dhsilv2 wrote:...the rise of physicality was mostly in the late 90's and we didn't see the impact fully until the early 00's where perhaps it might work that way.
You don't know what you're talking about.
The league publicly acknowledged the concerns about physicality and then announced multiple rule changes in the early 1990s.
Rod Thorn, director of NBA operations:
“We looked at the games and saw that the physical contact had gone to the outer extremes,” Thorn said. “I’m not talking about the fights, but all the grabbing, holding and shoving was making it almost impossible to move from place to place on the basketball court.”
That doesn't impact what I am saying. You're not listening.
I'm not disputing there was physcal play, a lot of non basketball crap. It wasn't having the impact on small guards you're claiming, and that's what you're continuing to ignore.
dhsilv2 wrote:I'm not disputing there was physcal play, a lot of non basketball crap. It wasn't having the impact on small guards you're claiming, and that's what you're continuing to ignore.
Perhaps more importantly, it had NO impact whatsoever on guys who knew how to run a PnR or run around screens. Reggie was MURDERING people in the 90s. Even in the late 90s and the early 2000s (as an OLD guy, no less).
And that doesn't even account for guys like KJ or Tim Bug. Or Mark Price, who wasn't even close to as good as Steph.
Plenty of rule changes have happened not because it's a league wide problem, but because particular players or teams are disrupting the balance. You can't just point to a rule changes or even the rationale behind it as if thay is the whole story. The actual game play still trumps the outliers that lead to a rule change.
The whole league wasn't doing Barkley backdowns. The league made rule changes to slow down Wilt specifically, not because everyone was playing like Wilt. The rip through is a non shooting foul didn't happen because the whole league did it. A few players were getting out of hand so the league clamped.
These discussions always turn outliers into the everyday when that's not at all what was happening, and even when we look at the actual outlier players and teams, it wasn't every play this stuff was happening. Large stretches of games were played with levels of physicality that looks no different than what we see in the current NBA especially when we look at playoff basketball.
Only 7 Players in NBA history have 21,000 points, 5,750 assists and 5,750 rebounds. LeBron has double those numbers.
og15 wrote:I guess I'm wondering what we are arguing here, because it looks like you guys are speak around each other. I've watched many games from the 80's over the years, and the vast majority of games didn't have dangerous fouls.
In a nutshell....
The Original OP's Thesis is that 1990s basketball was slower, more physical and tilted heavily in favor of NBA defenders.
Spoiler:
LakerLegend wrote:The softened defensive rules, outlawing handchecking or touching an offensive player in any way, removing physicality and promoting freedom of movement have allowed players to run amok on the offensive end.
This is best exemplified by Curry. A relatively unimpressive 6-3(if that) physical specimen.
The league addressed this by implementing multiple rules changes over the course of a decade to increase movement, fluidity and scoring.
Steph Curry has benefitted tremendously from these multiple rule changes that benefit offensive players. He's an incredibly talented player, but the entire ecosystem of early 1990s basketball would not have allowed Curry the space or freedom of movement to dominate games the way he does in the modern era.
In the same way that Shaq wouldn't dominate modern basketball, Steph Curry would be unlikely to dominate in the 90s. Because the game has changed so much over the decades.
AI's summary of the NBA rule changes...
Yea, the the late 90's definitely transformed into that slower pace defensive era. Though not the whole 90's. I would remind people that this was the pace and Ortg in Curry's first two MVP seasons: 14-15: 93.9 pace / 105.6 Ortg 15-16: 95.8 pace / 106.4 Ortg
The 90's pace didn't get lower than 14-15 until 94-95 when they shrunk the court with the shorter 3PT line. The Ortg in the 90's wasn't lower than 14-15 until 97-98. So we actually only had two seasons, 97-98 and then the lockout season 98-99 which had a lower Ortg than the first time Curry got MVP, and even 97-98 had a 105 Ortg. In terms of pace, half of the 90's seasons had a higher pace than 14-15.
The reason this is important is that I've found that a lot of people are also lumping everything past like the mid 2010's into "this era" where we are back to 80's pace, but Curry didn't break out in "this era". Curry broke out in a league that even after the SSOL Suns, the SVG Magic, etc were still mostly playing 00's style basketball in terms of pace, roster make up, etc.
The early 00's was actually a more slower paced and stronger defensive era than the 90's as a whole, even if you couldn't clobber people as much (not like fouling is good defense). For some reason some people are resistant to that idea or it gets forgotten a lot, and the last few seasons of the 90's seem to get projected to the whole decade.
I agree that there have been rule changes and differences that change some things.
I do disagree that the differences in the 90's would make Curry dominate less relative to the competition, and I think people are missing some key things when they just assume that. His total numbers might not be the same due to things like pace, etc, but I think when we actually rewind back to the 90's and even early 00's, we see that shooters and movement guys actually had higher team offensive impact and success than most people realized or credited them for at the time.
The method was actually very successful in those times, many of us were just not realizing it. I mean, NBA coaches took years to maximize something like utilizing the 3PT shot, even after they saw the Rockets in the short line seasons, the SSOL Suns, the Magic, Euroleague, FIBA competition having some lesser teams stick with them due to 3PT shooting, they didn't catch on to the impact. Should we then be surprised that us as fans were not fully recognizing how impactful movement shooters were?
Another guy Curry is comparable to is Ray Allen, maybe a better comp than some of the other ones in terms of being better on ball than some other movement shooters he gets compared to. Obviously smaller and not as athletic as Ray, but he's a superior ball handler and passer, and his touch inside is superior. Ray Allen as soon as he became an All-star was the lead guy on teams with these Ortg:
2nd 1st 8th (Traded 02-03) 3rd 2nd 3rd
Of course part of Curry's success in terms of team is also because they built teams around him with right fitting guys who could also defend and they had both elite offense and elite defense. That's part of all players ultimate success the talent around them, but I see no argument that Curry wouldn't be a dominant offensive player in terms of impact.
I also disagree that Shaq wouldn't dominate modern basketball, he has all the tools to do so. He only wouldn't dominate if he was stubborn. Shaq's off ball post game is a perfect fit to the modern game. Shaq would score so much from transition, roll man, seals, flashing to the middle, cuts, being on the baseline, offensive rebounds, before you even add post up isolation.
Then he actually has very nice passing skills that you can utilize. Of course yes, he shouldn't be 385 lbs, and he shouldn't keep letting himself go if he wins a championship like he said he did.
Ainosterhaspie wrote:The whole league wasn't doing Barkley backdowns.
I mean, a LOT of the league was doing it. By the time the rule was implemented (for the 99-00 season), Barkley was an afterthought. That was literally the final season of his career, in which he played 20 games. No one gave af about Barkley at that point. It had been a half-decade since he'd scored 20 ppg. He was 36. He played 20 games that year, half a season the year before, etc. He was not super relevant, and not breaking the game. But the issue of extended back-to-the-basket isolations inside the FT line extended was a thing.
og15 wrote: I also disagree that Shaq wouldn't dominate modern basketball, he has all the tools to do so. He only wouldn't dominate if he was stubborn. Shaq's off ball post game is a perfect fit to the modern game. Shaq would score so much from transition, roll man, seals, flashing to the middle, cuts, being on the baseline, offensive rebounds, before you even add post up isolation.
Then he actually has very nice passing skills that you can utilize. Of course yes, he shouldn't be 385 lbs, and he shouldn't keep letting himself go if he wins a championship like he said he did.
There's a rock/paper/scissors aspect to the league that gets missed sometimes. Shaq got way bigger because teams were bringing in huge bodies to rry to stop him. But if teams tried that now, they'd get destroyed by smaller teams that space the floor and run.
So import Shaq into the modern league where he doesn't have to get big to deal with those big bodies and he is a hard counter to teams going small. No one has the size to stop him.
Curry changed the league and suddenly you couldn't put big bodies on the floor. Then along comes Jokic and no one has centers that can body him effectively anymore, because Curry forced them all out of the league.
The league hasn't shifted to bigger guys to deal with Jokic better and I don't see them doing the same with Shaq. Lean Orlando Shaq would be a monster today and probably never gets as big as he was forced to with the Lakers.
Only 7 Players in NBA history have 21,000 points, 5,750 assists and 5,750 rebounds. LeBron has double those numbers.
dhsilv2 wrote:I'm not disputing there was physcal play, a lot of non basketball crap. It wasn't having the impact on small guards you're claiming, and that's what you're continuing to ignore.
Perhaps more importantly, it had NO impact whatsoever on guys who knew how to run a PnR or run around screens. Reggie was MURDERING people in the 90s. Even in the late 90s and the early 2000s (as an OLD guy, no less).
And that doesn't even account for guys like KJ or Tim Bug. Or Mark Price, who wasn't even close to as good as Steph.
And I again stress. Curry is 205-215 these days or at least was in his last finals run. He's added a huge amount of muscle on his much bigger frame than people seem to get. Curry's got good long arms and wider shoulders. It gives him a bit more of a skinny look at first glance but when you see him next to other small guys it stands out.
dhsilv2 wrote:I'm not disputing there was physical play...
You've been disputing it repeatedly. For over a month.
Now, you're trying to backpedal and change your argument.
dhsilv2 wrote:
LakerLegend wrote:It's different when your getting mugged on the perimeter, or hand checked the length of the court to the point you have to resort to a backdown dribble.
But that happens less than 1% of the time in the 90's. That wasn't how the 90's were played.
dhsilv2 wrote:The league was NOT brutally at all. Guys weren't mauled.
dhsilv2 wrote:In the early 90's handchecking and getting physical with guards was rare as hell.
dhsilv2 wrote:It was "notorious" because it was so uncommon and unusual at the time.
dhsilv2 wrote:the rise of physicality was mostly in the late 90's and we didn't see the impact fully until the early 00's where perhaps it might work that way.
“We looked at the games and saw that the physical contact had gone to the outer extremes,” Thorn said. “I’m not talking about the fights, but all the grabbing, holding and shoving was making it almost impossible to move from place to place on the basketball court.”
og15 wrote: Yea, the the late 90's definitely transformed into that slower pace defensive era. Though not the whole 90's. I would remind people that this was the pace and Ortg in Curry's first two MVP seasons: 14-15: 93.9 pace / 105.6 Ortg 15-16: 95.8 pace / 106.4 Ortg
The 90's pace didn't get lower than 14-15 until 94-95 when they shrunk the court with the shorter 3PT line. The Ortg in the 90's wasn't lower than 14-15 until 97-98. So we actually only had two seasons, 97-98 and then the lockout season 98-99 which had a lower Ortg than the first time Curry got MVP, and even 97-98 had a 105 Ortg. In terms of pace, half of the 90's seasons had a higher pace than 14-15.
Offensive Rating is not a fair measure of basketball scoring across different eras.
WE know that Offensive Rating can be intentionally skewed simply by taking a ton of 3-pt shots. So, without taking into account number of possessions per game and EFG%, it's really unfair to rely solely on a metric that didn't exist at the time.
But, I digress.
90s NBA basketball was not fun.
Jordan was great. AI was fun. Shaq was unstoppable. Hakeem was a force.
But the league was not built for 6'3" jump shooters to thrive the way it is today.
og15 wrote: I also disagree that Shaq wouldn't dominate modern basketball, he has all the tools to do so. He only wouldn't dominate if he was stubborn. Shaq's off ball post game is a perfect fit to the modern game. Shaq would score so much from transition, roll man, seals, flashing to the middle, cuts, being on the baseline, offensive rebounds, before you even add post up isolation.
Then he actually has very nice passing skills that you can utilize. Of course yes, he shouldn't be 385 lbs, and he shouldn't keep letting himself go if he wins a championship like he said he did.
There's a rock/paper/scissors aspect to the league that gets missed sometimes. Shaq got way bigger because teams were bringing in huge bodies to rry to stop him. But if teams tried that now, they'd get destroyed by smaller teams that space the floor and run.
So import Shaq into the modern league where he doesn't have to get big to deal with those big bodies and he is a hard counter to teams going small. No one has the size to stop him.
Curry changed the league and suddenly you couldn't put big bodies on the floor. Then along comes Jokic and no one has centers that can body him effectively anymore, because Curry forced them all out of the league.
The league hasn't shifted to bigger guys to deal with Jokic better and I don't see them doing the same with Shaq. Lean Orlando Shaq would be a monster today and probably never gets as big as he was forced to with the Lakers.
Very true, the league adjusts to what is going on.
Shaq originally got bigger to deal with the bigger bodies, he said he was 345lbs in championship#1, and that was a good weight for dealing with the big defenders teams piled up.
Then he said after his success he had a lot of fun in the off-season, no working, a lot of partying and eating, and then it was 385lbs. Then they won again and it was 415 lbs the next year, which of course those later weights were not for necessity, but just lack of discipline.
Modern day Shaq doesn't need to go to the 345lbs in the first place, but I'm not going to erase personality and mental makeup, there are different factors that affect people's ability to control weight. The modern era doesn't erase that human reality.
So while Shaq would probably still has some weight control issues later, his weight control issues wouldn't have him at weights like 415 lbs.
dhsilv2 wrote:I'm not disputing there was physical play...
You've been disputing it repeatedly. For over a month.
Now, you're trying to backpedal and change your argument.
dhsilv2 wrote:
LakerLegend wrote:It's different when your getting mugged on the perimeter, or hand checked the length of the court to the point you have to resort to a backdown dribble.
But that happens less than 1% of the time in the 90's. That wasn't how the 90's were played.
dhsilv2 wrote:The league was NOT brutally at all. Guys weren't mauled.
dhsilv2 wrote:In the early 90's handchecking and getting physical with guards was rare as hell.
dhsilv2 wrote:It was "notorious" because it was so uncommon and unusual at the time.
dhsilv2 wrote:the rise of physicality was mostly in the late 90's and we didn't see the impact fully until the early 00's where perhaps it might work that way.
“We looked at the games and saw that the physical contact had gone to the outer extremes,” Thorn said. “I’m not talking about the fights, but all the grabbing, holding and shoving was making it almost impossible to move from place to place on the basketball court.”
These statements are not conflicting. The context is they the play was such that it was negatively impact Steph Curry.
There were some brutal plays. They were not the norm. They were not common. And in general the play was not more physical than today on the outside, if anything it was much less physical. It was more physical inside. None of this was enough to impact someone like Curry.
og15 wrote: Yea, the the late 90's definitely transformed into that slower pace defensive era. Though not the whole 90's. I would remind people that this was the pace and Ortg in Curry's first two MVP seasons: 14-15: 93.9 pace / 105.6 Ortg 15-16: 95.8 pace / 106.4 Ortg
The 90's pace didn't get lower than 14-15 until 94-95 when they shrunk the court with the shorter 3PT line. The Ortg in the 90's wasn't lower than 14-15 until 97-98. So we actually only had two seasons, 97-98 and then the lockout season 98-99 which had a lower Ortg than the first time Curry got MVP, and even 97-98 had a 105 Ortg. In terms of pace, half of the 90's seasons had a higher pace than 14-15.
Offensive Rating is not a fair measure of basketball scoring across different eras.
WE know that Offensive Rating can be intentionally skewed simply by taking a ton of 3-pt shots. So, without taking into account number of possessions per game and EFG%, it's really unfair to rely solely on a metric that didn't exist at the time.
But, I digress.
90s NBA basketball was not fun.
Jordan was great. AI was fun. Shaq was unstoppable. Hakeem was a force.
But the league was not built for 6'3" jump shooters to thrive the way it is today.
Correct. It was EASIER for jumper shooters. Because teams didn't guard the 3 and they even had multiple years with a shorter line. And on top of that it was an era of isolation scoring...and area Curry excels at.
Your argument would make sense if we were talking about Ewards or a slashing guard as the paint was more compact and there were more big men. But that isn't Curry. It might make sense if we were talking about Trae who's physically not strong enough to deal with hand checking. But that isn't Curry.
Sorry but Curry has not dominated any era. His team during 2015-2020 did, but not him.
Kobe Bryant forever GOLAKERS I've heard it through the grapevine..NBA gods have already designated Los Angeles LAKERS as NBA Champions in near future. The destiny is real. TRUST ME.
Jamaaliver wrote:But the league was not built for 6'3" jump shooters to thrive the way it is today.
The problem with this is that it is entirely too reductive. Curry can do quite a lot more than just shooting jumpers. And the level of his shooting compared to literally any other player in that era is such a massive outlier that it would cause HUGE problems for teams who still weren't really game-planning to stop shots at that distance. And again, a good off-ball player could still go bananas, like the rail-thin Reggie Miller. Or Ray Allen, who wasn't much larger than Steph. And that's even BEFORE considering the pulled-in line from 95-97. There were 9 different guys under 6'4 who scored 20+ ppg over at least one season in the 90s... and Steph is better than all of them, and by a wide, wide margin.
Even if you consider him having difficulty finishing inside, it doesn't even matter. With just his perimeter shooting, he'd be obliterating the 90s off of simple PnR action and pull-ups, given his range and shooting proficiency.
Beethoven wrote:Sorry but Curry has not dominated any era. His team during 2015-2020 did, but not him.
This isn't a sensible comment. You're talking about a repeat MVP, the best shooter in league history, he even led the league in SPG one year. Pair of scoring titles.
He was definitely a dominant player. You'd have to be in aggressive denial to try and ignore that.
Jamaaliver wrote:Offensive Rating is not a fair measure of basketball scoring across different eras.
But the league was not built for 6'3" jump shooters to thrive the way it is today.
Correct. It was EASIER for jumper shooters. Because teams didn't guard the 3 and they even had multiple years with a shorter line. And on top of that it was an era of isolation scoring...and area Curry excels at.
No.
Other high level jump shooters existed during this time frame. And they didn't dominate the NBA. Because coaches, rosters, and defensive rules were not in their favor.
“We want to make it a more free-flowing, fluid, wide-open game,” said Rod Thorn, a former NBA’s vice president of basketball operations. The rule changes were intended to increase scoring and cut down on physical play (Wyche, 1999).
Under new rules the offense has been given the advantage by disallowing hand-checking and limiting the big men’s ability to stifle smaller guards and forwards.
Jamaaliver wrote:Offensive Rating is not a fair measure of basketball scoring across different eras.
But the league was not built for 6'3" jump shooters to thrive the way it is today.
Correct. It was EASIER for jumper shooters. Because teams didn't guard the 3 and they even had multiple years with a shorter line. And on top of that it was an era of isolation scoring...and area Curry excels at.
No.
Other high level jump shooters existed during this time frame. And they didn't dominate the NBA. Because coaches, rosters, and defensive rules were not in their favor.
“We want to make it a more free-flowing, fluid, wide-open game,” said Rod Thorn, a former NBA’s vice president of basketball operations. The rule changes were intended to increase scoring and cut down on physical play (Wyche, 1999).
Under new rules the offense has been given the advantage by disallowing hand-checking and limiting the big men’s ability to stifle smaller guards and forwards.
Those rules were to increase passing and allow for more freedom for SLASHERS!
The league absolutely did not have anyone remotely at Curry's level in that era. Yet you did see success for the warriors at the start of the decade with 3 shooters who all were less athletic, less skilled and less capable than Curry.
You keep avoiding this but I'll keep hammering this home. Curry would be among small guards one of the most physically imposing guards in the league in that era. He might only be second to someone like Gary Payton or Kidd. Both stars who didn't have remotely his shooting or overall skill.
You're trying to paint Curry's NBA career as if he played his whole career at his college 165 weight and didn't add 40 pounds of muscle to his frame. And you're trying to lump curry in with small guards who were slashing to the rim when Curry's game is a mix of elite iso and elite off ball where he takes jumpers which wouldn't be bothered by differences in the game and would only be helped by the lack of physical play on the outside and the lack of zone defenses.
Listen to the players, coaches, journalists who covered the 90s era and the modern era.
The 90s were not a great time for players who's game were built on skill or finesse or off ball movement.
Rule changes have NBA back in the fast lane
Doug Collins shook his head.
"Without those rule changes, I'm sure we're not at this point," said the former player and coach-turned broadcaster. "Just the no hand-checking rule alone brought so much speed and penetration and cutting back into the game. Before, if a guy tried to go through the lane, it was — bam! — you stop him.
Jamaaliver wrote:I'm not asking you to take my word for it.
Listen to the players, coaches, journalists who covered the 90s era and the modern era.
The 90s were not a great time for players who's game were built on skill or finesse or off ball movement.
Rule changes have NBA back in the fast lane
Doug Collins shook his head.
"Without those rule changes, I'm sure we're not at this point," said the former player and coach-turned broadcaster. "Just the no hand-checking rule alone brought so much speed and penetration and cutting back into the game. Before, if a guy tried to go through the lane, it was — bam! — you stop him.
But again, it's more about slashers than anything else. It most certainly didn't stop off-ball guys from using screens to run around. The late 90s and early 2000s were like a festival of movement shooters. Alan Houston, Ray Allen, Reggie Miller, Rip Hamilton... those guys had no actual problems wielding cardio and good screens to get what they wanted.
Yes, slashers were stymied somewhat when they got southbound, but I think the point dhsilv is trying to drive home is that this really isn't salient to a discussion of Curry.
What about Reggie Miller and the other 3 point specialists of that era? Wouldn't they better than Curry if they were playing today?
There's no such thing as a 3 point specialist anymore is there? How can there be when everybody thinks they are one these days? I can't remember the last time I heard that term, so they must not exist anymore.
