Ice Man wrote:Jamaaliver wrote:These statements have been public knowledge for literally three decades.LA Times -- 1994Rod Thorn, director of NBA operations, was a key figure in devising and implementing the new rules.
“We looked at the games and saw that the physical contact had gone to the outer extremes,” Thorn said. “I’m not talking about the fights, but all the grabbing, holding and shoving was making it almost impossible to move from place to place on the basketball court.”
League officials are aware that scoring in regular season games dropped 17 points between 1986 and [1993-1994]. Defense became the best route to the Finals, if not the championship.
Three things. First, it's incorrect that league scoring dropped 17 points over those years. The actual figure was 9 points. Second, almost that entire decline was due not to lower offensive efficiency, but instead to slower pace. From the mid Eighties to the mid Nineties, defenses became better at stopping fast breaks, so there was more half-court play, which lowered overall scoring. Third, while the grabbing and clutching in the Nineties was high by the standards that were before that time, that doesn't mean that they were high by current standards. After all, Rod could not comment on how basketball in 2025 is played, only how it was played before 1994.
OK, four things. The fourth being that nobody who has ever written about the prevalence of hand checking back in the day has ever posted a video showing said hand checking. Look, here's 3 minutes of playoff ball from rough, tough 2003. Nobody touches anybody. Honestly, it looks more like a scrimmage than a playoff game.
It's always like that, whenever I look. I can't find any game from the past that supports the thesis.
