quality NBA basketball... and I must say, how people interface with the idea of handchecking is just fantasy, especially with respect to the 90s and EARLY 90s.

What basketball looked like from 98-04 was very much MORE physical than anything we saw from any team assembled and playing in the 1980s or on the border between the 80s and 90s. Detroit's brand of defense was a lot more about fouling at the rim, swarming and skirting/breaking the rules pertaining to zone defense in the NBA than it was about being especially physical on the perimeter. Keep in mind, too, that you're talking about Isiah Thomas, who was not an especially well-regarded defender... and if they wanted to put RODMAN on Curry (or Klay for that matter), they'd run into some other problems defensively.

Realistically, though, the way the Pistons defended other perimeter stars was to run more than one guy at them, and once you start doubling, Golden State is already winning because their gameplan is basically exploiting the defensive gravity which Curry commands because of his threat literally 30 feet from the basket. It warps everything. Now, you have to respect threat from that distance and layer against that... but inevitably that weakens your defense elsewhere and they are uniquely positioned to exploit you to a level which you are not likely to match. Curry from 3, on 10.8 attempts per game, is shooting 45.8%, and +1.0% over that from 25-29 feet, as I mentioned. The Pistons AS A WHOLE shot 47.8% from the field in the 89-90 regular season. They took 541 3PA all year and shot 32.7%. That's ~ 6.6 3PA/g. Curry's got them at roughly 167% or so in terms of volume.

That's an unfathomable difference. Teams now, teams three and a half decades after the official implementation of the three-point shot in the NBA, and well into the era where it's become a significant part of regular usage league-wide, struggle to defend it.

The Pistons would be coming into that blind and really without the tools to go after that. None of their frontcourt thugs would be of major use because they largely weren't sufficiently mobile to go after him. You throw Rodman out there on him and Draymond Green SHREDS Mahorn or whomever else you'd bother to put on him while Klay goes nuts, and Iggy isn't exactly chopped liver either.

You double or trap, you run into the same problem that teams now have. I mean, that's the thing: if he's hitting from 3, you're basically done. And he's usually hitting from 3. Yeah, in a series, you might catch him on a cold night, because those totally happen, but the team as a whole has breadth and depth of talent and ability, they don't just ride or die on the basis of Curry's shooting. That's why even when he wasn't totally earth-shattering in the Finals, he had defensive draw like Shaq in the 06 Finals between Miami and Dallas. They had to respect him so hard within a dozen feet of the rim that they could not double off of him... and Wade just PnR'd from the left side so hard that either he and Shaq traded buckets or he was pitching to the weakside corner for James Posey or Walker or whomever else and they were murdering Dallas on the back end of that series. Curry's got that same kind of issue. He's perfectly content to just chill in spots and make you single cover him and warp your D around that truth while the rest of the team goes, then dive in as necessary as assassinate your confidence with a 28-footer.

No way the Pistons could account for that. Modern teams with years and years of experience explicitly against high-volume three-point shooting from teams and individuals have trouble with that. It'd be totally foreign to them. You give them a few years and tweak their roster some and maybe they find something to do but their physicality and hand checking meant more against slashers than any kind of perimeter attack.

[ReaLiez]

90s rules was a different game .... I would love to see Curry play while getting hand checked and abused by Rodman/Dumars and of course Isiah....

Plus that front court .... I would love to see Rodman vs Green tho

[Laimbeer]

I mean, I'm not saying this one would be 4 straight blow-outs or anything, but the main idea of the Pistons D was designed for an entirely different style of offense. And really, this whole "NFL game" stuff is overblown. They gave a hard foul on the regular, but they also mostly did it at the rim. Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

But their threes are often set up by penetration, and the threat of penetration can create more space. And I'd like to see how Curry reacts to some of those hard fouls.

[kabstah]

I mean, I'm not saying this one would be 4 straight blow-outs or anything, but the main idea of the Pistons D was designed for an entirely different style of offense. And really, this whole "NFL game" stuff is overblown. They gave a hard foul on the regular, but they also mostly did it at the rim. Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

But their threes are often set up by penetration, and the threat of penetration can create more space. And I'd like to see how Curry reacts to some of those hard fouls.

Curry would react by making a bunch of free throws at a 90% rate.

[Shock Defeat]

I mean, I'm not saying this one would be 4 straight blow-outs or anything, but the main idea of the Pistons D was designed for an entirely different style of offense. And really, this whole "NFL game" stuff is overblown. They gave a hard foul on the regular, but they also mostly did it at the rim. Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

But their threes are often set up by penetration, and the threat of penetration can create more space. And I'd like to see how Curry reacts to some of those hard fouls.

Curry would react by making a bunch of free throws at a 90% rate.

Yeah but would he last the whole series after being pushed around like a ragdoll? I'm not so sure, Curry was surprised by Dellavadova's physical defending in the Finals and he really had to adjust to it. Now you are asking him to play through that but 5x worse and all of those hits would be completely legal. This is a really large adjustment for someone who plays a finesse game, back in that era you could hit guys on the elbow while they were shooting and it wasn't considered a foul. Fouls that would be considered flagrant 2 and ejections today were just common fouls back then. Then what about the rest of the team? Klay Thompson was porous in last year's Finals, how would he really do against the Pistons in that era? Barnes too, is considered kind of soft today, how would he perform?

[tsherkin]

But their threes are often set up by penetration, and the threat of penetration can create more space. And I'd like to see how Curry reacts to some of those hard fouls.

Not nearly often enough to matter in the grand scheme of things, though. Over and over again, Curry and Klay both prove capable of regularly bombing away on pull-up threes in the secondary or otherwise. We're not going to see a ton of difference here, the change out on the perimeter isn't that big. Guys got clean, open looks all of the time, and would still do so. Honestly, I mean that year, Reggie Miller burned the crap out of them and they've got a guy on their team who is a similar type of scorer...

And that's not even Steph, you know what I'm saying?

[HeartBreakKid]

I mean, I'm not saying this one would be 4 straight blow-outs or anything, but the main idea of the Pistons D was designed for an entirely different style of offense. And really, this whole "NFL game" stuff is overblown. They gave a hard foul on the regular, but they also mostly did it at the rim. Nothing about the 90s rules would really change the Warriors attack, though. They don't rely heavily upon dribble penetration, which is what the contemporary re-up on the handcheck enforcement rules really enhances their style of play. Nothing about the handcheck would really make a huge difference to the way they advance the ball or attack from the perimeter.

But their threes are often set up by penetration, and the threat of penetration can create more space. And I'd like to see how Curry reacts to some of those hard fouls.

Oh no, Curry is going to get fouled, because getting fouled hard has stopped a lot of superstars before. You're talking about the best player in the NBA getting shook by fouls, please.

[kabstah]

But their threes are often set up by penetration, and the threat of penetration can create more space. And I'd like to see how Curry reacts to some of those hard fouls.

Curry would react by making a bunch of free throws at a 90% rate.

Yeah but would he last the whole series after being pushed around like a ragdoll? I'm not so sure, Curry was surprised by Dellavadova's physical defending in the Finals and he really had to adjust to it. Now you are asking him to play through that but 5x worse and all of those hits would be completely legal. This is a really large adjustment for someone who plays a finesse game, back in that era you could hit guys on the elbow while they were shooting and it wasn't considered a foul. Fouls that would be considered flagrant 2 and ejections today were just common fouls back then. Then what about the rest of the team? Klay Thompson was porous in last year's Finals, how would he really do against the Pistons in that era? Barnes too, is considered kind of soft today, how would he perform?

Dellavadova's impact on defense gets over-exaggerated because Cleveland's defense got blown up as soon as GSW benched Bogut. Also, I think it's both amazing and hilarious that your defensive strategy is Hack-a-Curry.

[turk3d]

I haven't read the entire thread but one thing to be considered (may have already been mentioned) is the Warriors toughness, including Klay and especially Steph. I know that for a while there a lot of people were saying (probably started by Barkely) is that the Warriors were soft.

This is about as far from the truth as can be imo. I believe that particular aspect of their game is overlooked due to their tremendous skill level (people tend to think that when you're as skilled as most of them are that they are automatically weak physically). This is not the case with this particular group.

No doubt that the Pistons would try and bully them but I'm pretty sure they'd be up to the task. Guys like Bogut, Green and probably Ezeli will not allow themselves to be punked by the Pistons players. I also think Iguodala could hold his own in a physical game.It would definitely be an all out war though imo. Just watch Curry the next time they play. He gets knocked around pretty much the entire game and just bounces back up. Kinda reminds me of the Energizer Bunny. Don't let his boyish look fool you. Kids as tough as nails.

[Frosty]

I disagree on this. A lot of what GS does would be impacted by the hand checking that went on. Hand checking was as much about buying your teammate a bit of time to get into help position as it was shutting down your primary target. The screen and roll often resulted in some slowing down of your man using your hands that gave your team some additional time to react. Curry gets a lot of clean shots off of screens and ball handling to get free of his man long enough to get a quick shot off (which his incredibly quick release makes you pay for). The same rules that have made penetration easier have made getting open for a shot easier. Having a guy slow you down even a little can change that from a wide open to a contested shot. That's the basis of what Cuban took to the NBA after the 2004 Piston's dismantled the Lakers. Team advantages through hand checking guys and slowing them down a bit.

I think people have a highly romanticized view of what did and did not go on in the league at the time, as is often the case as time passes. We see the same thing with people who watched ball in the 60s... and then you go back and watch, and it's literally nothing like this dreadful slugfest they were talking about, you know? In the 80s and 90s, that's handchecking. It wasn't even until the late 90s when it started to get really consequential and spread beyond the Knicks in the first place, but I mean it's not like there was hand-on-hip the entire time the game was played, and that's how it is often represented. It was illegal then and it's illegal now, but it went through a down period of lax enforcement...

Ah the "romanticized" response...sigh. First off, I wasn't talking about a slugfest or anything similar. And handchecking was common for the Piston's (who are the subject of this thread) defense. They all used it. Dumar admits he used it heavily on MJ. It wasn't enforced at all. It's not something you did all the time but there was definitely a lot of hand obstruction going on by the Pistons. Are you denying that?

But if you watch Curry, I mean handchecks are gonna do only so much to the guy. Do you know the proportion of his shots which he takes from stupid ranges that no handcheck was ever going to stop? You understand that he's 4/7 from 30-34 feet, that he's 152/325 (46.8%) from 25-29 feet, right? He's 1-2 from 35-39 feet. The NBA 3pt line peaks at 23'9. So here's a guy who has taken the bulk of his shots a foot-and-a-quarter to 5'3 off of the actual line... and is crushing FACES with his efficiency at that range.

And he still needs to get open. He still needs to take other shots. Or is the discussion just how will Detroit deal with Curry's range? My answer. Stick Rodman on him.

The pick and roll was a common set during the 80's, the Pistons used it heavily themselves so it's not like their defense couldn't deal with it at all. Their defense was excellent at rotating and scrambling. Having the SF version of Rodman would be a huge deal in facing GS as well.

They wouldn't really be able to do anything about it, though. It's not even that they could or couldn't defend the PnR, which actually wasn't featured as commonly as you're talking about in the 80s. That was more of a Utah thing at the time. It was there, sure, but we saw a lot more post/re-post and clear-out isolation at the time than any kind of major usage of the screen-and-roll play...

We are still talking about Detroit right? Daly loved the pick and roll. I mean he would joke about his coaching 'if the pick and roll isn't working I'll call a pick and roll' or something similar was a response to one question at the time.

Chuck Daly was exceptional at coaching the PNR, running it from various angles on the floor. He'd break it down -- from 2-on-2 up to 5-on-5 -- drilling it until it was perfect. He really revolutionized the PNR game in modern basketball.

Coach Daly would script PNRs to see how opponents would react or defend them. Calling it the "windshield wiper" technique (a philosophy he'd borrowed from former Niners coach Bill Walsh), Coach Daly would run them all over the court, searching for an opponent's weakness and forcing them to make a decision.

http://emuss.blogspot.ca/2008/12/pick-and-roll-is-universal.html

precisely because we had guys like Kareem, Magic, Barkley, Dantley, Ewing, Olajuwon, Robinson and so forth in the league. Hell, Parish, Bird, Bill Cartwright in New York, JBC with the Warriors, McHale... I mean, post ball was alive and thriving at the time, so PnR was considerably deflated by volume compared to today (although certainly the various bigs with a 17-footer were involved in it, especially as we moved towards the mid-90s).

You are easily distracted. I'm talking about the Piston's not what the rest of the league was doing. It has no relevance.

Meantime, when you watch a Warriors game, it's not about conventional PnR play. Yeah, they get out and set screens and everything, but a lot of what they do is literally just walk it up the court and pass it around the perimeter until Curry takes a three, or they swing it about and hit Klay around pindown... or Curry coming around a baseline screen and stuff. Those are sets that worked to perfection against the handchecking league for guys like Bird and Reggie and Dell Curry, Glen Rice, Dale Ellis... It's total revisionism to suggest that these fundamental sets which worked beautifully against even the most physical of defenses at the time would suddenly not work against the Bad Boys. And that's even ignoring how often the Warriors just pop when they feel like it from 3 without any kind of prelude screen action.

Curry gets screens at the top all the time. Ugh now you pulled the revisionist card....what's next ?

It's just fantasy.

Sorry I asked.

It's well and good to respect the Pistons, to acknowledge that they wouldn't get steamrolled, but we do need to put a stop to some of our own nostalgia, lest we become hypocrites for doing that while on the other hand turning around and undercutting earlier generations for doing the same.

Wow "nostalgia" that's the full deck of lame responses to what could have been a decent discussion.

I don't mean to platform too much, Frosty; like 40% of that wasn't really directed at you so much as the broader whole of comparison dialog where we hear this stuff, but this one's a button for me.

Too late. I just read this part and it's a button for me too. I can't stand the people that fall back on all of the above cop out responses and can't admit there are changes that would have some impact on a team built for an entirely different ruleset. No team is directly portable to another era without some impact. Well unless you send a team further back.

and I must say, how people interface with the idea of handchecking is just fantasy, especially with respect to the 90s and EARLY 90s.

You keep getting caught up on the physicality and that's not what people are talking about with hand checking. You don't need to abuse someone to have an impact with your hands.

Anyways I'm done with the rest. Too long and I've already seen what I need to in order to realize this isn't going anywhere.