The4thHorseman wrote:VanWest82 wrote:The4thHorseman wrote:What's that say about the league in 1993 if Grant and Pippen were both able to "basically" take the regular season off yet both still made the All Defensive team while Pippen also made All-NBA?
You mean what does it say about the voter group and their propensity to vote based on reputation over actual impact.
As for league quality in 93, it was super high with numerous high quality teams in both East and West. NBA handled the first couple rounds of expansion well before the league got watered down in the mid-late 90s. You had new ATG talent (Shaq, DRob, GP/Kemp, GHill) entering the league with 80s ATGs (Jordan, Barkley, Dream, Stockton/Malone, Ewing, Price/Daugherty, Clyde/Porter) in their prime. The fact that Bulls had so much trouble with Knicks in 93 (and Knicks and Cavs in 92) despite Scottie and Horace actually trying (and getting punked) and MJ legit struggling vs Knicks in first three games of 93, plus teams like Blazers and Suns taking two games in their series vs. prime MJ Bulls says a lot about league quality. The early 90s being weak is without a doubt one of the dumbest anti-Jordan arguments going. Early 90s is in contention for the greatest NBA era of all time before even getting to the swan songs for the Birds, Magics, Isiahs, etc.
How could Grant make his first All-Defensive team and it be due to reputation? Same with Pippen making both All-NBA and All-Defensive. Don't you have to have that reputation first before claiming that's why they made it??
Sorry man, you can't claim Pippen and Grant half assed it the whole 93 season to prop up Jordan and then claim how great the league was at the time. There's a reason why Stern moved the 3pt line closer for the 94 season and it sure as hell wasn't due to how great the league was offensively at the time.
They made it because Bulls were 2x defending champions and media narrative had started to shift belatedly to giving the other Bulls players credit while also turning on Jordan as backlash from all the success and universal adoration from the previous two years (titles, MVPs, FMVPs, Olympics, etc.) had started to take hold with scandals related to gambling and being a hard ass teammate now driving the narrative. Edit: also, in the case of Scottie, he was #7 in DPOY in 91 and #3 in 92 and then not a finalist in 93. Meanwhile, Jordan finishes #2 in DPOY voting in 93 even though he's only #3 in MVP that year. Voters penalized him despite being the best player in the world while acknowledging the effort.
Jordan has to raise his output on both sides of the ball back to late 80s levels to make up for decreased effort from rest of Bulls roster (see his shot attempts, steals, etc.). Both Scottie and Horace had notable down years statistically in 93 by comparison. This wasn’t an accident or unrelated.
Call it whatever you want if you don’t like the “less effort” explanation, but we’ve now seen several teams try for the three-peat since and in every case we saw teams struggle to maintain the same level of consistency in year 3 compared with the first two. Jordan was the only star who actually increased his effort level in year 3 of the three-peat. LeBron, by comparison, didn’t put forth near the same effort defensively in 2014 as he did in 2012 and 2013. I also believe the fall out from Jordan Rules and MJ’s profile and financial situation blowing up coming out of the Olympics played a role.
In summary, Jordan did more in year 3 of the three-peat on both sides of the ball while Scottie and Horace did less than both the year before and after that season. We have numerous sources including Scottie and Horace themselves saying they weren’t happy with how “credit” was allocated (probably code for money) during that period. Tendency to play less hard in year three of three-peat has been documented in numerous other teams with Jordan’s own personal motor/play being an exception. I’d say the evidence for 93 being a significant down year for Scottie and Horace is very strong beyond the obvious eye test argument any Bulls fan from that period would give you.