2023-24 NBA Season Discussion

[edgymnerch]

Steph vs Bron tomorrow I'm excited

[eminence]

What year do you think the talent per team level caught back up to the 1967 level after expansion? Counting both NBA/ABA.

I can see a pretty broad range here.

My initial thought was quite a long time, possibly not until the 00s.

Kind of an impossible to answer question since the 67 teams are obviously more talented for their league than any post expansion teams, by nature of there being only 10 teams. The two worst teams in the league still had combos like Gus Johnson/Ohl and DeBusschere/Bing that are still probably more impressive combos for 67 than Paolo and Franz are for 24. So to claim that teams in the 2000s with 20-30 teams could be more talented than teams in a 10 team league, you'd have to go down the road of claiming that the modern players who are worse for their league are in reality more talented just in a harder league, like 24 Paolo being 70 Reed's equal in talent, which is a dicier argument to make overall I think.

It would seem your answer is that the average talent level hasn't yet caught up (and may never). Fair perspective.

I'd probably put Paolo/Franz slighly above those duos. Which does make me think I should maybe lean towards the talent not having caught up as well, as the Magic are a perfectly decent squad and those Pistons/Bullets really weren't.

[PooledSilver]

What year do you think the talent per team level caught back up to the 1967 level after expansion? Counting both NBA/ABA.

I can see a pretty broad range here.

My initial thought was quite a long time, possibly not until the 00s.

Kind of an impossible to answer question since the 67 teams are obviously more talented for their league than any post expansion teams, by nature of there being only 10 teams. The two worst teams in the league still had combos like Gus Johnson/Ohl and DeBusschere/Bing that are still probably more impressive combos for 67 than Paolo and Franz are for 24. So to claim that teams in the 2000s with 20-30 teams could be more talented than teams in a 10 team league, you'd have to go down the road of claiming that the modern players who are worse for their league are in reality more talented just in a harder league, like 24 Paolo being 70 Reed's equal in talent, which is a dicier argument to make overall I think.

It would seem your answer is that the average talent level hasn't yet caught up (and may never). Fair perspective.

I'd probably put Paolo/Franz slighly above those duos. Which does make me think I should maybe lean towards the talent not having caught up as well, as the Magic are a perfectly decent squad and those Pistons/Bullets really weren't.

Do we mean talent at basketball or like average talent relative to the top, very different things


Of course the average player is far better now than 1967, don’t think that’s even remotely debatable when we can literally see the gaping difference in quality, you can tell guys are still figuring out how to play when you look at how they move how they shoot how they finish etc, and some players who weren’t at the top but pretty good like Greer and Jones being pretty clearly not NBA level guys today, relative to the top yeah a 10 team league is gonna be more condensed and this closer to the top though

Late 70s early 80s maybe? Certainly by the 90s

[Dr Positivity]

Kind of an impossible to answer question since the 67 teams are obviously more talented for their league than any post expansion teams, by nature of there being only 10 teams. The two worst teams in the league still had combos like Gus Johnson/Ohl and DeBusschere/Bing that are still probably more impressive combos for 67 than Paolo and Franz are for 24. So to claim that teams in the 2000s with 20-30 teams could be more talented than teams in a 10 team league, you'd have to go down the road of claiming that the modern players who are worse for their league are in reality more talented just in a harder league, like 24 Paolo being 70 Reed's equal in talent, which is a dicier argument to make overall I think.

It would seem your answer is that the average talent level hasn't yet caught up (and may never). Fair perspective.

I'd probably put Paolo/Franz slighly above those duos. Which does make me think I should maybe lean towards the talent not having caught up as well, as the Magic are a perfectly decent squad and those Pistons/Bullets really weren't.

Do we mean talent at basketball or like average talent relative to the top, very different things


Of course the average player is far better now than 1967, don’t think that’s even remotely debatable when we can literally see the gaping difference in quality, you can tell guys are still figuring out how to play when you look at how they move how they shoot how they finish etc, and some players who weren’t at the top but pretty good like Greer and Jones being pretty clearly not NBA level guys today, relative to the top yeah a 10 team league is gonna be more condensed and this closer to the top though

Late 70s early 80s maybe? Certainly by the 90s

I think 60s basketball doesn't look the best visually but a lot of it is tighter dribbling rules and lack of spacing. I don't agree about Jones and Greer not being able to play now.

70s basketball feels better to me watching it but it doesn't make sense to say it's because of talent when there was expansion/ABA and some of the 60s stars that played in 70s didn't have their stats hurt, the opposite in the case of a guy like Havlicek, or in early 70s some players like Walker and Wilkens. Then maybe some psychological impact of color vs black and white also makes a difference.

[PooledSilver]

It would seem your answer is that the average talent level hasn't yet caught up (and may never). Fair perspective.

I'd probably put Paolo/Franz slighly above those duos. Which does make me think I should maybe lean towards the talent not having caught up as well, as the Magic are a perfectly decent squad and those Pistons/Bullets really weren't.

Do we mean talent at basketball or like average talent relative to the top, very different things


Of course the average player is far better now than 1967, don’t think that’s even remotely debatable when we can literally see the gaping difference in quality, you can tell guys are still figuring out how to play when you look at how they move how they shoot how they finish etc, and some players who weren’t at the top but pretty good like Greer and Jones being pretty clearly not NBA level guys today, relative to the top yeah a 10 team league is gonna be more condensed and this closer to the top though

Late 70s early 80s maybe? Certainly by the 90s

I think 60s basketball doesn't look the best visually but a lot of it is tighter dribbling rules and lack of spacing. I don't agree about Jones and Greer not being able to play now.

There’s a difference between being limited by the rules though

I agree they could play now but not in the nba, it’s not the athleticsm it’s the skill, rules limited how good everyone was at the perimeter spots

The level of talent is certainly far higher or than in the first 10-15 years of the nba, it’s not just the shooting, the finishing, the footwork, the shooting form, the little details in movement, completely different levels at least in those areas

I think the closer to now the more it’s just a year or two of adjusting but definately on tape those years it’s just legitimately a completely different level, hard to pin the rules on the inferior finishing, movement in the paint (even with stricter travelling rules), etc. most of the best 60s perimeter tape really is just normal basketball moves which stand out in that environment

[eminence]

One has an unconventional definition of 'talent' if they think the US managed to produce <5 guard sized players that were NBA level talents up through the 60s.

It's fine enough, but nobody else has any idea what is being said.

[AEnigma]

You are talking talent distribution, he is talking absolute basketball talent in how well that talent has been fostered.

To the point about the 2024 Magic having lesser starters than the 1967 Bullets and Pistons — maybe, but that gets into questions of distribution. I focused on the top end and bottom end, but those talent distribution curves probably would not match up well regardless. Can the twentieth best player in 1967 correspond appropriately to the sixtieth best player today? I think so. Thirty to ninety, possibly not.

[eminence]

You are talking talent distribution, he is talking absolute basketball talent in how well that talent has been fostered.

To the point about the 2024 Magic having lesser starters than the 1967 Bullets and Pistons — maybe, but that gets into questions of distribution. I focused on the top end and bottom end, but those talent distribution curves probably would not match up well regardless. Can the twentieth best player in 1967 correspond appropriately to the sixtieth best player today? I think so. Thirty to ninety, possibly not.

What is 'absolute' basketball talent, basketball hasn't been static (dribbling, goaltending, the shot-clock some of the larger introductions), so how can talent for it be a static thing?

As I poked fun in the other thread, Tacko Fall is an absurd talent in the original game (no dribbling, goaltending is fine), but he is objectively not an NBA level talent in the game that currently exists.

[PooledSilver]

Are going to say lebron isn’t better than kwame brown at basketball because we haven’t seen how they do in the 1920s before the NBA was invented?

We can be real human beings for a sec you guys know what talent means I’m not gonna say curry is a worst shooter than a middle schooler in cambodia in 1937 because we don’t know how he shoots if his form looks stupid and he never learned how to shoot or if he didn’t learn how to make a basic layup

No need to overcomplicate everything

[trex_8063]

You are talking talent distribution, he is talking absolute basketball talent in how well that talent has been fostered.

The bolded part is where it gets dicey when thinking across eras that are separated by so many decades. Because if we consider only 'absolute talent' to the exclusion of HOW that talent was created/fostered, then are we not more rewarding the player solely for the environment he was lucky enough to be born into, rather than the player's potential itself?

I know there's the temptation to look only at 'absolute talent', because it frankly gets very messy to do otherwise.
And yet if one doesn't at least try, he ends up falsely depreciating entire generations **unfairly.

**because as eminence implies: it's simply not practical to think that the U.S.---with a population of ~135,000,000 in the early-mid 40s----would fail to produce 10 [or whatever small number] persons bearing the potential to be legitimate NBA-level talents.

Even allowing for the likelihood that many [let's even say the majority.....like 75%] of the best potentials never even pursued the sport, either for lack of incentive or lack of integration, or whatever (bearing in mind that basketball was already VERY popular by circa-1950, and every single NBA player was making a livable wage [or better] by the mid-60s).........that would still mean ~40 legit NBA level talents (by modern standards, I mean) in the league of 1967.


So I'd posit that one runs the risk of erroneous impressions of early eras if they only judge it in terms of 'absolute talent' [thru a modern lens] without thinking about these things.
As I've stated in the past, we haven't changed much as a species in the span of a few generations.

[penbeast0]

Do we need this discussion in two different threads simultaneously? Because it is the same discussion in Pooled Silver's "10 Best" thread.

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2364878

[PooledSilver]

I don’t think it was genetically impossible for them to be NBA players if they were born in a different era but it’s pretty clear Sam Jones isn’t an NBA player if you transport him today in his peak for example.

Like it’s SO clear when you watch how different the levels are, it seems like blatant willful ignorance to think rules cover everything.

[PooledSilver]

If ur talking like implicit genetic talent then that’s very different though

[tsherkin]

One has an unconventional definition of 'talent' if they think the US managed to produce <5 guard sized players that were NBA level talents up through the 60s.

Do they?

The range of places in the country emphasizing basketball instead of going to other sports, the differing trends in citizenship/immigration, the relative recency of integration and what that meant to talent development and what have you... there's a bunch of stuff working at odds with talent development at that period in time. How much any of that individually affected the total available pool of guys who actually hit the league and stuck (and then were good enough to be the kind of player discussed) was definitely impacted, though.

The NBA has only actually existed as the NBA since the 49-50 season, after all (and since 47 if you count the BAA), and African-American integration sort of happened in 1950 (first black player drafted). There had been an Asian-American player in 48. The 50-51 seasons was the first with a black player signed to an NBA contract.

Just some food for thought. Keep in mind that the athletic requirements to be in the league have changed over time as the talent pool has focused itself in different directions, and we see less effective volume scoring from the small guys... and the ones who managed it often break down against playoff defenses.

[OhayoKD]

You are talking talent distribution, he is talking absolute basketball talent in how well that talent has been fostered.

To the point about the 2024 Magic having lesser starters than the 1967 Bullets and Pistons — maybe, but that gets into questions of distribution. I focused on the top end and bottom end, but those talent distribution curves probably would not match up well regardless. Can the twentieth best player in 1967 correspond appropriately to the sixtieth best player today? I think so. Thirty to ninety, possibly not.

What is 'absolute' basketball talent, basketball hasn't been static (dribbling, goaltending, the shot-clock some of the larger introductions), so how can talent for it be a static thing?

As I poked fun in the other thread, Tacko Fall is an absurd talent in the original game (no dribbling, goaltending is fine), but he is objectively not an NBA level talent in the game that currently exists.

I've seen 3 approaches for defining "talent" in the absolute

1. The "how would you fare in today's game or in the "state of the art" league

2. How would you fare on average if you were transported across history(my preference)

3. How would you fare on average if you were transported across history with more weight put on today's game

[70sFan]

This Kyrie game winner is nothing short of incredible, one of the toughest shots I've seen in a long time. Truly remarkable...

[Peregrine01]

Games like today is why I’m highly skeptical that Murray can be anywhere near as effective anywhere else. When Jokic is off the floor all I see is one tough midrange pull-up after another. I wonder if it’s just bad shot selection or just inability to get to easier shots.

[GSP]

Mavs and Nuggs game down the stretch was very interesting. Both teams plans were to attack Luka and Jokic respectively they just kept going at them.......im not even saying it was the wrong choice but interesting that 2 top 5 players 1 prolly regarded as best player by most and in crunch time both coaching staffs agreed that the best offense was in targetting Jokic and Luka on pick and rolls or matched up with them off misdirection.......and it produced great results for both offenses

[penbeast0]

Wizards/Celtics was truly bizarre. Worst team in the league v. the best . . . and the worst team had all 5 starters out. Blow out by Celtics of course; zero defense out there. Jordan Poole scored a lot in a 1st all year PG start.

[TheGOATRises007]

Games like today is why I’m highly skeptical that Murray can be anywhere near as effective anywhere else. When Jokic is off the floor all I see is one tough midrange pull-up after another. I wonder if it’s just bad shot selection or just inability to get to easier shots.

They'd be a dynasty in the making if they had a better running mate for Jokic.