Everything about the NBA was better in the 80s/90s. Not only were the players better, but the game was tougher–the goal was higher (like, 11-12 feet IIRC), the ball was square, the court was uphill (both ways)…
I loved the Celtics of the 80s–Bird, Parish, McHale, Ainge, Johnson. My favorite player on that team was McHale (I’m a huge fan of the lost art of the big-man-in-the-post-with-his-back-to-the-basket game. The GOAT in that regard was Hakeem the Dream–he was a whirling dervish.) I also loved the intensity of the rivalries back then–teams really didn’t like each other. (Bird, on being told one year that Pistons’ great Bill Laimbeer hadn’t made the All-Star team: “Good, now I won’t have to tell him ‘fuck you’ when he tries to shake my hand getting off the bus.”) Although it was amazing the way some rivalries trumped others. One of my favorite memories was the first time the Pistons beat the Celtics for the Eastern Conference championship–1988, I think. They closed the series out in Boston. Toward the end of the final game, when it was apparent the Pistons would win, the Boston crowd started chanting “Beat L.A.! Beat L.A.!” Sent chills down my spine.
What a load of baloney! Look, he’s free to do whatever he wants but you won’t convince me that I should respect him MORE for joining the Warriors.
Let’s dial it back to 1990. Jordan just lost to the Pistons for the third straight year. He’s emerging as the best player in the league, but the Pistons still have his number. They’ve beaten the crap out of him, both on the scoreboard and in a much more literal sense. They’ve taken the Bulls out of the playoffs for THREE years in a row now. Before that the Celtics swept his ass.
Are you telling me that it would have been tougher for Jordan to join the Pistons, fresh off of two consecutive championships, than it would for him to keep getting better with his teammates and become the winning machine he turned into the next year?
That doesn’t pass the smell test one bit! Jordan did it the right way, the way fans want to see!
Okay, but I wanted to put that perspective out there. Sure, from a purely “old school playground” perspective, fans place this warrior mentality on the players. Jordan (and Kobe, I’d say) are examples of players who would fight tooth and nail to win at all costs. Most guys, I’d say like Durant, are great, great players who see basketball as something their good it. I think Durant takes it very seriously and strives to get better, but I also think he sees it at one aspect of his life. If he’s happier living and working in NorCal vs. OKC, likes his teammates, and excels at his job, great for him. I just got turned off by the attitude of “I lost all respect for him”, “What a loser”, etc…, etc… as if he committed some crime against humanity.
Exactly! And the fans nowadays… with their craft beer, sushi, and iphones.
I’m not saying any of those things. He’s still a great basketball player, but his decision doesn’t, in my opinion, make basketball more compelling to watch. Nor does it make me want to root for him. Had he stayed in OKC, I would have been glued to the TV for the whole OKC/GS series. Instead we got another rubber-stamped series with no compelling storylines or competitive fire.
I’ll be tuning in for the finals though. That should be good TV.
Yeah, I think we’re on the page. I know you’re not judging Durant as a person (like some fans are on talk radio and other sites), but just wish for a situation where we’d see some competitive playoff series. I hope the finals will be compelling, when they eventually start (which isn’t for another week or so.)
A lot of folks covered ground here, so no need to retread, but I’d like to argue a couple rule changes improving the game. For one, I believe that eliminating hand-checking made the game open up some. For one, players can drive to the hoop easier, and it makes for more motion in the game.
Secondly, I remember the motion of Phil’s/Jordan’s triangle, but for every team like that, you had the Sixers of Iverson (who I adore, but still) who simply played ISO because of man to man requirements. The zone allows for more defensive coverage, and again, forces teams to pass more.
Finally, while I did love me some Knicks/Heat rivalries in the 90s, those games were borderline unwatchable in terms of the skill. I think the game is more fascinating to watch when the final score isn’t 70/64, but rather, in the 100s. On the other hand, the showtime Lakers were fun to watch, no doubt, but those teams also played a bit loose on the defensive end. Whereas the Spurs of 2013 or Golden State this year play suffocating defense and dynamic offense.
That said, the free agency issues need addressing, as others have noted.
Ha! Couldn’t resist. Yeah it’ll be funny to watch it play out, because he had, “No chance of being an all time great without a ring.” but now the Stephen A. Smith’s of the sports world will be condemning him and it’ll be, “Well he had to go to arguably the greatest team ever to accomplish it.” It’s a circle that never ends, I applaud his performance throughout the year (the Finals especially) but it makes it a heck of a lot easier to score when there are 3 other dudes on your team that are MVP/Scoring Title/Facilitator extraordinaire type folks on your team.
And I take it you aren’t a big fan of superstars teaming up? Is it a through the decades thing you’ve disliked? (Jordan, Pippen, Rodman) (85 Celtics) (the Lakers’ Dynasty) Or is it more of a new development? A lot of folks I have talked to really, really dislike the moving around the league to different/better teams or situations and talk about the good ol’ days.
Not particularly, no. I don’t think it makes for compelling sports.
I don’t think any of the examples you gave parallel what we have today. Rodman was a side-show rebounding/defensive specialist when he joined the Bulls, who were coming off of the Jordan hiatus. Dickie Simkins, Jud Bueschler, and Luc Longley all got minutes. They didn’t have five all-stars on the court at the same time. They had Jordan, Pippen, and a bunch of solid role players.
The Warriors fourth best player currently has the record for most points in an NBA quarter. Their fifth best player won NBA finals MVP two years ago. No comparison.
The Lakers and Celtics are both examples of franchises being run very well and real competitive fire burning hot. Bird and Magic had massive egos and way too much pride to join forces with each other. Nothing like that would ever happen, and we got some of the best basketball entertainment ever because of it.
Durant is a top 2 player joining a 73-win team. Lebron got together with two other top players and decided to join forces. This is not the same way that any of the champions from the 80’s and 90’s were built.
Simply stated, there was more competitive parity and more competitive fire in the 80’s and 90’s. That’s a big reason why I like the NHL so much. An 8 seed making the finals isn’t a fluke. The league is just that competitive.
Right now the NBA looks an awful lot like a development league for the two teams that will compete for the finals in the near future. And the lesson, reinforced with trophies, is the big old stink bomb of…
Ya… the Bulls were not a superteam. I’m so sick of people trying to say they were because they’re not ready to accept that Lebron will never be on Jordan’s level. He’s not clutch and he doesn’t have the heart to finish every close game like Jordan did. This one, very simple concept makes all other stats irrelevant. You can’t be the greatest if you regularly let teammates play hero at the end of a close game. Jordan wasn’t having that, he demanded the ball and he produced when it was most important.
Honestly, if the NBA stays like this, then I’ll just be a Wizards fan (from the DMV area) and no longer a basketball fan. What’s the point? We all knew how this season was going to end before it even started. The only question was, would the Warriors fuck up again and let the Cavs beat them a second year in a row, even with KD added to the roster? That was literally the only question for an entire basketball season.
This is making the NBA suck. I feel bad for putting part of it on the Warriors, because they built their team right, mostly through the draft. Then they just added KD. But they need to break up these 2 teams somehow, or the NBA will continue to suck.
I didn’t have the pleasure of watching most NBA in the 80s and 90s, I was a kid and into other things, but I won’t need much convincing if you tell me it was way better then than it is now.
I laugh at the comment about there being more competitive balance in the NBA back then as opposed to today. Aside from this particular postseason, in which it was beyond obvious that no team other than the W’s and the Cavs had any chance at the Finals, it is just as likely in the last 17 years that a lower-seeded team makes it to the Finals as it was in the 70’s-90’s. And that likelihood has always been pretty much non-existent.
Look at the playoff seedings of every Finals team the last 40 years. In the last 17 years there have been 7 teams seeded lower than #2 who made the Finals. In the previous 20 years, there had been a total of 6 lower-seeded teams.
So spare me the bullshit about the league having more parity then than it does now. That argument holds no water whatsoever, especially when it was practically the same two teams in the Finals every year of the entire 1980’s. The Lakers played in the Finals something like 9 times in 12 years, and played Boston about half that time.
The idea that ANY of those teams could beat the Warriors is also laughable. I find it hysterical to think that today’s greatest players would somehow be thrown entirely and permanently off their game if a little bit of handchecking were still allowed. Like elite athletes can’t make and adjustment or two to their game. I laugh.
The '96 Bulls would have been absolutely annihilated, and the '85 Lakers wouldn’t stand a chance running with this team, not with the FAR faster, stronger, and more athletic players wearing blue and gold, not purple and gold.
The '96 Bulls would get destroyed, too. If there is a team in the NBA more capable of harassing Michael Jordan into a pedestrian 30-point game than the Warriors, I haven’t seen it. They can throw Thompson, Iguodala, Green, and Livingston at him. Jordan never played against teams that could throw very high-quality defenders (plural) at him for the entire game. A lot of teams had A player who could do that, but not several that the Warriors could rotate at Jordan.
Dennis Rodman wouldn’t even play against the Warriors. Does anyone really think Draymond Green would even bother defending Rodman? No, it would essentially be 5 on 4 until they yanked his ass. Besides, Rodman would have to slide to the center position anyways, given that Luc Longley would never see the court against the Warriors. Draymond Green and Kevin Durant at the 5 and 4 when the Warriors go small, which would be all fucking game against a plodding-ass team like the '96 Bulls, is a HUGE advantage over Rodman and Kukoc. Ron Harper would never be capable of guarding Curry, Jordan vs. Thompson is not the mismatch many might argue it is given that Thompson is the best on-ball defender in the NBA today, and Scottie Pippen simply is infuckingcapable of guarding Durant at 7’0".
All top sports teams today would dominate the sports teams from 20-30-40 years ago. Absolutely fucking dominate them.
I also find it hysterical that some people think the early 2000’s Lakers would even win a game against this Warriors squad. Those Lakers teams struggled mightily to make it past the Kings, who gave the Lakers trouble because they could play uptempo and could hit three’s.
This Warriors team plays much, much more uptempo than that team did, and if the Lakers struggled at times to defend Peja Fucking Stojokovic, I can’t see how they could ever handle Curry AND Thompson, let alone Durant. Would Shaq even play 30 minutes against the Warriors? No fucking way.
My comment regarding parity stems from the number of legit contenders. At no point has the NBA ever been like the NHL, but there were more teams contending for the title back in the 80’s and 90’s. Not too many more, but I don’t think the NBA Finals outcome has ever been as predictable as it is now. This is a direct result of superstars joining forces with each other. I don’t see next year being much different, or the year after that.
This does not make for great entertainment. That has been my basic case in this thread.
Is that case even being made by anyone anywhere? I didn’t notice it in this thread, but it does make for an easy strawman to spend the next seven paragraphs attacking.
It’s not really been made in this thread, but to be fair it has been made by “anyone, anywhere” - a bunch of NBA greats have come out of the woodwork to deliver their scorching hot “things were tougher back in my day” takes.
Skimming upthread, though, I don’t think anyone suggested that here. Your case has been less about “Are the Warriors better than the 90’s Bulls?” type questions and more about qualitative stuff, such as the feeling that there were more legitimate contenders than there are today.
The NBA and basketball simply suffer from the law of large numbers making things uninteresting when you’re looking from far enough out. Basketball games have so many more possessions and scores that a lesser skilled team getting lucky a couple times won’t let them win the series (probably won’t even let them win the game).
If the bottom team and the top team in the league played a game where the first to 7 points wins, you might see the bottom team win some times. But over the course of 48 minutes, the top team will win basically every time. Extend that to a best of 7 games in the series, and there simply isn’t enough luck in the world for the bottom team to come out on top.
Other sports are not like this as much. Football, baseball, hockey, and soccer are all lower scoring with fewer key plays making the difference between winning and losing.
In basketball, I think this also has a compounding effect, because once it is easier to see which teams are good it is easier for those teams to recruit the best players and vice versa. In baseball or hockey, we don’t know which teams are best year to year so its harder for the best players to congregate.
It’s not a case made here, but it’s been made practically everywhere else, so why not bring it up in here? It’s the only thing passing for an NBA thread these days.
I’m not sure where you get off arguing that there were more contending teams in yesteryear than there are today. Let’s take a look at the ultra-competitive, wide-open, parity-filled NBA of the 1980’s. In that decade, a grand total of 6 teams made it to the Finals. In the last 10 years, a grand total of 8 teams made it to the finals. In the 2000’s I believe there were something like 13 different teams that made it to the Finals.
Surely, if more teams were contenders back in the day, then more teams would have made it to the Finals. Surely, if the Finals were less predictable then than now, we would have seen a larger variety of teams in the Finals in the 1980’s but we didn’t. We saw a grand total of FOUR champions crowned for the whole decade. FOUR!
How can you seriously argue that the NBA was less predictable and more teams were in contention? This decade isn’t even over yet and we’ve already seen six different champions AND a wider variety of teams in the Finals. The 1980’s was probably the MOST predictable NBA decade with the LEAST amount of contenders.
Fair enough. I just wasn’t quite sure who you were debating with. I also happen to agree. I doubt many all-star teams could beat the Warriors in their present state. I also believe this makes for pretty crappy sports viewing, which is the basic case I’ve been making this whole time.
I’m comparing the 80’s and 90’s to the NBA of now, as per the thread title. Not the NBA of the last 20 years. Has there ever been a time in league history with only two legit contenders? Early 2000’s maybe? That’s the landscape we’re sitting in right now and, barring major injuries, I doubt much will change in the next two years. The Spurs are a fantastic franchise, but I can’t see them contending unless we concentrate even MORE talent on even FEWER teams.
Superstars joining forces got us here, and superstars joining forces is the new recipe for NBA success. If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.
As far as contenders, let’s have a look. Early 80’s had Boston, Philly and Milwaukee as legit contenders in the East, and L/A and Houston out west (Houston flip-flopped conferences around this time IIRC).
Late-80’s you had Detroit and Chicago coming up to challenge the Celtics in the East, with Portland and Utah coming up join the Lakers out West.
There were a ton of good teams in the 90’s, and we got some really spectacular playoff battles because of it. New York, Cleveland, Orlando, Indiana all made Jordan’s path the the finals difficult, again making for some really great series.
Phoenix, San Antonio, Seattle, Utah and Houston were all in the mix for most of the decade too. Again, great viewing.
The trend of talent concentration is only getting worse. It really only takes a few of the top guys moving around to completely change the competitive landscape. Durant to the Warriors directly crippled one contender (OKC) and out-classed another (formerly) perennial contender in the Spurs and, as it would seem, the Cavaliers.
Imagine if Jordan joins the Pistons after losing to them for three straight years, and Malone/Stockton team up with Hakeem out West, or something along those lines.
I’m not sure if there is a solution to this, and some may not even see it as a problem. I just know I was glued to the TV back in the 80’s and 90’s. I’m sure nostalgia plays a part, but none of the basketball I see being played today has the same feel as a Magic/Bird rivalry going back to college years or a Michael Jordan facing tough challenges and coming up huge when it matters the most.
Its like these guys stopped hating each other. Bring back the hate!
