RealGM

So I have seen a lot of player comparison threads between eras lately, and most of the time, the presented arguments strongly rely upon the population talent level per number of spots in the nba. In other words, one side often states that due to the increase in population, the league is more athletic, and has greater talent, while the other side argues that circumstances such as league expansion and void of players learning fundamentals has weakened the league.

I am only going to address the issue regarding team expansion in comparison to changes in the US population between 1990 and 2000. While some may argue that the increase in the number of international players needs to be noted, having looked here, < http://www.draftexpress.com/article/Wai ... Manu-2135/ > it appears the influx of international players happened after 2000. Since census population statistics are only noted every ten years, I just looked at 1990 and 2000.

Using age statistics of NBA players from 1990, and from 2000, I wrote a simple Matlab program to determine the density functions of ages. Then I took the US male population densities of those ages to discern how many people in each age group played in the NBA compared to the total US population of each age group.

Interestingly enough, there were actually more people in the US between 20-35(over 95% of players) in 1990 than 2000 by 1.5 million. Noting the difference between the total number of NBA players in 1990, 387, to 2000, 441, 1 out of 83,552 US males played in the NBA in 1990, compared to 1 out of 74,708 in 2000.

Taking into account the exact NBA age densities, the league in 1990 had 1,745,600 extra men to choose from compared to 2000. Ignoring social trends in say the sports popularity fluctuated, there were actually more people available for less roster spaces in 1990 than 2000.

This might explain how teams such as the Nets with Keith Van Horn as its second scoring option made the finals, Duncan won 4 titles, a very good but not great Lakers team three-peated. On the other hand though, maybe it doesnt. It does seem as though the league lacked many talented individuals and teams through 2000-2005 compared to the 90's and the present, and this might be part of the explanation

OR . . . it could be that Keith Van Horn has been grossly underrated and future generations will come to recognize him as one of the dominant big men of his generation . . . mmm . . . ok, I'm going to listen to the generational argument.

The stats will look much the same as you go back in time. The NBA expanded based on $$$ not talent. The greatest group of 20-35yr old males is the Baby Boomers. They are a larger population group than any other of that century.

When you factor in that over 50% of the worlds basketball players are from China yet they have only produced 2 NBA players the argument for more total players seems pretty mute. Birth rates are down in the US and Europe and with the changing demographics unless Hispanics start playing basketball more I dont see how one can argue that the talent pool is greater.

I hope that u did all this research for a final research paper in sports psych.

Interesting that that age group's numbers went down but definitely not indicative of a watered down league.

I'd think it's pretty hard to not consider the numbers of international players considering they could probably fill all the expansion teams since 1990 by themselves. It's hard to just ignore the popularity of the league as well. The generation that grew up watching Jordan started hitting the league in the last couple years. That kind of stuff definitely gets the numbers of wannabe ballers up. You also have to look at the constant trend of sports becoming more competitive at an earlier age. Seems like older people are always shocked at how much time/travel is involved when you put your kids on a team.

The league's popularity is a hard factor to measure in. Additionally, removing most of the latino and asian population demographics, and increasing the weight contributed by african americans would probably present a better analysis. As for your comment about China players, by taking into account the number of nba players from china compared to china's population would be the same method I used with regard to age. For example, I weighted the age 26 more than 35 since more 26 year olds are in the league than 35 year olds. Again, if you click on the link, international players account for only 9% of drafted players from 1995-1999. But in 2000, it changed to 19%. This is why I ignored them.

And you a absolutely right about the league expanding due to money. If you looked at the 80's, no teams are added until the late 80's which is when the league began to take off again. And then more teams were added in the 90's, but as popularity slipped in the 2000's, only 1 team is added.

While the census data for current demographics can only be estimated, I expect we will see a significant increase in the population numbers from 2000 to 2010 as high schools throughout the 2000's have increased student bodies as a whole. I think this factor along with the added international players would show that the increase in talent pool happened close to when all the new stars began appearing in the league.