Do you believe the average NBA player is more talented now than the 90s?

[prophet_of_rage]

Oakley in the 80s was more mobile than Oakley in the 90s with the Knicks. Looney has a 7’4” wingspan, Thompson does not. What 7 footers are you talking about other than Joel and Joker? The game is perimeter based nowadays where guys like Porzingis and Wemby are 7”4” guards. Oakley is from a different generation where bigs wresteled in the paint but Thompson and Looney are no quicker than Bulls Oakley in the 80s.

Im sure i can give you the names of players today who would struggle with the physicality of basketball in the 90s.

Joel, Joker, KAT, Robinson, Davis, Zubac, Adams, Porzingus, Capela, Wemby ... you think Oakley becomes an all star center amongst this group? You think even 80s Oakley can handle them? Kevon Looneyband and Thompson are low level now and were forced intonthe spoy because they couldn't hang at the 4.

Does Oakley become an all star at 4 or 5 today? Answer that please.

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The only allstar talent in that group are Anthony Davis, Joker, and Joel who are future HOF inductees. Towns and Porzingis play like they are 6’4” guards. Wemby looks to be a generational talent but lets see, Capela can dunk, rebound, and block an occasional shot. No Oakley is not an all star among that group but half those players are not all star talent either. The best American born players are who, SGA, Tatum, Durant? Great players but come on. Its the international talent that has created the gap.

SGA is American talent? Okay. I'm good. You answered my qiestion whether you wanted to or not.

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[prophet_of_rage]

Serious questiin. Why do peoole believe that basketball peaked in the 90s? And why was thr pacr so slow and scoring down so much in the latter half of it if players were si talented?

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Who is saying basketball peaked in the 90s? In the 90s teams ran plays for bigs to post up or you had players isolating offensively. Nowadays offensively its swing the ball around until someone gets an open 3 or drive and kick to an open 3 point shooter. A player scoring 50 in the game today doesnt even make the highlights anymore. Less focus on defense and physicality and more focus on spreading the court and scoring. Thats all im saying.

You don't like the style of play. We get it but you're lying to yourself. If you're not arguing the talent peaked then you agree players today are more talented unless you believe talent peakrd earlier than the 90s.

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[MavsDirk41]

Joel, Joker, KAT, Robinson, Davis, Zubac, Adams, Porzingus, Capela, Wemby ... you think Oakley becomes an all star center amongst this group? You think even 80s Oakley can handle them? Kevon Looneyband and Thompson are low level now and were forced intonthe spoy because they couldn't hang at the 4.

Does Oakley become an all star at 4 or 5 today? Answer that please.

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The only allstar talent in that group are Anthony Davis, Joker, and Joel who are future HOF inductees. Towns and Porzingis play like they are 6’4” guards. Wemby looks to be a generational talent but lets see, Capela can dunk, rebound, and block an occasional shot. No Oakley is not an all star among that group but half those players are not all star talent either. The best American born players are who, SGA, Tatum, Durant? Great players but come on. Its the international talent that has created the gap.

SGA is American talent? Okay. I'm good. You answered my qiestion whether you wanted to or not.

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Ok my bad on SGA but geezzz brother why dont you get pissed cause i disagree with you about something lol

[MavsDirk41]

Serious questiin. Why do peoole believe that basketball peaked in the 90s? And why was thr pacr so slow and scoring down so much in the latter half of it if players were si talented?

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Who is saying basketball peaked in the 90s? In the 90s teams ran plays for bigs to post up or you had players isolating offensively. Nowadays offensively its swing the ball around until someone gets an open 3 or drive and kick to an open 3 point shooter. A player scoring 50 in the game today doesnt even make the highlights anymore. Less focus on defense and physicality and more focus on spreading the court and scoring. Thats all im saying.

You don't like the style of play. We get it but you're lying to yourself. If you're not arguing the talent peaked then you agree players today are more talented unless you believe talent peakrd earlier than the 90s.

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What im saying is the nba is more talented today because of the amount of international talent that we have in the league compared to the 90s. Take away all the international talent and what do you have?

[prophet_of_rage]

The only allstar talent in that group are Anthony Davis, Joker, and Joel who are future HOF inductees. Towns and Porzingis play like they are 6’4” guards. Wemby looks to be a generational talent but lets see, Capela can dunk, rebound, and block an occasional shot. No Oakley is not an all star among that group but half those players are not all star talent either. The best American born players are who, SGA, Tatum, Durant? Great players but come on. Its the international talent that has created the gap.

SGA is American talent? Okay. I'm good. You answered my qiestion whether you wanted to or not.

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Ok my bad on SGA but geezzz brother why dont you get pissed cause i disagree with you about something lol

I'm not pissed. You.just said international players created the gap. So you acknowledge there's a gap which is the central premise of the thread and our dusxussion. I don't need to address anything else.

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[Jabroni Lames]

Absolutely not. The NBA is the only human endeavour that doesn’t evolve. It is the sole bastion in the history of humanity that is immune to continuous improvement and peaked in the 90s.

[Jabroni Lames]

The best international player was Kukoc. That tells you everything.

No Detlef Scremph was way better than Kukoc.

lmao. If that’s the best comeback… this thread should end right here.

[MavsDirk41]

The best international player was Kukoc. That tells you everything.

No Detlef Scremph was way better than Kukoc.

lmao. If that’s the best comeback… this thread should end right here.

Detlef would have no problem making a roster today

[prophet_of_rage]

No Detlef Scremph was way better than Kukoc.

lmao. If that’s the best comeback… this thread should end right here.

Detlef would have no problem making a roster today

Would he be the best euro? No. Then the talent has evolved.

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[JonFromVA]

FT % in the 1970’s - 75.4%

FT % in the 2010’s - 76.0%

If the modern player is so much more skilled, why have FT% for the league as a whole remained virtually the same over the past 50 years? Athletes are better, training is better, sports science is better, players practice more and yet the percentages are nearly identical. Can’t wait to read the mental gymnastics used to justify the responses.

How important do you think FT% is to fame, money, and NBA success?

[FarBeyondDriven]

enforce the rules and you'd see how much less skilled players of today are than in the past

[prophet_of_rage]

They didn't enforce them then, either. Hakeem and Ewing travelled consistently, MJ palmed and carried, pushed off and got a really good whistle, handchecking wasn't enforced the foul it was supposed to be.

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[Jabroni Lames]

No Detlef Scremph was way better than Kukoc.

lmao. If that’s the best comeback… this thread should end right here.

Detlef would have no problem making a roster today

Making a roster. lmao. Yep. You’re doing a great job of ending this thread.

[LaLover11]

lmao. If that’s the best comeback… this thread should end right here.

Detlef would have no problem making a roster today

Making a roster. lmao. Yep. You’re doing a great job of ending this thread.

Kukoc won you games

Kukoc> Detlef

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[Teen Girl Squad]

I said from the very first post, this thread is not about saying today's superstars are better than older superstars but comparing the majority of the league who are not actually superstars.

When I rewatch games from the 90s I see good superstars but as soon as I pay attention to the role players and bench players I see the differences from today.

Exactly. It's one of the things which is immediately noticeable to me when I watch pretty much any game from this era. Many of the bench players who were getting rotation minutes or even the 4th/5th men on good teams would struggle to make the rotation of a non-tanking team today. Or even to make the league at all in many cases. And that's exactly what you'd expect, the sport has become much more popular globally since then and the talent pool is much higher. ALso the training methods have improved a lot too.

I think modern players are indeed 'more talented' now than in the past, in basically every sense of the word, though its much more marginally in terms of raw physical ability.

I think the reason so many here think that modern players don't hold up to past players is precisely because the league is so much deeper and more talented now than it was in the past. We evaluate talent and skill relative to the rest of the players in the league at any given time. Thus the superstars stick out more because they are so much better than their peers. Because the game was much more simplistic than modern basketball, it was much easier to isolate players and see them comfortably beat their man (aka have 'skill'). Similar arguments have been made for decades about college basketball or WNBA having 'better fundamentals' than the NBA for similar reasons (its easier for the good players to stick out, the action is easier to follow and evaluate).

The floor is so much higher now that outside of maybe 5-10 players, its harder to isolate and rank who is better than whom, and thus the league feels 'weaker' to the layperson who evaluates talent/skill based on 1v1 on ball play. Both offense and defense are more fluid, less rigid, more subtle and faster. If you don't know what your looking for, of course its just going to feel like spamming threes, its hard to notice anything else. The rules do influence this for sure, especially contrasted vs. FIBA but I think people are overrating how much of a factor they are.

[FrozenLeafz]

Gifted, no. Harder working, yes.

[ScrantonBulls]

Joel, Joker, KAT, Robinson, Davis, Zubac, Adams, Porzingus, Capela, Wemby ... you think Oakley becomes an all star center amongst this group? You think even 80s Oakley can handle them? Kevon Looneyband and Thompson are low level now and were forced intonthe spoy because they couldn't hang at the 4.

Does Oakley become an all star at 4 or 5 today? Answer that please.

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The only allstar talent in that group are Anthony Davis, Joker, and Joel who are future HOF inductees. Towns and Porzingis play like they are 6’4” guards. Wemby looks to be a generational talent but lets see, Capela can dunk, rebound, and block an occasional shot. No Oakley is not an all star among that group but half those players are not all star talent either. The best American born players are who, SGA, Tatum, Durant? Great players but come on. Its the international talent that has created the gap.

SGA is American talent? Okay. I'm good. You answered my qiestion whether you wanted to or not.

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I also liked this part:
- "KAT isn't an allstar talent"
KAT: 4-time all-star by the age of 28

Why exactly are we trying to embelish Oakley's talent and act like he's an allstar today? What does this dishonest exercise accomplish?

[BernteB]

lebron james has been playing in the nba since 2003. he basically played against many players from the 90ies in his early years. he is still, as a soon to be 40 years old with almost 1800 games on the clock, putting up (raw) stats, which he couldn't put up, when he was playing against 90ies players. so how much more talented can todays player be if that is possible?

what todays player are better at is definitely shooting. they all can shoot nowadays, because it's valued way higher than it was 30 years ago. but this is only due to a focus on what is being trained, not necessarily talent as such.

what is also true is, is the fact, that the talent pool is way bigger. but this basically only means, that certrain bench mobs, that made the nba in the 90ies, would maybe not make the nba today. we are talkeing about roster spots 9-12. but even today, these roster spots are more or less irrelevant, to define, how good the top talents are.

[NbaAllDay]

The only allstar talent in that group are Anthony Davis, Joker, and Joel who are future HOF inductees. Towns and Porzingis play like they are 6’4” guards. Wemby looks to be a generational talent but lets see, Capela can dunk, rebound, and block an occasional shot. No Oakley is not an all star among that group but half those players are not all star talent either. The best American born players are who, SGA, Tatum, Durant? Great players but come on. Its the international talent that has created the gap.

SGA is American talent? Okay. I'm good. You answered my qiestion whether you wanted to or not.

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I also liked this part:
- "KAT isn't an allstar talent"
KAT: 4-time all-star by the age of 28

Why exactly are we trying to embelish Oakley's talent and act like he's an allstar today? What does this dishonest exercise accomplish?

The usual insecure nonsense.

Embarassingly created his own trap by even arguing the best euro back then as Detlef not realising he was making everyone's exact point about the talent gap. Can't make this stuff up.

[prophet_of_rage]

The only allstar talent in that group are Anthony Davis, Joker, and Joel who are future HOF inductees. Towns and Porzingis play like they are 6’4” guards. Wemby looks to be a generational talent but lets see, Capela can dunk, rebound, and block an occasional shot. No Oakley is not an all star among that group but half those players are not all star talent either. The best American born players are who, SGA, Tatum, Durant? Great players but come on. Its the international talent that has created the gap.

SGA is American talent? Okay. I'm good. You answered my qiestion whether you wanted to or not.

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I also liked this part:
- "KAT isn't an allstar talent"
KAT: 4-time all-star by the age of 28

Why exactly are we trying to embelish Oakley's talent and act like he's an allstar today? What does this dishonest exercise accomplish?

Besides killing one's credibility? Not much, but he admitted finally that there is a gap. Logic wins in the end.

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