camby23 wrote:Lunartic wrote:Agreed, there's absolutely no way 90's players would have realized they had to actually guard shooters at the 3 point line.
You see, back then defense was optional and if you ran far enough away from the rim, you were left alone.
Unlike today's defense, which is hard nosed and physical and players like Harden and Curry are constantly hand-checked, bodied up and are forced to earn their FTA.
You are talking about physicality, but name one 90's player who was guarded off ball like that:
https://streamable.com/b2fm7uAnd then people like you are saying that now defense looks like sh... It looks like that because the offense in 5x better than 20-30 years ago. It's preatty easy to defend when 4 of 5 players can't shoot and when most of the plyares are playing ISO and taking bad shots.
It's also funny when people are talking about FTA considering that average FTA in 90's was higher than in 10's
1990-1999 - 26.6 FTA
2010-2020 - 22.9 FTA
I know you said "off-ball" but Curry is a deadly off-ball scorer, possibly the best in NBA history so it's not very different from MJ being guarded on-ball.
I don't understand, are you saying 90s era players wouldn't realize Curry is shooting from the outside and would just wait for him to pullup for a two? It's a pretty quick adjustment to make. The moment MJ/Pippen realize that Curry is scoring from long range they would just constantly harass and bump and grab and handcheck him and make his life difficult.
There's this strange mentality people have in reference to past era players vs today's. As if, past players are stuck in the past and ONLY will play like it's the 90's. Past players aren't idiots and present players aren't enlightened geniuses. If you see some lightweight guard making shots from range, you just get closer to him and chase him off the line. Not a very radical adjustment. Curry would be a great player in any era because he's incredibly skilled.
Comparing raw FTA between eras while ignoring the obvious difference in officiating defense is meaningless. Perhaps FTA were up simply because players played far more physically? Is your honest interpretation that today's defense is more aggressive and physical than past eras? That would be pretty radical.