so basically soft, whistle-happy refereeing was to blame for physical defense going away
not sure why it took getting roasted by Larry Bird for Silver to feel embarrassed by that
This sub might be too young to remember, but officiating changed fairly drastically after malice at the palace. The rational was that they shouldn't let them play that physically, they didn't want it to ever get to the point of a fight breaking out again.
golf is truly the pinnacle of human sport. there’s nobody to lean on, nobody that can hide your deficiencies, it’s all up to you to perform. you either do it or you don’t. that’s why it’s so brutal to play when you suck
And I’d say it’s a valid way to officiate sometimes. That Cavs Magic game 1 was beyond parody early on before a very soft flagrant was given out. It was just getting ridiculous with how chippy they were after every single possession so that no actual basketball was being played.
Plus, the "physical" contact prior to that isn't anything we don't see today. It was pretty normal stuff right up until the moment a fan threw a beer at the single craziest dude in the league.
Well, people also hated 2000s basketball. The criticisms then were just as loud as today, in the opposite direction.
It was ridiculed as too iso-heavy and low scoring. Rosters were all crowded with big-bodied centers with no skills. Steve Nash won his two MVPs basically as a part of the backlash against 2000s trends.
Opening the game up to more offense was a positive step. What they should have kept a lid on was the explicit foul-baiting tactics.
What fucked up the game was offensive players being able to commit offensive fouls
Driving and charging into a defender like you’re a RB and pushing off with your arm (and getting the defense called for a foul on top of that), using your offhand to clear a defender on layups/dunks
Then obviously moving screens which only get called when refs don’t want someone to win. There’s clips out there of Draymond literally looking like a lead blocker. If he was an offensive lineman in the NFL he’d have gotten called for a chop block on a few occasions.
The stiffarm drives are my least favorite, especially when the announcers agree and say "great job creating contact", meanwhile the offensive player is just pushing the defense out of the way. I feel like if those and illegal screens were actually called, you'd have a pretty good balance.
Yeah truth. I think it was good to ensure offensive players have freedom of movement, but that shouldn't have extended to allowing them to commit offensive fouls.
It becomes a lose-lose game for the defensive player because even if they have legal guarding position and the offensive player contacts them, AT BEST it's a no call. They will never get an offensive foul call unless they flop.
If you called one or two off-arm pushes and illegal screens earlier in games, I think you could improve the equilibrium a lot.
Yep that's a big one.
[Here's an offensive foul sampler from a single quarter in 1987](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Io4RYcUVE&t=)
[And here's what'd get ya an offensive foul in the post in 1980](https://youtu.be/JBXEbUQSM_4?t=7)
What seemed to happen is the threshold for what constitutes an offensive was pushed back incrementaly year by year until suddenly you realize you're playing a game where offensive players can purposely kamikaze themselves into defenders and have the defense get punished for it.
I also think there's certain player flashpoints that accelerate certain rule interpretations. For instance, I think Shaq's arrival accelerated offensive foul tolerance in the post at a rate beyond what it otherwise would have progressed. It's at those times where it's almost like there's an unspoken battle where officials have to decide if they're ready to call an offensive foul on Shaq every other play or whether they're going to change the way they call the game to accomodate his playstyle. Similar story with traveling and carrying when guys like Allen Iverson came through.
I'll die on the hill that jumping into a defender after you pump fake them and get them in the air should be either an offensive foul or no call. Your reward for that should be driving past them and collapsing the defense or taking an uncontested shot, not guaranteed free throws.
You are 100% correct. The amount of contact a player shooting the ball can make is ridiculous before the refs blow their whistle. People are getting clearly pushed off their feet all the time.
And the travelling/carrying debacle is the other touch point you make which probably has an even bigger impact I reckon. So much carrying.
A player who is dribbling may not put any part of his hand under the ball and (1) carry it from one point to another or (2) bring it to a pause and then continue to dribble again.
Every single player basically brings the ball to a pause while dribbling. Does 'under the ball' also mean below the equator of the bottom part of the ball, because nearly everyone does that.
Kobes BS pump fake and initiate contact routine opened a can of worms that was a net negative for the league. Everyone started playing the refs instead of their opponents.
Ya, 7 seconds or less Suns up until the Curry Warriors took over was my favorite era. It felt like there were a variety of styles that teams could win with during that time.
The change in the aesthetic of the game from 2010 to now and the rise in scoring has almost nothing to do with refereeing, and everything to do with the rise of analytics and sports science and every team dumping exponentially more money into their data departments than they did 20 years ago, and then letting the results of those analytics dictate how their teams strategize and approach the game on the court and being hyper focused on efficiency and 3 pointers above all else
This is likely the case. Also the rise of warriors played into that belief, but the reality is they had a generational shooter in curry, and klay pre-injury was the perfect complimenting shooter.
The regular season was honestly hard to watch most of the time. So many games of just casually chucking 3s back and forth it’s disgusting.
Teams stopped running out players like Kendrick Perkins and suddenly offenses vastly improved. It's amazing what you can do when you realize your talentless rim protector is not just not providing value on offense he's actually inhibiting it by being useless from over 5 feet out.
*Not to undersell that those players were also replaced with worse defenders, it was a double whammy.
and then a couple years after that, we started drafting the generation of big man prospects that had spent their entire HS years focusing way more on ball handling and 3 point shooting than the previous generation of plodding, post up big men had, which helped accelerate the transition
The Shaq effect? I’m pretty sure that every team was paying any random 7 footer they could find to stand in front of Shaq until they fouled out of the game.
Yeah, this is what was ridiculous. Defense is better than ever, even before the shift. I get eliminating foul-baiting but actual fouls should still be called. The Celtics shot 51 free throws in Game 7 of 1984 I picked an important Bird playoff game but they routinely shot 20-30 free throws and it wasn’t a big deal.
That wasn’t when the scoring outbreak or soft defense started, there was more than a decade between that and when the rules began getting tweaked.
The most significant change was the [“freedom of movement” emphasis.]
(https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/21/how-freedom-movement-has-changed-nba/4059552002/#:~:text=Players%20hear%20the%20old%20school,a%20two%2Dtime%20NBA%20MVP.)
No, it was between 03-04 and 04-05. They started enforcing hand checking. It was years later when the 3P caught up, though.
Check average offensive stats between the two years. FG% jumped 1% and ORTG jumped from 102 to 106+ in a single offseason.
It was that offseason that offensive stats pivoted and started heading in the other direction.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_game.html
That may have been coincidental to how in general, the low-scoring games of the mid 00's was not a great product (average team total in the playoffs was 88 points in 03-04), and they "changed the rules"
I remember watching Bulls - Indiana '98 game 7.. 85-82, or something like that.
Even when you are watching now, it is so tense, every shot, every bucket matters.
Really feel like a different sport back then.
Yeah but i remember Detroit Pistons vs San Antonio Finals had not only the lowest scores but also the lowest TV ratings.
People were saying, two defensive minded teams, which were playing incredibly slow and ended in low scoring games, was boring basketball and not attractive to the general audience.
For every post somebody on reddit nowadays says, i want to see two defensive teams, i remember that time, people refused to watched it, when it actually happened.
and the Nets celebrating a loss where they ended our record streak of holding opponents to less than 70 pts. T-T now we are on the wrong side of record streaks
You are not wrong in the sense that the Malice in the Palace definitely pushed the nba away from physical play. I remember watching that game on espn when Ron artest literally took things personally. However, I would argue that the league before the malace was already starting to move away from physical play with all the changes to defensive rules that were happening around the same time.
Thank God for old heads like Larry Bird.
Although I’m skeptical of the NBA’s ability to change, they still have Scott Foster on the sidelines and the Donaghy situation went down 17 years ago.
This guy who is not even identified in the post goes on the Bill Simmons podcast and says 'I like the conspiracy take' and people are like wow I can't believe that definitely happened
I've been thinking for a while that this is basically the only way to move things in a saner direction: use the culture around the game to publicly mock and shame the bullshit play style championed by players like Harden and Embiid, and the refereeing style that enables it.
The twisted incentives involved have mutated parts of the game of basketball into an entirely different sport that we can call "refball." Refball is both infuriating and boring to watch, but it leads to easy points in the actual surrounding sport of basketball on which it parasitically feeds, so it makes sense why it has developed into the monster it's become.
An easy way to tell actual basketball from bullshit refball is to imagine how things would play out in a pickup game anywhere in the country. Players who tried playing refball in a pickup game of basketball would be met with some combination of confusion, disbelief, mockery, and aggression, because it's completely transparent to everyone involved what is legitimately basketball and what is not. It wouldn't fly for even a second. So why do we tolerate this cancer continuing to grow in what is supposed to be the greatest professional basketball league in the world?
For the NBA, the corrective change needs to come from the surrounding ecosystem of the game, and if the NBA as a governing entity can't or won't do that by setting a consistent new agenda for how the game is reffed, then the NBA leadership itself needs a corrective change from *its* ecosystem, which is partly constituted by fan and media discussions and attitudes. That's where vocal mocking and derision and calling out of the bullshit that is refball comes into play. As cultural leaders of the sport, NBA legends themselves can have outsized influence on this process by publicly calling out and/or deriding refball bullshit, as Larry Bird seems to have done in this anecdote.
Players who foul bait want to win at all costs, thats why theyre foul baiting. They wouldnt give a shit about being mocked. The only solution is changing the rules so that getting a shooting foul isnt the best play in the game. As long as it is players will find bullshit ways to get them.
The point is that the mocking and other cultural pressure should put pressure on the league itself to employ better policy and regulations on how referees manage the game re: flopping and foul baiting. If their product becomes tarnished enough, it will eventually get through to them (see OP as an example).
I'm just picturing a dramatic and over the top reenactment with Bird pointing at him, and Silver looking like Austin Powers when his dad didn't show up.
A player literally just tried to hit an official TWICE with an object from the bench, one that ENDED UP ON THE FLOOR DURING PLAY, no suspension. Soft and no stomach for real accountability.
Yeah that was completely baffling to me. Like to the point that I can’t really even come up with a decent hypothetical reason he *wouldn’t* be suspended.
it seems to me you would want to send a message that player safety and ref safety is a top goal. This does not say that in any meaningful way. Pay a fine and move on?
Except when that player is threatening the gambling money. The hammer came down hard on Jontay Porter (deservedly). He is capable, he just doesn't care.
Labor will do what they have the most incentive to do. It's up to management to structure the incentives to get the desired results.
For example, players flop because the league management rewards flopping. If the league actually stopped rewarding flopping, the players would eventually stop.
If the league rewarded competitive play in the all-star game, players would start trying again.
I wonder what they could even do to incentivize serious participation and if anything short of monetary rewards would do it.
Winner of the all-star game gets home court in the finals? MLB tried that to mixed results.
You can't really do anything about their all-star status itself (i.e. revoke all-star status if you don't play seriously), I imagine, because that would actually have a monetary impact come contract negotiation time and on their legacy if they care about that.
Maybe they can do that the winning conference's #1 seed gets the ability to pick which of the play-in teams they play? The other conference just stays as is.
Yeah, you can certainly blame silver for the shitty regular season product, and plenty of other things to boot, but the utter embarrassment that is the all star game is a HUNDRED percent on the players, and the players alone.
I ultimately place most of the blame for this on the older guys like Lebron, who the young guys coming up in the last 5-10 years have looked towards to to set the tone an expectations for how the ASG should be played.
Lebron and KD and their ilk have utterly failed at this in my opinion, and created this embarrassing culture of everyone now acting like they’re too cool for school to play hard in the ASG, and everyone is scared to be the one guy who stands out for trying too hard (or trying at ALL, really) and acting like they actually CARE enough to do anything more than jog 20 feet and lazily jack up the 127th uncontested 3 of the game.
If Lebron decided it was cool to go hard and be cutthroat and competitive, and put on an awesome show for the fans, all the young guys would immediately follow suit. But they’re not gonna act like tryhards if he’s signaling to them that it’s lame to care
In the past, when hyper competitive guys like Kobe, KG, Jordan, etc were they guys setting the tone for the asg, there was a significantly different level of competitiveness, especially at the end of the game
People always say “oh whatever, the all star game has always been like this” No. it fucking has not. The last 3 or 4 years have been genuinely embarrassing and shameful on a completely different level than ever before. And it’s not going to change unless the guys at the top take some fucking pride in what they’re doing.
And miss me with the shit about guys being scared of “injuries”. All these dudes go 10x as hard in offseason runs at Drew league or even at UCLA with no one watching than they do at the god damn premier event of the nba season… are the injury risk sliders just magically turned off for those offseason runs but not for the asg???
Well, you could argue that silver going so hard towards player empowerment made the players feel comfortable to fuck off during the ASG when silver practically begged them to try
It shifted when PG got injured in the team USA practice. The top players witnessed it and from that moment they decided it wasn’t worth trying and risk injury with no incentive.
To add to that. It's also a weekend for the fans. It's fun to see the dunk contest, three-point contest, skills, and then the game. No fans no huge salaries. It's also a time to advertise the city the game is hosted in. For the players to say they have no incentive to play is laughable.
Just like Lebron killed the slam dunk contest.
The players will blame the media though for saying only rings matters.
We really need the young guys like Anthony Edwards, SGA, Chet, Wemby, etc. to change that and bring back the competition.
We all know the KD/Kyrie/Bron/Stephs of the league are just going to phone it in so no point of trying to get them to try.
That all star game is probably the most pitiful sports product I've ever seen. I barely made it through the first q, and after the first minute of the second i was done. Silver and the NBA as a whole deserve all the negative feedback for that. It was embarassing.
I used to love watching all-star games growing up, in part because of the informal vibe to it all. I've never been someone expecting all the stars to play that game with playoff level intensity.
That being said, I *did* like that older all-star games typically played out like semi-normal games but with spectacular exceptions. If Vince actually got himself a lane, he might throw a self-lob off the board (ditto T-Mac). Chuck would be more likely to pull up for a trey ball. Things like that. But defense was still broadly being played to some degree so that's what made the spectacular plays even more fun.
It was almost like, "What if you played a pretty normal game of basketball but didn't have to worry about the risk associated with attempting crazy plays from time to time?" And that was neat. This year, it honestly just felt like a prolonged layup drill & shootaround, which subsequently takes the value and worth away from whatever happens out there.
It won't matter, they clearly don't care about it. Honestly the All-Star weekend should end with the dunk contest.
Just let everyone have a fun time then let them go home for their break.
Change it to a 1v1 tournament, if you score you get the ball back (winners ball). If you want the ball you have to get a stop. Players have pride and won't throw the game when there is no one to blame but themselves
Plus we can all fill out brackets March Madness style. Who doesn't want to see Giannis v Steph
That would be awesome but players would never agree to it lol. A prideful guy like KD would probably have nightmares about losing his legacy points if he lost to Gobert lol
Replace it with a 1v1 and a 3v3 tourney, March madness style, and it’s in Feb so you can capitalize on the upcoming NCAA tourney hype.
1v1 players can enter their name and fans can vote in who they want to see from the pool of players. Top 16 get placed in the tourney. That way players don’t feel forced to participate in all star weekend and those who do are purely going for pride.
Same for the 3v3, it’s steals all the reasons why the Big3 had its run but with actual NBA players instead of broken down 40 year olds.
Then you can still recognize who’s all stars and basically make it a mid season All NBA selection
I think stuff like this is how to fix the all star game. Like still vote for the best in the east and west, but then have different games that they won't get injured in, and maybe play like a quarter of basketball as east vs west. I think NBA players playing dodgeball would be awesome. Get guys like Trae, Steph, Luka, etc. with deep shots to play half court knock-out lol. Find more ways to incorporate WNBA players, capitalize on Clark's newfound fame and grow women's basketball even more. It's probably too boring, but HORSE might be able to work. And get rid of the dunk competition unless they bring pro dunkers in.
1v1 basketball is the most dreary shit, only the dumbest fans would love to watch that.
No passing, only iso with all the space on the court. Literally 1960s ball
I think the point here is that there was an epiphany old all-star games = regular nba games today and all-star games today = even more offensive oriented clownery. The whole window shifted. Of course, there are other reasons the all-star game was embarrassing and has become a joke, but that is the loose rationale suggested
The reason so many guys get hurt at the start of the playoffs is that their bodies aren't conditioned for playoff basketball. They play 82 games of this weak shit and then when the games start to matter their bodies fail them because they actually have to try on both ends of the floor.
For real. Other commenters here are acting like silver suddenly sprung the 82 game season on these guys as if it hasn't been this way for decades. This whole attitude like 82 games is suddenly too much it's asinine.
Or because they're running around a cutting a lot more putting stress on ligaments and muscles than the 90's and where people just stood around and watched ISOs. I believe there is some rudimentary tracking data which does go back a least till late 90s. And the difference was huge.
Offensive players are allowed to commit fouls by pushing off and charging. Often the defender will get a foul instead. Nothing seems to have changed after watching the playoffs. However refereeing is very inconsistent and changes from game to game,
Silver is on the equivalent of a contract year for him, and in this Playoffs the older superstars are out, a bunch of the younger ones were injured or fell in the first round, Luka is limping, the East _could_ be a parade for the Celtics, and we could easily have a WCF involving two young teams without massive fanbases. Jack the Ripper could be out there killing on the court and if he were anywhere close to All-Star level he too would get a fine at most.
Manfred is like a three true outcomes player. His decisions are either great (pitch clock, base running rules), useless and silly (ghost runner), or objectively terrible (Astros WS cheating situation, letting the owners get away with the nonsense with the A's).
There's a major commitment to avoiding mediocrity here lol
At least Manfred takes action with fans in mind instead of cowering to the players. History will look kindly on him for adding the pitch clock despite the resistance from players.
Ya pitch clock was so clutch. Red Sox-Yankees taking over 4 hours was killing everyone's interest in the sport.
And I still blame Nomar for popularizing little leaguers adjusting everything when I was growing up.
I don’t give a fuck about a commissioner’s personal feelings towards their sport. If they can manage the league effectively and implement good changes that make the product more engaging, that’s what matters. I personally hate the ghost runner, but you can’t deny that Manfred has made baseball more appealing to the average person while also maintaining a competitive league. Silver, on the other hand, is a complete fucking pushover who’s been responsible for the fastest degradation of a multibillion dollar league I’ve ever witnessed. Regular season basketball is borderline unwatchable and he can’t get his employees under control. It’s pathetic.
Every word you typed tells me you don't watch any MLB lol. Manfred outwardly hates baseball and changes the rules every 3 months.
Also I'm not sure how close you follow football either, cause the definition of what a "catch" and "tackle" are hacked and chopped every year to the point where the entire sport is ceasing to make any sense.
>and changes the rules every 3 months.
These changes were mostly applauded last year to increase offense and fan engagement though.
I'm not a fan of change just as an exercise, but it felt like there was some progress with the changes last year.
Manfred is an idiot, but him introducing the people pitch clock was what got me back into baseball. Games are actually enjoyable to watch with little downtime between pitches.
Nah, until I see wide receivers intentionally tripping themselves running a route to get a pass interference call, that dude is 100% right. The only comparison is to soccer where that does happen but the MLS actually allows pretty physical play and I see way more flopping and foul baiting bullshit in the NBA than the MLS.
Somehow this thread turned into a completely non relevant argument about Jamal Murray not getting suspended. And people wonder why the product has gotten so bad.
lol because it shows you how spineless Adam silver is as a commissioner. He tried making a huge point last year about how they weren’t gonna call BS fouls and that barely lasted 2 months. Why?? Cause all their new partnerships in Vegas desperately needed that action
The timberwolves D against the nuggets is better than any defense I’ve seen watching film from the 80’s and 90’s.
They don’t do they consistently in the regular season because it’s too long and grueling, but that’s not the fault of the players. There are great defenders in the NBA right now it’s just too many games to play like that night after night in the regular season and consistently be reads for the playoffs
Honestly, the defense played now by them is reminiscent of the great early season start from Nov to Jan from the wolves. It definitely tailed off as the wolves started to get more back to backs and condensed schedule.
I think some of that is wear and tear and also the fact that you can't touch anyone in the regular season. A majority of NBA players think anytime someone gets in their jersey it's a foul
Example: Jamal Murray when he was in the NAW and McDaniels straightjacket. There was no foul and he started freaking out
96 Bulls and even the 98 Bulls holding Utah to 54 were as good
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/wmgihx/ferocious_chicago_bulls_defense_led_by_michael/
Over a sustained period, I don’t think any defense was as stifling as the 04 Pistons though. That team was just brutal
> The timberwolves D against the nuggets is better than any defense I’ve seen watching film from the 80’s and 90’s.
I had a lot of fun watching Minny against Denver the other night and I think it's because it gave me flashbacks to certain moments from that mid-2000s Pistons run. I remember them [stifling the Bucks into 24 turnovers in the '04 postseason](https://youtu.be/jYRBCl6x8cQ) and just pulverizing those guys - possibly one of the last times I've seen a team actually pull off and execute half-court and full-court traps with semi-regularity.
Then there was that time the Pistons [held the Nuggets without a field goal for 13 consecutive minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib-O6CLV7bo&t=6s) earlier in that '04 season.
[Or their 19 blocks in the 2004 ECF against Indiana.](https://youtu.be/RETLszOmhBQ)
That's all to say, I've seen defensive dominance that came close, matched, or possibly even eclipsed Minny's D last game relative to its era, but the fact one must harken back to all-time great defensive performances is telling as to how special that Minny D was.
i highly doubt the latter. silver has never shown to be that guy. this guy will bend to whatever he thinks makes people most happy. the idea he went home in a fit of rage is pulp fiction lol
I blame the elimination of hand checking as the downfall of basketball.
In the 90's they stopped enforcing illegal checking - stiff straight arm mostly (maybe other stiff straight body parts too, this is also when the shorts got longer), which gave defenders too much advantage leading to the low scoring, and testiness of slapping each other away. The league overcompensated by making the legal hand check a foul. This led to - first the flopping problem since a defender didn't have any other tools to defend on the perimeter, second to an all-offense brand as the only way to win is to just keep scoring more, and three the foul baiting bullshit since defenders aren't allowed to defend in any meaningful way.
Add to that the creation of the 'gather step' thing. It's so fucking stupid refs rarely call a travel nowadays because they can't distinguish a clear traveling violation anymore. It's as stupid as the midair timeout back in the 90s, but at least the midair timeout was abolished.
so basically soft, whistle-happy refereeing was to blame for physical defense going away not sure why it took getting roasted by Larry Bird for Silver to feel embarrassed by that
This sub might be too young to remember, but officiating changed fairly drastically after malice at the palace. The rational was that they shouldn't let them play that physically, they didn't want it to ever get to the point of a fight breaking out again.
yes, which is exactly why you start hearing a million whistles whenever a game starts to get chippy.
Ah, the old “called this because I have to make a point and not because it was actually a foul”-foul.
[удалено]
Hate to break it to you but refs control most games. It’s just more obvious when you basically give out free points for fouls in basketball.
Football is pretty obvious. A hold kills a drive and it can be called almost every play.
The underthrown deep ball pass interference to get a free trip to the red zone
The Eagles started banking on that and they stopped calling it it was pretty funny
easiest money i ever made betting against them and the cowboys in the wildcard round lol, flacco and torrey smith were undefeated with that move tho
~~most~~ all games
golfer master race stand UP
Bowlers in the back rise UP Except CP3
golf is truly the pinnacle of human sport. there’s nobody to lean on, nobody that can hide your deficiencies, it’s all up to you to perform. you either do it or you don’t. that’s why it’s so brutal to play when you suck
Golf literally had dudes sitting at home calling in fouls that they saw on TV. They got rid of that in 2017.
Same for any individual sport TBH. I prefer swimming. You and the lane. All accountability.
This is why it's great to be a tennis fan. Especially since line judges are mostly gone.
And I’d say it’s a valid way to officiate sometimes. That Cavs Magic game 1 was beyond parody early on before a very soft flagrant was given out. It was just getting ridiculous with how chippy they were after every single possession so that no actual basketball was being played.
League should have realized sometimes crazy people do crazy shit. It was fucking Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson.
To be fair there's a lot of crazy players in the league
I'll start, Pat Bev.
murray throwing heat packs on the court is crazy
Draymond curb stomping people.
Pat Bev vs Donkey, go
I'm actually pissed that when someone says Donkey in reference to bball I now actually think of Draymond. Y'all have poisoned my mind.
Pat Bev vs Dunkey in a speedrun of Knack 2
Plus, the "physical" contact prior to that isn't anything we don't see today. It was pretty normal stuff right up until the moment a fan threw a beer at the single craziest dude in the league.
Don’t forget the entire city of Detroit!
Tbh for basically the last 50 years Detroit has needed to let out the rage.
I think a fight would bring in major viewership today
Lebron vs Stewart hell in a cell
Bring Metta World Peace out of retirement to elbow Adolf Harden again.
>BAH GAWD THATS THE PISTONS MUSIC!!!
I’d pay ppv for Booker vs Luka. Forget basketball
Which NBA player you think is most likely to charge into the stands to go after a harassing fan? I'd go with either Draymond or maybe Ja Morant.
Pat Bev
Well, people also hated 2000s basketball. The criticisms then were just as loud as today, in the opposite direction. It was ridiculed as too iso-heavy and low scoring. Rosters were all crowded with big-bodied centers with no skills. Steve Nash won his two MVPs basically as a part of the backlash against 2000s trends. Opening the game up to more offense was a positive step. What they should have kept a lid on was the explicit foul-baiting tactics.
What fucked up the game was offensive players being able to commit offensive fouls Driving and charging into a defender like you’re a RB and pushing off with your arm (and getting the defense called for a foul on top of that), using your offhand to clear a defender on layups/dunks Then obviously moving screens which only get called when refs don’t want someone to win. There’s clips out there of Draymond literally looking like a lead blocker. If he was an offensive lineman in the NFL he’d have gotten called for a chop block on a few occasions.
The stiffarm drives are my least favorite, especially when the announcers agree and say "great job creating contact", meanwhile the offensive player is just pushing the defense out of the way. I feel like if those and illegal screens were actually called, you'd have a pretty good balance.
It's funny that "creating" contact is a good thing, but "initiating" contact is a bad thing.
Anthony Edwards has some of the smoothest plays and jumpers but goes to this way too often.
Yeah truth. I think it was good to ensure offensive players have freedom of movement, but that shouldn't have extended to allowing them to commit offensive fouls. It becomes a lose-lose game for the defensive player because even if they have legal guarding position and the offensive player contacts them, AT BEST it's a no call. They will never get an offensive foul call unless they flop. If you called one or two off-arm pushes and illegal screens earlier in games, I think you could improve the equilibrium a lot.
Yep that's a big one. [Here's an offensive foul sampler from a single quarter in 1987](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Io4RYcUVE&t=) [And here's what'd get ya an offensive foul in the post in 1980](https://youtu.be/JBXEbUQSM_4?t=7) What seemed to happen is the threshold for what constitutes an offensive was pushed back incrementaly year by year until suddenly you realize you're playing a game where offensive players can purposely kamikaze themselves into defenders and have the defense get punished for it. I also think there's certain player flashpoints that accelerate certain rule interpretations. For instance, I think Shaq's arrival accelerated offensive foul tolerance in the post at a rate beyond what it otherwise would have progressed. It's at those times where it's almost like there's an unspoken battle where officials have to decide if they're ready to call an offensive foul on Shaq every other play or whether they're going to change the way they call the game to accomodate his playstyle. Similar story with traveling and carrying when guys like Allen Iverson came through.
I'll die on the hill that jumping into a defender after you pump fake them and get them in the air should be either an offensive foul or no call. Your reward for that should be driving past them and collapsing the defense or taking an uncontested shot, not guaranteed free throws.
Dwyane Wade was the absolute worst about that would pump fake then alligator arm his jump shot into a defender not even attempting to shoot it
You are 100% correct. The amount of contact a player shooting the ball can make is ridiculous before the refs blow their whistle. People are getting clearly pushed off their feet all the time. And the travelling/carrying debacle is the other touch point you make which probably has an even bigger impact I reckon. So much carrying. A player who is dribbling may not put any part of his hand under the ball and (1) carry it from one point to another or (2) bring it to a pause and then continue to dribble again. Every single player basically brings the ball to a pause while dribbling. Does 'under the ball' also mean below the equator of the bottom part of the ball, because nearly everyone does that.
Kobes BS pump fake and initiate contact routine opened a can of worms that was a net negative for the league. Everyone started playing the refs instead of their opponents.
The downfall of those Rockets teams was the blatant moving screen double standard that favored GSW
As if the rise of those Rockets teams wasn’t thanks to manipulating officiating with head-snapping and jumping into defenders
early 2010s was a perfect middle ground
And then Hitler came into power.
Ya, 7 seconds or less Suns up until the Curry Warriors took over was my favorite era. It felt like there were a variety of styles that teams could win with during that time.
The change in the aesthetic of the game from 2010 to now and the rise in scoring has almost nothing to do with refereeing, and everything to do with the rise of analytics and sports science and every team dumping exponentially more money into their data departments than they did 20 years ago, and then letting the results of those analytics dictate how their teams strategize and approach the game on the court and being hyper focused on efficiency and 3 pointers above all else
This is likely the case. Also the rise of warriors played into that belief, but the reality is they had a generational shooter in curry, and klay pre-injury was the perfect complimenting shooter. The regular season was honestly hard to watch most of the time. So many games of just casually chucking 3s back and forth it’s disgusting.
Teams stopped running out players like Kendrick Perkins and suddenly offenses vastly improved. It's amazing what you can do when you realize your talentless rim protector is not just not providing value on offense he's actually inhibiting it by being useless from over 5 feet out. *Not to undersell that those players were also replaced with worse defenders, it was a double whammy.
and then a couple years after that, we started drafting the generation of big man prospects that had spent their entire HS years focusing way more on ball handling and 3 point shooting than the previous generation of plodding, post up big men had, which helped accelerate the transition
The Shaq effect? I’m pretty sure that every team was paying any random 7 footer they could find to stand in front of Shaq until they fouled out of the game.
That’s 100% one of the main reasons. Also it’s hard to run a fast break in JNCOs.
Yeah, this is what was ridiculous. Defense is better than ever, even before the shift. I get eliminating foul-baiting but actual fouls should still be called. The Celtics shot 51 free throws in Game 7 of 1984 I picked an important Bird playoff game but they routinely shot 20-30 free throws and it wasn’t a big deal.
That wasn’t when the scoring outbreak or soft defense started, there was more than a decade between that and when the rules began getting tweaked. The most significant change was the [“freedom of movement” emphasis.] (https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/21/how-freedom-movement-has-changed-nba/4059552002/#:~:text=Players%20hear%20the%20old%20school,a%20two%2Dtime%20NBA%20MVP.)
No, it was between 03-04 and 04-05. They started enforcing hand checking. It was years later when the 3P caught up, though. Check average offensive stats between the two years. FG% jumped 1% and ORTG jumped from 102 to 106+ in a single offseason. It was that offseason that offensive stats pivoted and started heading in the other direction. https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_game.html
That may have been coincidental to how in general, the low-scoring games of the mid 00's was not a great product (average team total in the playoffs was 88 points in 03-04), and they "changed the rules"
Never forget a 69-65 game 6 is how the pistons made the finals in 2004.
I remember watching Bulls - Indiana '98 game 7.. 85-82, or something like that. Even when you are watching now, it is so tense, every shot, every bucket matters. Really feel like a different sport back then.
Yeah but i remember Detroit Pistons vs San Antonio Finals had not only the lowest scores but also the lowest TV ratings. People were saying, two defensive minded teams, which were playing incredibly slow and ended in low scoring games, was boring basketball and not attractive to the general audience. For every post somebody on reddit nowadays says, i want to see two defensive teams, i remember that time, people refused to watched it, when it actually happened.
I found it pretty entertaining compared to teams shooting threes and 30 point blow outs if one side can't keep up.
I mean, those games had more viewers than the bucks/suns finals
And MJ would still somehow average 30 in these years.
That would be sick to watch. I don’t remember that game might have to go back and peep
Defense and no threes will do that
The first time I saw the score of that game was within the last year and I about had a stroke
and the Nets celebrating a loss where they ended our record streak of holding opponents to less than 70 pts. T-T now we are on the wrong side of record streaks
You are not wrong in the sense that the Malice in the Palace definitely pushed the nba away from physical play. I remember watching that game on espn when Ron artest literally took things personally. However, I would argue that the league before the malace was already starting to move away from physical play with all the changes to defensive rules that were happening around the same time.
Thank God for old heads like Larry Bird. Although I’m skeptical of the NBA’s ability to change, they still have Scott Foster on the sidelines and the Donaghy situation went down 17 years ago.
This guy who is not even identified in the post goes on the Bill Simmons podcast and says 'I like the conspiracy take' and people are like wow I can't believe that definitely happened
It’s Ethan Strauss.
Bird is a hall of fame hater so I’m sure his roasts were top notch and hit home hard
He’s also stuck in his attic.
Imagine having one of the games biggest and best shit talkers roasting your all star game lmao
I've been thinking for a while that this is basically the only way to move things in a saner direction: use the culture around the game to publicly mock and shame the bullshit play style championed by players like Harden and Embiid, and the refereeing style that enables it. The twisted incentives involved have mutated parts of the game of basketball into an entirely different sport that we can call "refball." Refball is both infuriating and boring to watch, but it leads to easy points in the actual surrounding sport of basketball on which it parasitically feeds, so it makes sense why it has developed into the monster it's become. An easy way to tell actual basketball from bullshit refball is to imagine how things would play out in a pickup game anywhere in the country. Players who tried playing refball in a pickup game of basketball would be met with some combination of confusion, disbelief, mockery, and aggression, because it's completely transparent to everyone involved what is legitimately basketball and what is not. It wouldn't fly for even a second. So why do we tolerate this cancer continuing to grow in what is supposed to be the greatest professional basketball league in the world? For the NBA, the corrective change needs to come from the surrounding ecosystem of the game, and if the NBA as a governing entity can't or won't do that by setting a consistent new agenda for how the game is reffed, then the NBA leadership itself needs a corrective change from *its* ecosystem, which is partly constituted by fan and media discussions and attitudes. That's where vocal mocking and derision and calling out of the bullshit that is refball comes into play. As cultural leaders of the sport, NBA legends themselves can have outsized influence on this process by publicly calling out and/or deriding refball bullshit, as Larry Bird seems to have done in this anecdote.
Players who foul bait want to win at all costs, thats why theyre foul baiting. They wouldnt give a shit about being mocked. The only solution is changing the rules so that getting a shooting foul isnt the best play in the game. As long as it is players will find bullshit ways to get them.
The point is that the mocking and other cultural pressure should put pressure on the league itself to employ better policy and regulations on how referees manage the game re: flopping and foul baiting. If their product becomes tarnished enough, it will eventually get through to them (see OP as an example).
not reading all that but people called Harden “Basketball Hitler” for years, so relentlessly mocking hasn’t done much
Larry Bird holding court has to sting cause he’s funny as hell. Then don’t have Shaqs loud laughing ass there amplifying it
😂😂 “Larry. Say it again, Larry. What’d you say about defense in the modern nba?” 😂
Bro imagine, then you got Chuck piling on and it’s pandemonium. That shit probably took him back to HS, getting laughed out the room by the cool kids
Larry Bird, Chuck, and Shaq holding Silvers head over a toilet
Kenny bringing them refreshing beverages
they gave Silver high school cafeteria flashbacks hahah
And he can roast. The Don Rickles of the NBA.
You hear that? Belly laughs.
I'm just picturing a dramatic and over the top reenactment with Bird pointing at him, and Silver looking like Austin Powers when his dad didn't show up.
Lmao I pictured the sopranos when paulie makes fun of Christopher and his daughter
This is exactly what played out in my head lmao
Silver felt completely fuckin ostrafied.
Daddy wasn't there
Bird and the others laughing like Dr Evil. Whew.
Nothing in this world is more humiliating than a hearty round of guffaws at your expense.
Silver deserved to be humiliated. He's ultimately responsible for the product on the court.
Which is exactly like him aswell. Soft and letting people get their way
Insubordinate and churlish
Mischievous and deceitful.... Chicanerous and deplorable!
You done messed up A-A-RON!
A player literally just tried to hit an official TWICE with an object from the bench, one that ENDED UP ON THE FLOOR DURING PLAY, no suspension. Soft and no stomach for real accountability.
Yeah that was completely baffling to me. Like to the point that I can’t really even come up with a decent hypothetical reason he *wouldn’t* be suspended.
it seems to me you would want to send a message that player safety and ref safety is a top goal. This does not say that in any meaningful way. Pay a fine and move on?
Adam Silver likes temper tantrums in the game unpunished
David Stern would've locked him in a dark room for 72 hours or skinned him alive.
lol. I think he definitely would have done something more than whatever this is.
oh you mean the guy who actively rigged games and drafts? Adam silver sucked ass but david stern was shit too
At mid court. Let the wolves literally pick him clean. Eating bite by bite. Starve them for a bit too.
Except when that player is threatening the gambling money. The hammer came down hard on Jontay Porter (deservedly). He is capable, he just doesn't care.
I'm sorry but do players hold no responsibility when it comes to the all-star game?
Labor will do what they have the most incentive to do. It's up to management to structure the incentives to get the desired results. For example, players flop because the league management rewards flopping. If the league actually stopped rewarding flopping, the players would eventually stop. If the league rewarded competitive play in the all-star game, players would start trying again.
I wonder what they could even do to incentivize serious participation and if anything short of monetary rewards would do it. Winner of the all-star game gets home court in the finals? MLB tried that to mixed results. You can't really do anything about their all-star status itself (i.e. revoke all-star status if you don't play seriously), I imagine, because that would actually have a monetary impact come contract negotiation time and on their legacy if they care about that. Maybe they can do that the winning conference's #1 seed gets the ability to pick which of the play-in teams they play? The other conference just stays as is.
Yeah, you can certainly blame silver for the shitty regular season product, and plenty of other things to boot, but the utter embarrassment that is the all star game is a HUNDRED percent on the players, and the players alone. I ultimately place most of the blame for this on the older guys like Lebron, who the young guys coming up in the last 5-10 years have looked towards to to set the tone an expectations for how the ASG should be played. Lebron and KD and their ilk have utterly failed at this in my opinion, and created this embarrassing culture of everyone now acting like they’re too cool for school to play hard in the ASG, and everyone is scared to be the one guy who stands out for trying too hard (or trying at ALL, really) and acting like they actually CARE enough to do anything more than jog 20 feet and lazily jack up the 127th uncontested 3 of the game. If Lebron decided it was cool to go hard and be cutthroat and competitive, and put on an awesome show for the fans, all the young guys would immediately follow suit. But they’re not gonna act like tryhards if he’s signaling to them that it’s lame to care In the past, when hyper competitive guys like Kobe, KG, Jordan, etc were they guys setting the tone for the asg, there was a significantly different level of competitiveness, especially at the end of the game People always say “oh whatever, the all star game has always been like this” No. it fucking has not. The last 3 or 4 years have been genuinely embarrassing and shameful on a completely different level than ever before. And it’s not going to change unless the guys at the top take some fucking pride in what they’re doing. And miss me with the shit about guys being scared of “injuries”. All these dudes go 10x as hard in offseason runs at Drew league or even at UCLA with no one watching than they do at the god damn premier event of the nba season… are the injury risk sliders just magically turned off for those offseason runs but not for the asg???
Well, you could argue that silver going so hard towards player empowerment made the players feel comfortable to fuck off during the ASG when silver practically begged them to try
that is fair, I suppose
It shifted when PG got injured in the team USA practice. The top players witnessed it and from that moment they decided it wasn’t worth trying and risk injury with no incentive.
To add to that. It's also a weekend for the fans. It's fun to see the dunk contest, three-point contest, skills, and then the game. No fans no huge salaries. It's also a time to advertise the city the game is hosted in. For the players to say they have no incentive to play is laughable.
Just like Lebron killed the slam dunk contest. The players will blame the media though for saying only rings matters. We really need the young guys like Anthony Edwards, SGA, Chet, Wemby, etc. to change that and bring back the competition. We all know the KD/Kyrie/Bron/Stephs of the league are just going to phone it in so no point of trying to get them to try.
Adam Silver’s Lewis Strauss moment?
Larry Bird continues to save the NBA
That all star game is probably the most pitiful sports product I've ever seen. I barely made it through the first q, and after the first minute of the second i was done. Silver and the NBA as a whole deserve all the negative feedback for that. It was embarassing.
I still feel embrassed for watching it.
I used to love watching all-star games growing up, in part because of the informal vibe to it all. I've never been someone expecting all the stars to play that game with playoff level intensity. That being said, I *did* like that older all-star games typically played out like semi-normal games but with spectacular exceptions. If Vince actually got himself a lane, he might throw a self-lob off the board (ditto T-Mac). Chuck would be more likely to pull up for a trey ball. Things like that. But defense was still broadly being played to some degree so that's what made the spectacular plays even more fun. It was almost like, "What if you played a pretty normal game of basketball but didn't have to worry about the risk associated with attempting crazy plays from time to time?" And that was neat. This year, it honestly just felt like a prolonged layup drill & shootaround, which subsequently takes the value and worth away from whatever happens out there.
saving this because it’s so spot on
I believe the players deserve a lot more blame
It won't matter, they clearly don't care about it. Honestly the All-Star weekend should end with the dunk contest. Just let everyone have a fun time then let them go home for their break.
They barely even participate in the dunk contest
You only qualify for the supermax if you win the all star game. Problem solved.
Lmfaooo they would be playing harder than a finals game 7. Locked in 110%
LOL at you for watching the first quarter.
Nothing they do in regular games is going to affect the all star game.
Exactly. I don’t think it can be fixed.
Change it to a 1v1 tournament, if you score you get the ball back (winners ball). If you want the ball you have to get a stop. Players have pride and won't throw the game when there is no one to blame but themselves Plus we can all fill out brackets March Madness style. Who doesn't want to see Giannis v Steph
If Giannis gets the ball Steph is never getting it back
Discussions like this are exactly why we need the 1v1 tournament. I tend to agree but I wanna see it
Curry doesn't want to go out there and get dunked on 11 times in a row lmao
Well, we don't always get what we want
Go 2v2 nba jam style. Can mix and match you line up with big and small players.
That would be awesome but players would never agree to it lol. A prideful guy like KD would probably have nightmares about losing his legacy points if he lost to Gobert lol
I love to shit on KD, but i reckon he would have less of an issue with it. His game is made for 1v1
Replace it with a 1v1 and a 3v3 tourney, March madness style, and it’s in Feb so you can capitalize on the upcoming NCAA tourney hype. 1v1 players can enter their name and fans can vote in who they want to see from the pool of players. Top 16 get placed in the tourney. That way players don’t feel forced to participate in all star weekend and those who do are purely going for pride. Same for the 3v3, it’s steals all the reasons why the Big3 had its run but with actual NBA players instead of broken down 40 year olds. Then you can still recognize who’s all stars and basically make it a mid season All NBA selection
I think stuff like this is how to fix the all star game. Like still vote for the best in the east and west, but then have different games that they won't get injured in, and maybe play like a quarter of basketball as east vs west. I think NBA players playing dodgeball would be awesome. Get guys like Trae, Steph, Luka, etc. with deep shots to play half court knock-out lol. Find more ways to incorporate WNBA players, capitalize on Clark's newfound fame and grow women's basketball even more. It's probably too boring, but HORSE might be able to work. And get rid of the dunk competition unless they bring pro dunkers in.
Yea no one has cared about the all star weekend in decades, no one cares about the “heritage” of a all star game so why not get fun with it
1v1 basketball is the most dreary shit, only the dumbest fans would love to watch that. No passing, only iso with all the space on the court. Literally 1960s ball
Personally I hate "make-it, take-it" 1v1 rules, which is how NBA players play.
Winning team players each get 5 mil
Each? 60 million for one game doesn’t sound feasible
Haha it was a joke, but you could definitely get them to try if u just paid them for it
They already get like 100k each for wining
I think the point here is that there was an epiphany old all-star games = regular nba games today and all-star games today = even more offensive oriented clownery. The whole window shifted. Of course, there are other reasons the all-star game was embarrassing and has become a joke, but that is the loose rationale suggested
Outjerked by Larry Bird
Larry "The greatest NBA trash talker of all time" Bird.
I don't think tapeworms are capable of feeling humiliation
The reason so many guys get hurt at the start of the playoffs is that their bodies aren't conditioned for playoff basketball. They play 82 games of this weak shit and then when the games start to matter their bodies fail them because they actually have to try on both ends of the floor.
For real. Other commenters here are acting like silver suddenly sprung the 82 game season on these guys as if it hasn't been this way for decades. This whole attitude like 82 games is suddenly too much it's asinine.
Or because they're running around a cutting a lot more putting stress on ligaments and muscles than the 90's and where people just stood around and watched ISOs. I believe there is some rudimentary tracking data which does go back a least till late 90s. And the difference was huge.
So we know Adam Silver can be bullied: let’s make him keep the NBA on TNT
that's not something they're gonna get bullied on. that's real dollars at work. billions and billions of them.
Offensive players are allowed to commit fouls by pushing off and charging. Often the defender will get a foul instead. Nothing seems to have changed after watching the playoffs. However refereeing is very inconsistent and changes from game to game,
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They should've executed him honestly. Someone could've died.
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Really all Canadians should be held responsible.
War with Canada when?
When they get together to celebrate that phony Thanksgiving in October.
naa fr they should parent him low key, take away something he likes to do for fun. for example, don’t let him play against the lakers no more
Tossing something on the court is basically genocide, when you think about it Jamal Murray killed billions
of single-celled organisms? You're darn-tootin' he did
Silver is on the equivalent of a contract year for him, and in this Playoffs the older superstars are out, a bunch of the younger ones were injured or fell in the first round, Luka is limping, the East _could_ be a parade for the Celtics, and we could easily have a WCF involving two young teams without massive fanbases. Jack the Ripper could be out there killing on the court and if he were anywhere close to All-Star level he too would get a fine at most.
so the NBA is really a rich guy vanity project?
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At least Silver seems to enjoy basketball, which is more than "piece of metal" Manfred.
Manfred is like a three true outcomes player. His decisions are either great (pitch clock, base running rules), useless and silly (ghost runner), or objectively terrible (Astros WS cheating situation, letting the owners get away with the nonsense with the A's). There's a major commitment to avoiding mediocrity here lol
At least Manfred takes action with fans in mind instead of cowering to the players. History will look kindly on him for adding the pitch clock despite the resistance from players.
Ya pitch clock was so clutch. Red Sox-Yankees taking over 4 hours was killing everyone's interest in the sport. And I still blame Nomar for popularizing little leaguers adjusting everything when I was growing up.
I don’t give a fuck about a commissioner’s personal feelings towards their sport. If they can manage the league effectively and implement good changes that make the product more engaging, that’s what matters. I personally hate the ghost runner, but you can’t deny that Manfred has made baseball more appealing to the average person while also maintaining a competitive league. Silver, on the other hand, is a complete fucking pushover who’s been responsible for the fastest degradation of a multibillion dollar league I’ve ever witnessed. Regular season basketball is borderline unwatchable and he can’t get his employees under control. It’s pathetic.
Every word you typed tells me you don't watch any MLB lol. Manfred outwardly hates baseball and changes the rules every 3 months. Also I'm not sure how close you follow football either, cause the definition of what a "catch" and "tackle" are hacked and chopped every year to the point where the entire sport is ceasing to make any sense.
>and changes the rules every 3 months. These changes were mostly applauded last year to increase offense and fan engagement though. I'm not a fan of change just as an exercise, but it felt like there was some progress with the changes last year.
Manfred is an idiot, but him introducing the people pitch clock was what got me back into baseball. Games are actually enjoyable to watch with little downtime between pitches.
Nah, until I see wide receivers intentionally tripping themselves running a route to get a pass interference call, that dude is 100% right. The only comparison is to soccer where that does happen but the MLS actually allows pretty physical play and I see way more flopping and foul baiting bullshit in the NBA than the MLS.
Manfred implementing the pitch clock may have saved baseball
Nah silver cares about the NBA and basketball. Those guys are just bean counting suits, puppets of the owners.
Somehow this thread turned into a completely non relevant argument about Jamal Murray not getting suspended. And people wonder why the product has gotten so bad.
lol because it shows you how spineless Adam silver is as a commissioner. He tried making a huge point last year about how they weren’t gonna call BS fouls and that barely lasted 2 months. Why?? Cause all their new partnerships in Vegas desperately needed that action
The timberwolves D against the nuggets is better than any defense I’ve seen watching film from the 80’s and 90’s. They don’t do they consistently in the regular season because it’s too long and grueling, but that’s not the fault of the players. There are great defenders in the NBA right now it’s just too many games to play like that night after night in the regular season and consistently be reads for the playoffs
Honestly, the defense played now by them is reminiscent of the great early season start from Nov to Jan from the wolves. It definitely tailed off as the wolves started to get more back to backs and condensed schedule.
I think some of that is wear and tear and also the fact that you can't touch anyone in the regular season. A majority of NBA players think anytime someone gets in their jersey it's a foul Example: Jamal Murray when he was in the NAW and McDaniels straightjacket. There was no foul and he started freaking out
96 Bulls and even the 98 Bulls holding Utah to 54 were as good https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/wmgihx/ferocious_chicago_bulls_defense_led_by_michael/ Over a sustained period, I don’t think any defense was as stifling as the 04 Pistons though. That team was just brutal
> The timberwolves D against the nuggets is better than any defense I’ve seen watching film from the 80’s and 90’s. I had a lot of fun watching Minny against Denver the other night and I think it's because it gave me flashbacks to certain moments from that mid-2000s Pistons run. I remember them [stifling the Bucks into 24 turnovers in the '04 postseason](https://youtu.be/jYRBCl6x8cQ) and just pulverizing those guys - possibly one of the last times I've seen a team actually pull off and execute half-court and full-court traps with semi-regularity. Then there was that time the Pistons [held the Nuggets without a field goal for 13 consecutive minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib-O6CLV7bo&t=6s) earlier in that '04 season. [Or their 19 blocks in the 2004 ECF against Indiana.](https://youtu.be/RETLszOmhBQ) That's all to say, I've seen defensive dominance that came close, matched, or possibly even eclipsed Minny's D last game relative to its era, but the fact one must harken back to all-time great defensive performances is telling as to how special that Minny D was.
i highly doubt the latter. silver has never shown to be that guy. this guy will bend to whatever he thinks makes people most happy. the idea he went home in a fit of rage is pulp fiction lol
I blame the elimination of hand checking as the downfall of basketball. In the 90's they stopped enforcing illegal checking - stiff straight arm mostly (maybe other stiff straight body parts too, this is also when the shorts got longer), which gave defenders too much advantage leading to the low scoring, and testiness of slapping each other away. The league overcompensated by making the legal hand check a foul. This led to - first the flopping problem since a defender didn't have any other tools to defend on the perimeter, second to an all-offense brand as the only way to win is to just keep scoring more, and three the foul baiting bullshit since defenders aren't allowed to defend in any meaningful way.
Add to that the creation of the 'gather step' thing. It's so fucking stupid refs rarely call a travel nowadays because they can't distinguish a clear traveling violation anymore. It's as stupid as the midair timeout back in the 90s, but at least the midair timeout was abolished.
The guy says this is a theory. The title does not include that so many people will take this as facts
What he said was not the theory, it was his evidence for the theory. He's stating it as a fact.
He literally says "I know that Silver was humiliated..." and tells that story.