Bensational wrote:I think todays league is much, MUCH more skilled than past eras. The ballhandling and shooting is better across all positions. The craft is better.
I couldn’t say one era is better than another though. They’re both enjoyable, but very different. Magic were more enjoyable in the 90s and late 00’s because we had two of the best big men in the era of big men. Most of the last decade sucked though, before Suggs, Franz and Paolo showed up.
I don't really agree with first paragraph. It's not that i disagree either, imo every basketball era has kind a similar amount of talented players ,but nba playstyle in particular plays role in selecting players.
There are on demand needs league has, and in time slot between Magic Johnson stepping down and 2015 most dominant basketball style in nba were:
1) monster size bigs ( Howard, Dwight, Hakeem, Yao, Robinson , Duncan etc)
2) uber athletic ballhoging wings
You can make objective argument that 1999-2013 nba played dreadful basketball with billion low efficiency long 2s and defense that looked much better because players were on regular bases taking- idiotic shots.
But player's selection was based on : who plays physical defense, who is bigger.
Almost every team had 1 or 2- 20 FGA player and they would just patch rest of roster with stiff woods to do the dirty work. For example, Lakers leading scorer off bench in 2002 playoffs averaged 5 ppg and only 1 starter aside from Kobe & Shaq averaged points in double digits. ( Fisher, 10,2 as lead PG, he also only averaged 2,7 apg as lead PG).
Or notion that Rasheed Wallace was viewed as "reliable offense" on championship roster with hideus 48% TS and their "best offensive player" Billups had 45% eFG in playoffs , for comparison sake, Booker on his crazy streak, this year ,sits at 68% eFG in playoffs.
In such environment playful, creative PGs weren't on high demand, and nobody really needed shooters.
In whole damn league, only 16 players , during 2004-05 averaged more than 5 three point attemps a game and actually shot ball over 35,01%. And like 6 of them were allstars, so rest of a league had no interest into high volumen, high accuracy shots, neither was ready to give up ball to prolific shooters to shoot.
That impacted player's selection a lot.
This is same era where USA basketball team was routed several times mostly by- very creative ballhandlers who could often shoot lights out ( Navarro, Ginobilii, Diamantidis, Papanikolau, Jasikevicius etc). But there was no place ( or at least no serious money to be offered) to majority of them in nba because they didn't fit profile of role player - stiff wood and/or big. And nobody was willing to give them "keys" of teams, as various Marbury's, Iversons & Steve Francis of the world were in charge of throwing bricks in air.
I mean... Iverson had season where he shot 38,7% FG, 28% for 3, 41% eFG and still averaged 23 shots a game. And made it to an allstar game. In middle of his prime. As some of most notorious examples of teams that were winning games despite their "best players" who were there to chuck shots & collect money.
Lot of late of 1990s and 2000s players who were fine, in today's era would have much better careers today ( Kukoc, Petrovic, Allen, Reggie Miller, LaFrentz, Nash, Price, Lewis..)
Today league changed. If you have basic basketball skills set, and you are very good at shooting & playmaking, you can make it to nba.
But now, if you are 7'2 monster who is back to basket player, you probably will have much, much harder time finding roster to play because those players are no longer needed. Traditional bigs died off. Now it's normal to have PF play C, SF to play PF; and we also often see two small guards , sometimes even 3.
Heat for example, last night had in one moment, if i'm not mistaking: 6'0 Lowry, 6'3 Vincent, 6'5 Strus, 6'7 Butler and 6'9 Adebayo on the floor. Average size of that team is what ? 6'5 ?
And there aren't any more bigs to be fed inside, and any more "athletic wings who take mid range jumpshots" to be fed with 25 shots.
By default smaller players are more foundamentally sounded than bigs. This era doesn't need big players. That's why, by default, players are "more skilled". Because teams activlly search for skilled players, who are easly founded in smaller players unlike in past where very talented players weren't playing because they didn't fit mold.
This however, doesn't stop scouts from proposing and selling "can't play basketball but for damn sure can win olympics in other sport" type of athletes to be drafted sky high. Kuminga and Sekou Doumbouya being most recent examples. Sekou being one of most epic examples , since , somehow, he wasn't even athletic in games, despite having 43 inch vertical (and some of worst advanced numbers nba has ever seen ).
i think baseball
