bledredwine wrote:og15 wrote:bledredwine wrote:Don't tell me I'm making a blanket claim and learn from below how the 1999 rule changes were actually impacting the game. You're overlooking the 1999 changes significantly, as those changed the way the game was played completely... though the official ban did take place in 04-05.
I'm not making this up- this is Scottie Pippen telling you directly how it impacted him, just as Nash did. (see below)
1999 - "A defender may not make contact with his hands and/or forearms on an offensive player except below the free throw line
extended"
Look at Pippen discussing the effects in just 1999
In 97-98, they had one of the all time low scoring seasons and were hard at work
mitigating defense already. Just watch and you'll see the implemented rule.
Kenny talks about hand checking at 3:15
This is why I find it maddening that posters deny this. It's just... blatantly obvious and is the reason why I couldn't bear to watch (including non-Bulls teams) after 98.
Literally all of the professional players and coaches openly discuss and admit it. Even players like Joe Johnson, Kobe etc who played post-rule changes spoke about this.
They banned it like 10 times, 99 they banned, then there were too many tick tack fouls, so they adjusted again in 00-01 or 01-02. Then they clarified again in 04-05 because it wasn't actually being called as they wanted.
Hand checking had been banned and clarified multiple times since like 1977 or so. They always made a rule when it was getting out of hand, but how hand checking functioned was not the same every year until 99 or 04-05. Teams didn't hand check in 90-91 like they were in 97-98 for example.
Regardless, hand checking was not going to prevent Stackhouse chucking up 24 FGA/G.
Stackhouse was drawing 7.2 FTA/G in 95-96 as a rookie taking 15 FGA/G, and 8.2 FTA/G in his second season taking 16 FGA/G.
In 00-01 he took 24 FGA and 10.1 FTA, there's nothing actually impressive there. He got more FTA primarily because his touches jumped massively. It was just a year of a guy inefficiently chucking away shots on a bad team which can happen in any era and isn't an argument for anything except that players can chuck up shots inefficiently on bad teams.
Stackhouse wasn't a point guard attacking from the middle of the floor, Stackhouse was a wing launching up whenever he got the ball and attacking off isolation, hand checking wasn't preventing him from throwing up shots at 40% FG while he averaged 4 tpg.
It's just not an example of much. Scoring didn't go up much relative to pace increase from 98-99 (or use 97-98 since 98-99 was lockout and a lot of guys sucked) to 99-00. FTA went down 0.5 per game and fouls were up 1.1 per game.
Skipping lockout season, from 97-98 to 99-00:
Pace up 93.1 (from 90.3)
Ortg down 0.9
Ppg up 1.6 ppg,
FTA down 0.5 FTA
Fouls up 0.9
I actually can't see any argument for why the hand checking rule would make someone unable to bear to watch after 98, it doesn't really check out why that would have made a significant difference in watching experience, but to each their own. There were a few too many touch fouls, then they adjusted it, then it was too hard to score with zone, more looser perimeter contact officiating, so they adjusted. There was a good amount of time it was mostly the same basketball in terms of team build and style, but Jordan was gone.
That's the real reason people were tuning out, let's be real. It was a lot of lower quality basketball (league as a whole with a very few teams as exceptions at that time) saved by the brilliance of Jordan. Then he retires and what do you have left?
I tuned out because the game started looking like a joke and I’m a defensive minded athlete to begin with.
Yes, handchecking clearly impacted and mitigated defense, as Scottie Pippen and Lenny just explained you. Yes, I got annoyed by it and chose not to watch the game because there was no aggression and easy buckets comparatively.
You can choose what you’d like to believe and ignore the top fifty players like Pippen Nash KG Jordan etc who played through this transition first hand and understand it.
In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you can find one interview of a player who played through both eras and said that the rules didn’t make defense more challenging or stated that the challenge of scoring remained the same.
This makes a big difference instead of working circles around what I say with your own narrative. Videos are worth a thousand pictures and pictures a thousand words, and videos of professionals explaining how it impacted the game for themselves trumps all.
I totally understand that you have a point you want to make and it works for your conclusions, that's fine. The problem is that you aren't actually addressing what is being said. What I'm arguing is not about difficulty of scoring, but about the ineffectiveness of your example and claim to actually getting the point you want across.
The point you're aiming to make:
Scoring was made easier after 98-99 --> This is why Stackhouse was able to average 29.8 ppg
This would be true if:
1) There was a significant difference in efficiency and scoring between the 90's and that season
2) Stackhouse averaged a 29.8 ppg that was more efficient than his regular production
3) Stackhouse averaged that amount by doing things he couldn't do in previous seasons that year
You're focusing on the PPG, but not actually focusing on why it happened and what it actually says.
What did Stackhouse do that season:
1) Take a lot of shots on a bottom 5 offense
2) Shoot 52.1 TS% vs league average 51.8% TS - Only the lockout season in the 90's, 98-99 (51.1%) had a lower TS% than 99-00. It was also a career 2nd low, only beat by the lockout season when the whole league sucked
3) Shoot a lot of FT's which he did every season before that too
So let's ask the relevant questions
1) Could Stackhouse take 24 FGA on a bottom 5 offense in the 90's?
Yes2) Could Stackhouse have a similarly high free throw rate in the 90's?
YesHis free throw rate in 95-96 (rookie!) and 96-97 were HIGHER than in 00-01
Stackhouse from 95-96 to 98-99 averaged 10.3 FTA and 21.1 FGA every 100 possessions
In 98-99 (before rule) it was 11.6 FTA to 22.8 FGA
In 00-01 it was 12.8 to 30.4.
So per 100 possessions, he took 6.4 more FGA and got only 0.8 more FTA
So nothing amazing, nothing to point to a rule change as the culprit, but definitely point to using a lot of possessions
3) Could Stackhouse have averaged 29.8 ppg in the 90's (any season from 89-90 to 98-99) on a bottom 5 offense?
Yes!4) Would it mean anything or be a plan for a winning team?
No5) Is it something to use as an indication of scoring difficulty or ease?
Absolutely NOT! Stackhouse averaged 29.8 ppg on a 32-50 bottom 5 Offense Detroit team in 00-01 the same way Bernard King averaged 28.4 ppg at 34 years old on a 30-52 bottom 5 offense Washington team. They were in situation that needed someone to take shots.
The Pistons starting lineup:
Chucky Atkins
Jerry Stackhouse
Michael Curry
Joe Smith
Ben Wallace
The previous season, Grant Hill was there playing 74 games at 37.5 mpg. The next season they added Uncle Cliff, and Big Dog (C.Williamson) was there for more than 27 games.
Season: Ortg/TS%/PPG/Pace (lower bolder):
00-01: 103.1 Ortg / 51.8 TS% / 94.8 ppg / 91.3 Pace
98-99 (lockout):
102.2 Ortg /
51.1 TS% /
91.6 ppg / 88.9 Pace97-98: 105.0 Ortg / 52.4 TS% / 96.5 ppg /
90.3 Pace96-97: 106.7 Ortg / 53.6 TS% / 96.9 ppg /
90.1 Pace95-96: 107.6 Ortg / 54.2 TS% / 99.5 ppg / 91.8 Pace
94-95: 108.3 Ortg / 54.3 TS% / 101.4 ppg / 92.9 Pace
93-94: 106.3 Ortg / 52.8 TS% / 101.5 ppg / 95.1 Pace
92-93: 108.0 Ortg / 53.6 TS% / 105.3 ppg / 96.8 Pace
91-92: 108.2 Ortg / 53.1 TS% / 105.3 ppg / 96.6 Pace
90-91: 107.9 Ortg / 53.4% TS / 105.3 ppg / 97.8 Pace
89-90: 108.1 Ortg / 53.7% TS / 106.3 ppg / 98.3 Pace
So if the league average was 5-11 ppg higher, Ortg was up to 5 pts/100 higher, there was a shorter 3PT line for some seasons, pace was the same or up to 7 possessions higher, and league TS% was higher. All that and you put Stackhouse on a team with no other scorers and let him chuck up 24 a game, he couldn't take those shots and this time shoot BELOW league average (he around league average in 00-01) and score a lot of points for a bad team (good on defense) and bottom offense? This is the argument you are dying on a hill on? And the "proof" is that Pippen said his 34 year old self found it more difficult to defense after the 99 change?
The premise is that it was too hard to score in the 90's for a mid-efficiency player on a bottom offensive team with no other scorers to take a lot of shots and score a lot of points, but it was EASIER to score in every 90's season except for ONE than it was in 00-01. If your argument was simply that Stackhouse couldn't score 29.8 ppg in the lockout season, yea, of course, because there was a lot of sucking in general that year.
Pippen in the quoted video just talks about how it is more difficult to defend individually in general, yup, they are also comparing to around 15 years later, and Pippen really just mainly mentions that it made it harder for him to defend at 34 years old when a lot of guys were quicker, faster, etc. But the data doesn't show that offenses had any easier time scoring than all the previous seasons before the lockout season than they did in 00-01.
98-99 - Lockout = Crap BasketballLet's also remember that the 98-99 dip in scoring was directly related to the NBA lockout, and the increase in 99-00 was not simply because a rule changed. In addition, 98-99 was an outlier compared to the rest of the 90's in itself.
It is well documented that many players didn't come back in shape and there were enough unprepared participants that it affected production. We still saw a dip in 11-12 even though teams were better prepared and many were saying "we won't let the same thing as 98-99 happen". While players were mostly far better prepared, you still have the condensed schedule issues to factor into performance.
What we might miss here is that if you compared 98-99 and 99-00 an say,
"look, you see how much the one rule change affected efficiency", you've thrown out all context. Lockout seasons can result in poor player preparation and performance, and that one 100% did. You get a super quick training camp, so teams are still in pre-season mode, you get a condensed schedule with more back to backs, and you have many players who come in with poor conditioning, don't have time to ramp up (it was the norm to use training camp to get in shape, less so now), and you increase fatigue and decrease performance.
96-97: 96.9 ppg
97-98: 95.6 ppg
98-99: 91.6 ppg (Outlier!!!!)
99-00: 97.5 ppg
10-11: 99.6 ppg / 107.3 Ortg / 54.1 T%
11-12: 96.3 ppg / 104.6 Ortg / 52.7 TS%12-13: 98.1 ppg / 105.8 Ortg / 53.5 TS%
You're just wrong here once again. You constantly get proven wrong and are so stubborn that you refuse to admit you were wrong. 
