NBA all-star weekend

[CardiacAndre7]

Bron carried the Cavs to the Finals in 2007. If you want to remove KD fine.

Wade won in 2006. T Mac won his scoring titles in 2002-2003. What are you talking about.

I’m saying, are you comparing the 2000’s to now or the 2010’s? KD and LeBron peaked in the 2010’s, Wade 2000’s, TMac 2000’s. It’s unfair to add them together if you are just doing a 1v1 comp with the 2020’s.

 

[Deleted at users request]

I’m saying, are you comparing the 2000’s to now or the 2010’s? KD and LeBron peaked in the 2010’s, Wade 2000’s, TMac 2000’s. It’s unfair to add them together if you are just doing a 1v1 comp with the 2020’s.

I’m talking about the 2000s.

Bron and Wade were drafted in 2003. They are for sure a part of that 2000s group which is light years ahead of current day. I’m not sure how that’s a question.

I didn’t even bring up players like Carmelo, Vince and Ray when talking about depth of that generation.

 

[UCONNRPh]

OTOH, i’m feeling better about my Steph Castle for ROY future bet.

Ditto Here too

 

[UCONNRPh]

Do you think todays bigs could go toe to toe with Shaq, Olajuwon, Ewing, Robinson, Sabonis, etc?

no way whatsover

 

[Deleted at users request]

Do you think todays bigs could go toe to toe with Shaq, Olajuwon, Ewing, Robinson, Sabonis, etc?

I think Joel and Jokic have a strong case to be better than everybody based on their skill. But the depth from that time is better.

I’d personally go with Shaq over anyone today because he was so dominant. I’d understand if someone wanted to argue for Jokic.

 

[champs99and04]

I hear this a lot. You really think 20 foot jumper brings people back? It’s a dumb shot. i don’t want guys taking contested mid range shots.

talking about how great previous hoops were and then we get an 83-81 game nba finals game 7 and train wreck. Do we remember pistons spurs and pistons lakers?

look at nba style for Tim Duncan and the midrange jumper off the backboard. I can’t think of one great spurs moment other than ray Allen hitting the game 6 tying shot.

issue with nba is load management And effort of star players. Not style of play.

I'm talking about style of play specifically as it relates to the all-star game. Don't believe me? Go look at the proportion of three point attempts taken in last year's all-star game compared to 20 years ago. You can argue whether the pace and space era has been good for the league in sum, but what's undeniable is that defenses have to expend much more energy now than they did before. That makes effort a lot harder to fake in an exhibition like the all-star game.

 

[champs99and04]

People don't want to watch teams hoist up 50 threes in a game.

I know I certainly don't. I mean it's one thing to watch Ray Allen or Steph Curry launch 10+ threes in a game. People pay money to watch great shooters shoot. It's another thing when it's Brook Lopez or Al Horford.

The NBA is encountering a similar problem now that MLB did 20-25 years ago in that competitive instinct of the franchises to maximize the efficiency of their players through data analysis has begun to compromise the aesthetic appeal of the product. You might be seeing more homeruns but you're also seeing a hell of a lot more swings and misses.

Unfortunately, more threes leads to more variance, which ultimately leads to more parity. And I think that's what the league wants. The days of Shaq or Duncan winning the title every year are long gone.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

 

[CardiacAndre7]

Vecenie with a thread on this as well.

 

[superjohn]

Random twitter nobody arguing with Eddie Johnson. Classic case of know your place.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

Random twitter nobody arguing with Eddie Johnson. Classic case of know your place.

The idea is pretty funny, it’s twitter it’s harmless. Old heads think their time was the best, others think differently.

 

[superjohn]

The idea is pretty funny, it’s twitter it’s harmless. Old heads think their time was the best, others think differently.

Yeah but when it's a guy who scored nearly 20,000 points in the NBA going after something you said about the NBA it's best to just let him speak his mind. It is funny and a bit weird Eddie Johnson is chiming in on some rando dude's tweet though.

If it were me and Eddie Johnson was doing this with my tweet I would do a "holy s***" to myself and tell him it was an honor to watch him play.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

Yeah but when it's a guy who scored nearly 20,000 points in the NBA going after something you said about the NBA it's best to just let him speak his mind. It is funny and a bit weird Eddie Johnson is chiming in on some rando dude's tweet though.

If it were me and Eddie Johnson was doing this with my tweet I would do a "holy s***" to myself and tell him it was an honor to watch him play.

Yeah if I had the opportunity I wouldn’t try to argue, but the guys was just responding to a tweet. I don’t think in a million years he thought Eddie would respond, so he took his 15 mins and kept yapping.

 

[champs99and04]

There was some brutal, brutal basketball played in the 90s and early 00s. One of my earliest basketball memories was watching the Celtics and Pistons play to a 66-64 final in game three of the 2002 eastern semi-finals (there's actually a youtube clip out there somewhere of an entire six minute stretch without a FG in the third quarter). It was really the worst of both worlds in that you had a generation of self-centered stars raised on sneaker money and and1 tapes that had abandoned the offensive structure of previous eras before they'd developed the skills to evolve past it. It was just a very ugly, unenlightened brand of basketball that - while I'm still somewhat nostalgic for it - I definitely wouldn't recommend it as a blueprint moving forward.

That said, there's a happy medium and I think we're at least ten years past that point. I find the modern game every bit as unwatchable as those slugfests of 20-30 years ago and sometimes worse. At least then, the best players usually won. Now it's about whose role players are hitting their threes on a given day and which analytics department has best assembled their desired skillsets and brainwashed their players.

(There's a misconception that Steve Kerr, Stephen Curry, and the Warriors are responsible for this shift when I think it was really Daryl Morey and James Harden - that's where all the iso, five out stuff grew its wings)