1993 MJ vs 2022 DeRozan (Who faced the tougher defense?)

[CBS7]

People always talk about Jordan's poor competition because of the apparent increasedtalent in today's NBA

But MJ would benefit from the added talent and rule changes too. Jordan with today's spacing? Jordan without 2-3 pure specialists starting on his team? Jordan allowed a gather step?

[Lockdown504090]

The average professional athlete today is better than they were 30 years ago. This isn't a controversial sentiment in any other sport but among some basketball fans.

This doesn't mean that past stars weren't great and wouldn't be today but most NBA players past and present are not stars.

its like this becuase of how dramatically the rules and style of play has changed over the last 40 years more than younger fans being unreasonable btw. even though demar is playing against better defenders on a lot of nights, it is much harder to defend because of the spacing, rules, and evolution in strategy and coaching. Then you have the massive growth in the game that basketball has had in comparison to tennis, soccer, football, hockey globally. There amount of serious basketball players and coaches on earth is way higher than 1993.

[kodo]

Warriors were one of the worst teams in the league in 93, like bottom 3.
The tough defenses MJ faced were more like the championship Pistons, although he still averaged 32 ppg even in the Conf Finals loss to them.

[picc]

Mj played in an era where Mailmen and Navy Admirals and worms were getting All-Star nods.
Of course it is Derozan!

Imagine coming home from a long shift delivering mail and getting chewed on by pit bulls, and now you gotta guard MJ.

[theonlyclutch]

The people that claim Jordan could average 40 today are probably not far off either. With his style of play he would absolutely live at the FT line in the freedom of movement era.

Jordan absolutely lived at the FT line in his own era.

What is this nonsense about Jordan not getting calls?

Exactly. When did I say he didn't calls? He already shot a lot of FTs and would shoot even more in this era, that's what I meant

He definitely got a ton of FTs early in his career but that tapered off a bit at the start of the 90s. As far as I can tell he was never higher than 4th in the league in FTA per game after 1989

Reggie shot a somewhat similar amount of FTs to MJ post-91 despite taking way less shots, more of which are 3s. Unless you want to argue that Reggie Miller is somehow gonna live at the line today as well there's little basis for guys auto-getting more FTs in today's era.