Doctor MJ wrote:There were injury issues and there were attitude issues, but in terms of a 3rd factor, I feel like this next group was actually biased toward chucking - shooting shots beyond one's capabilities merit - in the wake of Jordan. It kinda felt like guys were only taking a fraction of the message they should have from the previous generation's best.
I wanted to circle back to this point, because it resonates strongly with me.
In Jordan's early years, he was a call-back to other guys who scored a lot and didn't really win until they started shooting less. The whole banner cry of "scoring champions don't win titles" and all that stuff, right?
And MJ had his lessons to learn, his compromises to make with Phil for more team involvement and all that. And better rosters to find built around himself as time passed. He was also a better scorer than a lot of his wing contemporaries, and/or a better playmaker than those wing dudes who were on a similar plane relative to their league. He was a lot better at his peak than Baylor even if you just focus on performance relative to league average (and most of his worst seasons correlate with Baylor's best, even if you ignore raw efficiency), and he was considerably better at shot creation/playmaking than Gervin or English. And in general a lot better at Nique at most things beyond rebounding. Erving starts be a little more interesting, but wasn't as much the volume guy in the NBA.
Anyway, I ramble.
People looked at the volume and the isos, and they didn't so much see the off-ball movement, the post game. Him leveraging his favorite spots. The fundamentals behind his success. It's one of the things which held back a guy like Kobe, despite his skills and other tools (and this is obviously a relative term, given Kobe's myriad successes). Jordan had his flaws, but he had many strengths which go overlooked, and which certainly did in the generation coming up behind him.
You see it all over the place, especially in old-heads doing sport commentary. Volume is valued in and of itself, because people love PPG. It's simplistic, it's easy to see, it's simple to measure. It lacks nuance, so it isn't hard to grasp. And then we saw Iverson carry that banner forward.
And it was sadly the wrong message to sell, because it escaped a lot of what made MJ who he was. It no doubt exerted a palpable influence on the Next, and not necessarily a good one. Especially with the media punishing people who couldn't score at a given volume which had no objective value.
EDIT to Add: Almost like the opposite of what Magic and Bird had fostered.
