OldSchoolNoBull wrote:Ainosterhaspie wrote:OldSchoolNoBull wrote:And I agree with all of that. There is a view amongst modern-leaning fans that the game has been figured out and is now being played "correctly" and that everyone was doing it wrong for the first 60+ years of the NBA, and I really, really dislike that way of thinking. It leads to a POV where the past isn't respected or given its due.
The three point line fundamentally changed the game. Strategies prior to the introduction of the three were relatively mature and solidly effective. Once the three was implemented, it took 20+ years for the NBA to shed thinking that
used to be correct and to adapt to the new paradigm.
The process of understanding the value of the three, developing strategies to leverage that advantage and training players to develop the new necessary skills took time.
This process was unnecessarily slowed by adherence to obsolete thinking.
I just fundamentally reject the notion of "correct" and "incorrect" when comparing eras, because it's all done with hindsight knowledge, and it's using that hindsight knowledge to criticize an entire era's worth of players and coaches.
Agree to disagree.
Semantics. Put whatever word or label on it that you want. But like the notion that computer technology will inevitably continue to get smaller, faster and cheaper (Moore's Law), basketball strategy -- sports strategy in general -- will continue to change and evolve. Somebody figures out a new way to do something, or a league changes rules, everybody adjusts, and then they come up with changes to counter those changes.
I wouldn't argue that every single change in strategy or tactics in every single sport have been an improvement. But it would be fairly hard to argue that most haven't.
Take football: Coaches would get fired even 20 years ago for taking some of the gambles they do on fourth down now without blinking. (Many of which aren't really even gambles at all.) Why? Much like 3-pointers in basketball, statistical analysis proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that coaches were grossly underutilizing a tool that could help them win games.
Does that mean coaches like Bill Walsh or Vince Lombardi or Paul Brown still weren't geniuses? Of course not. Indeed, they all revolutionized football in their own ways. They just had a particular blind spot that needed a fresh set of eyeballs to correct.
Hell, I was just watching a documentary on John Madden a couple of months ago, in which he recounted some clinic he attended as a younger coach where Lombardi -- his idol -- was giving some presentation involving a particular blocking technique. And Madden, despite being a relative nobody at that time, sheepishly stood up and said, no coach, that's outdated, this is how it should be done. Instead of lighting him up, Lombardi thought about it and said yeah, you're right.
Whatever word you want to put on that, that's how it's supposed to work.
EDIT: And I want to add, not all changes are a case of throwing conventional wisdom completely out the window. The pick-and-roll is a great example. I think somebody came up with that in the 1920s, then it fell out of popularity for a long time. And now 100 years later it's one of, if not
the, most common plays in the NBA. A basic-ass set created years before the advent of television. But if it ain't broke...
