How good would Prime Jerry West and Walt Frazier be now ....

[qm22]

illogical comparison...

most athletes today are under 8% body fat percentage, have high muscular frames, with supervised/monitored diet for maximum energy exertion...



Talent, skills and knowledge wise Jerry West and Walt will run circles around most of todays athletes.

The diet point is greatly exaggerated IMO. A lot of players may have personal chefs, but they often eat terribly, like, tons of McDonalds and Popeyes... especially before drafting. Has McDonalds started to chip in to the modern super athlete talent pool?
The best athlete of the era in question (arguably of all players through modern times), Wilt, also had terrible nutritional habits, like a Slurpee during the game. (I imagine if he did so now it would cost the NBA gatorade endorsement money).
I've never seen any sophisticated evidence that modern nutrition has significantly impacted the athleticism in basketball, as blasphemous as that is. Even in OIympic sports, there is a paucity of data. Look at 5x gold medalist Micheal Phelp's daily meals of huge pancake stacks with ice cream (not to mention pot smoking). It is more likely that modern nutrition has mostly made meeting nutritional requirements a bit more convenient, rather than it being a game changer.

I think measured athleticism improved from a wider recruiting pool, pressure to get noticed athletically by scouts, and general competitiveness for roster spots. Most of the elite players would be sufficiently athletic, at the least, in today's game. (And "modern nutrition" wouldn't make them more athletic than they were).

I don't want to add speculation on West and Walt Frazier, since I think players evolve, but I doubt Frazier's lack of a 3 point shot is a fair critique. I think it's quite possible they could range from good role player to top 5 players. It's really hard to predict adaptability of guards; what would they evolve, and how important are the losses of previous advantages?

I must say when watching West highlights posted here, he did do a lot of modern "no-nos" with ball handling, and a lot of shots and drives were things you simply cannot get away with - as performed - in the modern NBA. People implicitly comparing West to DWade in speed need their eyes checked. Maybe West was capable of going faster than shown, but clips mostly showed a rather ... controlled ... pace. Yet the post quoted above said skills-wise, West would run circles around modern guards. OK.

I applaud those who put in effort in the impossible task of trying to guess Frazier's and West's translational potential. Since paid scouts cannot even reliably judge if international talent will be able to perform in the NBA (I for one, thought Rudy Fernandez would excel), I'm going to guess the more specific predictions made are as accurate as an 8 ball.

[trex_8063]

I don't see Frazier translating as well, particularly offensively. He was more of a half-court guy and he wasn't a great outside shooter.

On the other hand, the halfcourt game is a much bigger percentage of today's game than it was in the 70s where there wasn't the emphasis on stopping the fast break at the expense of offensive rebounding. Plus, it's harder to guard the slashers and post-up guards without handchecking. I'd guess Frazier would be at least as effective today, particularly if he developed a decent 3 point shot (you don't have to be Curry, just enough to keep defenses honest and space the floor).

Also Frazier was a killer mid-range shooter. Obv I don't know the exact proportions, but to my eye A LOT of his attempts came in the 14-21' range (I would estimate more than half, and usually off the dribble and variably contested), and yet he was 49.4% from the field in '69-'76 (>51% in the two seasons that compete as his peak ('70 and '72)). That suggests to me he must have been hitting a wicked percentage from the mid-range.

Nice half-court game, deadly mid-range shot, rebounds well, elite defender........idk, that seems like a decent guard already. I'd assume he would at least become capable of 32-33% from trey too, in the modern up-bringing. And better spacing, no hand-checking, and fewer ball-handling restrictions might allow him to develop a better slashing game, too.

Bottom line is I have a hard time seeing a 6'4", 200 lb fairly athletic guy with a great mid-range shot, high bball IQ, and elite defense NOT being a pretty excellent player in any era.