Channing Frye: Nostalgia is KILLING the NBA. 90s basketball era with MJ and Kobe was not as clean as you think.

[ScrantonBulls]

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"Nostalgia is killing the NBA. The ’90s basketball era with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant was not as clean as you think. Y’all forget that Jordan left the league for two years. Y’all forget that Kobe—rest in peace—quit on his team in the playoffs and refused to shoot the basketball.

"So all this talk about Kobe, Jordan—'Oh, he’s not this, he’s not that'—it’s propaganda. Every great player, whether it’s Ant, Wemby, LeBron, Steph—whoever—gets compared to players from 40 years ago.

"But the rules weren’t even the same back then! You’re not really watching help-side defense. Who’s doing what? What are these rules? Nobody celebrates the new generation of players.

"So why would anyone want to be the face of the league when every network constantly criticizes them for not being like someone from 40 years ago? It’s ridiculous. It’s unfair.

"LeBron is one of the greatest players ever. Stephen Curry is one of the greatest players ever. Giannis is one of the greatest. Jokic—same thing. Yet we just keep talking about Michael Jordan."

[Big J]

Guys now are incredible, but they don’t care as much as MJ & Kobe did. Kobe was out there giving 110% effort in damn All Star games. MJ took every slight that was said about him personally, and avenged every single one of them.

[CROBulls]

Old man yelling at cloud. When players start giving *** on floor and stop being socialites instead basketball players, maybe ratings wouldnt go to *** and people would enjoy this era of basketball. Pretty bad basketball but still basketball in some way.

Lets remember that players are product of league. If NBA ratings are going down then players are reason for it. If people dont like current NBA that means they dont like players in NBA.

In Kobe and MJ era every player specially stars and superstars played 82 games. Full seasons. There was a effort and pride to play and compete against each other. People knew that when they pay ticket for basketball game they gonna get full experience and it's gonna be worth it. Now they get full prices, all buddy budddy (Lebron's fault), lousy experience when 15 minutes before basketball game star player decides sit out because his muumuu is hurting. Whatever the mumuuu is your choice to fill up.

[Snakebites]

He’s right.

[Galou]

Not even watching the video and I kinda agree

I was raised in the 80s & 90s. Lived through the Golden years so I overstand the nostalgia but it's time to move on. Most raised in that era don't realize how redundantly corny they sound crying about the old NBA. I was one of those then I stopped and started to embrace the new era.

[levon]

SGA, Luka, and Jokic are plenty like Jordan and Kobe. Trouble with Luka and Jokic is they're not about the fanfare and personality cults, and that's a big problem for a league built on superstar personalities.

Maybe that changes with Luka in LA. But I think the league should really lean in to SGA. I think this postseason is going to be his coming out party.

[CROBulls]

SGA, Luka, and Jokic are plenty like Jordan and Kobe. Trouble with Luka and Jokic is they're not about the fanfare and personality cults, and that's a big problem for a league built on superstar personalities.

Maybe that changes with Luka in LA. But I think the league should really lean in to SGA. I think this postseason is going to be his coming out party.

Why? He is corny as hell. Some "aura" guy. People laugh in his face. I mean I do.

[levon]

SGA, Luka, and Jokic are plenty like Jordan and Kobe. Trouble with Luka and Jokic is they're not about the fanfare and personality cults, and that's a big problem for a league built on superstar personalities.

Maybe that changes with Luka in LA. But I think the league should really lean in to SGA. I think this postseason is going to be his coming out party.

Why? He is corny as hell. Some "aura" guy. People laugh in his face. I mean I do.

I wasn't around for young Jordan, but Kobe was plenty corny.

[YogurtProducer]

Guys now are incredible, but they don’t care as much as MJ & Kobe did. Kobe was out there giving 110% effort in damn All Star games. MJ took every slight that was said about him personally, and avenged every single one of them.

You are kidding yourself if you think MJ and Kobe cared more than others. Kobe and MJ were straight up d-bags who due to not coming up in the social media era have been able to market that as "caring".

You think LBJ "doesnt care" when the dude spends $1m+ a year to keep his body right? If he didnt care, why would he play into his 40s with generational wealth locked up?

You seriously think Giannis doesnt care? Or Curry? or any other great player in the league?

All because they don't try in an exhibition game lol

[ScrantonBulls]

SGA, Luka, and Jokic are plenty like Jordan and Kobe. Trouble with Luka and Jokic is they're not about the fanfare and personality cults, and that's a big problem for a league built on superstar personalities.

Maybe that changes with Luka in LA. But I think the league should really lean in to SGA. I think this postseason is going to be his coming out party.

Why? He is corny as hell. Some "aura" guy. People laugh in his face. I mean I do.

I wasn't around for young Jordan, but Kobe was plenty corny.

Yep. SGA is corny, but the dude who self nicknamed himself the "Black Mamba" and had to tell everybody how hard of a worker he was and how much of a killer he was isn't?

[TheGeneral99]

This is what happens we always tend to romanticize the past.

Now we look at these amazing highlight reels of the 1980s and 1990s greats that show the best plays without remembering all the negative stuff or how boring some of the games were.

The late 1990s and early 2000s in my opinion was the worst period of basketball that I've watched - boring, slow games, iso-oriented players trying to replicate Jordan, little ball movement, a lot of selfish players, and disgruntled superstars acting like babies. Yet former players act like the NBA back then was this incredible thing that could do no wrong.

There is a reason the NBA made rule changes...because people didn't like how the games were played back then. People didn't like big men clogging the paint the whole game, people didn't like iso-oriented basketball, people didn't like slow pace slog fests...they were boring as ****.

The NBA will have to address some of the ultra high-volume 3 point shooting issues but this isn't different from any issues we've had in the past...I think the game is better than ever.

It's the same **** with MAGA...Make America Great Again...when was it great? When the natives were being genocided? When we had slaves? When we had robber barrons controlling all the wealth and workers had no rights and we had literal child labour? When we had japanese internment camps, the KKK and Jim Crow laws? When we had the Vietnam war? When we had the great depression and the great recession? When we had the failed Iraq war? We always look back and act like the previous decades were this incredible time without acknowledging all the bad **** that happened.

The conclusion is that we can acknowledge that the current game has issues and we need to improve those issues, but we shouldn't dismiss how amazing the game is now and act like the game was so much better decades ago when it clear wasn't.

[SkyBill40]

Guys now are incredible, but they don’t care as much as MJ & Kobe did. Kobe was out there giving 110% effort in damn All Star games. MJ took every slight that was said about him personally, and avenged every single one of them.

You are kidding yourself if you think MJ and Kobe cared more than others. Kobe and MJ were straight up d-bags who due to not coming up in the social media era have been able to market that as "caring".

You think LBJ "doesnt care" when the dude spends $1m+ a year to keep his body right? If he didnt care, why would he play into his 40s with generational wealth locked up?

You seriously think Giannis doesnt care? Or Curry? or any other great player in the league?

All because they don't try in an exhibition game lol

James continues to play because he's on a mission to eclipse Jordan's accomplishments which he'll never do. He can't stand being second. As you mentioned, he has generational weath, so why bother otherwise?

Sent from my SM-F936U using RealGM mobile app

[Bloodbather]

He's bang on the money. There's an insane amount of romanticism surrounding the basketball of the 90s and the early 2000s. You may have been very excited to follow it back then, but do yourself a favor and go back and watch some games again. It's not that pretty. People jacking up terrible long twos, congestion down the post, cookie cutter plays, that dumb ass illegal defense rule, etc.

I say this as someone who fell in love with the game in the early 2000s and has his complaints about some aspects in the current game.

[Teen Girl Squad]

He's not wrong. There are still plenty of old heads here from the beginning on RealGm and let me tell you, the discourse around the NBA in the early 00s had a similar level of doomerism with how objectively awful offense was vs the Jordan era. There is a group of people that simply cannot appreciate anything current in basketball (or life), they can only enjoy things drenched in the rosy sheen of nostalgia. People who cry that LeBron/KD/Steph/etc... are frauds/overrated/etc.. are the people who will lecture us about how "they don't make players like LeBron anymore" this time a decade from now.

[GSWFan1994]

ScrotumBalls whenever he creates a thread """debating""" against, well... you know who.



Warned for personal attack.

[Bobbymcgee]

The NBA is way better now. Just off the top of my head we now have:

More three point shooting than ever
The Gather step
Kevin Hart
Shaqtin A Fool
The Wingstop No Flex Zone commercial
NBA on TNT

People just can't appreciate how great the NBA is now.

[KokoKaizer]

Scrantonbulls, you have some real pb...

MJ would say, GET SOME HELP

[druggas]

Nostalgia? Always looking for a reason that people are turned off by the current NBA. Look no further than players taking days off, no real rivalries, and no more different style of play. Everything is vanilla and that's on Silver.

[BodieB]

He's absolutely correct. The perception of Kobe and MJ has been wildly skewed too. Kobe quit on his team in the playoffs, and Jordan quit the league twice to rest.

Not only that the load management narrative the media focuses on is so overblown now. It's only attributed to Kawhi and Embiid when it's talked about, and never mentioned that stars like SGA, Ant, Jokic, Lebron, Tatum, Brunson, are practically always available.

[Black Jack]

He's not wrong. There are still plenty of old heads here from the beginning on RealGm and let me tell you, the discourse around the NBA in the early 00s had a similar level of doomerism with how objectively awful offense was vs the Jordan era. There is a group of people that simply cannot appreciate anything current in basketball (or life), they can only enjoy things drenched in the rosy sheen of nostalgia. People who cry that LeBron/KD/Steph/etc... are frauds/overrated/etc.. are the people who will lecture us about how "they don't make players like LeBron anymore" this time a decade from now.

It. Has. Always. Been. This. Way.

Literally since I started watching in the 80s everybody always moans and whines about the NBA. It will NEVER END.