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I was looking through some advanced stats and noticed the crazy defensive efficiency the 04 champs had. (78.7). The worst that year was 94. Today, 94, would be the 2nd best. I know gone are the days of hand checking, but the difference has to go beyond this. The difference is staggering.


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ComboGuardCity wrote:I was looking through some advanced stats and noticed the crazy defensive efficiency the 04 champs had. (78.7). The worst that year was 94. Today, 94, would be the 2nd best. I know gone are the days of hand checking, but the difference has to go beyond this. The difference is staggering.


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In my opinion it's because during that time period/era the importance of shooting was forgotten, advanced stats have shown us the way again so defenses don't stand much of a chance.

sc8581 wrote:

ComboGuardCity wrote:I was looking through some advanced stats and noticed the crazy defensive efficiency the 04 champs had. (78.7). The worst that year was 94. Today, 94, would be the 2nd best. I know gone are the days of hand checking, but the difference has to go beyond this. The difference is staggering.


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In my opinion it's because during that time period/era the importance of shooting was forgotten, advanced stats have shown us the way again so defenses don't stand much of a chance.

http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html

That 04 pistons defense led to rule changes that "opened up the game".


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momed11 wrote:

sc8581 wrote:

ComboGuardCity wrote:I was looking through some advanced stats and noticed the crazy defensive efficiency the 04 champs had. (78.7). The worst that year was 94. Today, 94, would be the 2nd best. I know gone are the days of hand checking, but the difference has to go beyond this. The difference is staggering.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

In my opinion it's because during that time period/era the importance of shooting was forgotten, advanced stats have shown us the way again so defenses don't stand much of a chance.

http://www.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html

That 04 pistons defense led to rule changes that "opened up the game".


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It's nice to think that the team we root for made that happen but that's quite a stretch.

Not a stretch at all, although the Pacers deserve a bit of the credit (or blame) as well. The '04 ECF was absolutely dreadful for anybody who wasn't a Pistons or Pacers fan. Nobody wants to watch 2 teams struggling to score 70 or 80 pts. No real marquis names and a brand of bball that was damn near impossible to sell to the global community.

I'm not sure how much credit I'd give to the use of advanced stats, but it's certainly true that we had a decade of poor fundamental bball.

Stern propelled the league to new heights by capitalizing on the marketability of the "superstar" with Magic & Bird, but fell victim to it's own prosperity during the Jordan era. You had an entire generation of players who grew up watching and trying to emulate MJ. Unfortunately they only wanted to emulate the high-light reel plays. The ones that made SportsCenter the night before. Lost were the fundamentals and team play, replaced by a buncha one-on-one, me-1st, me-2nd bball. The art of shooting (and passing) became virtually extinct.

But over the last decade we've seen the Iversons, Marburys & BDiddys replaced by the likes of Nash, LeBron & CP3. The pass is cool again and now everybody wants to make 3's. Even your C's. Eventually this will pass too. The game is in a constant state of evolution and the league will continue to redefine itself.

The eventual improvement of offense was inevitable given just how far the league had fallen, but there should be no question that the Pistons/Pacers contributed largely to the hand-check rule and that as much as anything helped to open the game back up. I certainly miss watching the Pistons completely smother opposing offenses, but I think most people would agree the league as a whole is much more enjoyable to watch now than it was 10-12 years ago.

Don't forget the Spurs and Nets finals right before we made it there.

Indeed.

where did you find this? as far as I can tell the pistons had the second best defensive rating that season (behind the spurs) at 95.4.