Post#128 » by TrueLAfan » Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:45 am
Referring to Nash's comment--it's dead on...but he's referring to the period after Hakeem's peak; the dead/slow era of the late 90s and early 2000s. He entered the league in 1996-7, when the league was getting close to the bottoming out point around the strike. Like I said--sorry if the post was long--we are returning to the style of play of the early 90s. We are not there yet. You can show this in multiple ways. It's quantifiable. You can see it in pace. Pace in 1993 and 1994--that would be around Hakeem's peak--was 96.8 and 95.1. It was 92.9 in 1995. After that, it spiraled downward, dropping as low as 88.9 in the strike year (and 90.1 in 2004). Since 2004, it has gradually risen again. Last season's pace was 91.9. Other than the one year anomaly of 2000 (the post strike year), it's the fastest pace since 1995. This season we're at 92.3...almost at the level of 1995. That would be the period of Hakeem's peak. What Nash is saying is we're returning to the athleticism and fluidity of the game before he entered the league--the early to mid-90s (and, if we're lucky, the late 80s).
You can see it in points per game. As the game slowed and became more halfcourt oriented, scoring dropped. It was around 91-95 point per game for most of the years between 1998 and 2004. We're on an upswing now. Last year, scoring was at 98.7 ppg. This is a by product of the open movement and athleticism Nash refers to. The last time scoring was higher was when--yup--Hakeem was at his peak. From 1993 to 1996, scoring was higher than now; 105.4 ppg in 1993.
You can see it in assists per game and percentage of baskets where assist are awarded. Assists per game were around 25 per game in the mid 1990s. They dropped to 21 apg in the slow period of the late 90s and early 2000s. they have started to go up again, and are approaching the 61.5/62% figure of baskets where assists were recorded in...yup. 1994 and 1995.
Actually, you can see it in player weight as well. When the game was slower (1997-2005), players were heavier. When the game was truly fast in the 80s, average player weight was around 215 pounds. It went to 224-225 and over in the dead period of the late 90s and early 00s. Now it's dropping again...it's back to 221. NBA players are the lightest that they've been since...well, I won't say it again, but you should get the point by now. There are lots of quantifiable facts to support what Nash points out...and it basically indicates we're going to back to a style and athleticism similar to that of 12-15 years years ago
That's why the era argument is being brought up and discussed (in those 500+ word responses)...because it's completely relevant to how we judge relative play and athleticism between time periods. It is not a tangent at all.
What I'm wondering--and, obviously, Harry Palmer and tsherkn are wondering the same thing--is that if you saw any decent numbers of games back then how you could have missed these changes. That's not a snide or rude question; I/we are honestly confused. If you didn't watch the games then...which means you didn't really watch Hakeem...that's fine. You need to say "I didn't really see Hakeem play." If you had, you'd recognize that he was a superlative athlete in a very athletic period; a period whose style (which relates to athleticism) we are returning to now. And Harry Palmer is right...Hakeem's athletic peak was earlier than his performance peak. He became a smarter player in the early and mid 90s. Earlier, he was relying more on his athletic gifts. And they were stupendous.
