I started watching Basketball semi seriously back in 1980. Got real serious around 83 or so. Grew up watching Alex English and his sweet silky smoothness. Bernard King and tragically short career, Moses Malone and his rebound after miss on purpose put backs, and Dr J with his cool as hell name and unbelivable hang time. Games were fun to watch. To see a score of 128-126 were the norm not the unnormal. Jumpshots rained in from all parts of the floor, not just the 3 point line and dunks. But dont get me wrong, dunking was cool. Dr J, Dominique Wilkins, and MJ made sure of that. Ive heard all the reasoning. "Players are more athletic, leading to more aggressive D" Well if they are so much more athletic youd think that it would transpose into an offensive side too. Rule changes are an annual event now, games are flooded by laptop carrying business men instead of the fans. So I ask what has happened to the game I grew loving. Now its an ugly game penetrated by 60 point efforts almost weekly. Ive come to this as my own personal conclusion. 1. The three point line Killed the art of the Jump shot. Too many players are in love with it, who dont deserve to be there. I call it the Charles Barkley affect. Everyone saw how if given the opportunity Charlie would let them fly regularly during the game. Never, o Never shoud Chucky of been letting them fly. Never. I have no doubt that of 10 players on a court at one time, there were at least 8 more capable of making one. 2. Agents. Not in the money aspect of it though. Players deserve to get whatever they can whenever....when they have established themselves. Too many one year college wonders and high school players sifting into the NBA, with promises of being the next Kobe, or Garnett. For as good as Kobe has been, there isnt one of you that can convince me that at least 2 years of college ball couldnt of made his game come around quicker. Agents have destroyed any dignity of contract talks, and forced unnecessary movement of players from team to team. Thats why the most recent CBA addresses this issue by allowing the home team to pay more for talent. 3. Refs Ive been screaming this to NBA.Com for the last 3 years. Tell the refs to put whistles down, forget trying to be part of the game and just call and even fair game. Someone watch a game from the mid 80's and youll see something youll never see now. Several game minutes with uninterrupted play. Sometimes I think the refs are told to blow lots of whistles just to get the TV timeouts in. Its just aweful as a fan of the game to watch now a days. There should be no such thing as a "Iverson palm" as compared to a rookies palm. I cant remember the last time I watched 2 WHOLE minutes of game without a whistle. 4. Coaching Too many coaches afraid of their players. Guys like Pat Riley, and Larry Brown who are chastised for trying to coach a game. There should of never been a debate as to who was right between Iverson and Brown. Iverson is a player, Brown is a coach. If you want to side with Iversons Ideas on how a game should be run, then let him coach the team too. There is a gluttony of coaches who have to play public relationist, and baby sitter. Afraid to set the tone with the players, to play the game their way or dont play at all. Its up to the owners to decide if they dont like what they see on the floor. 5. The lost art of Fundementals. Im not some old fogey who just wishes to see the four corners executed to perfection. But this is just crazy now. Sloppy sloppy play. Too much flash. I like flash, I like the 360 statue of liberty dunks (remember those) and inbetween the legs dunks, but there is a time and place for them. Not in the 4th quarter trailing by 8. Looking pretty but losing is much worse than looking ugly and winning. There isnt enough of that attitude out there. Anyways, feel free to chime in on what you think is wrong, or not wrong, and how youd aleviate some of the problems. Its an ugly product on the floor right now guys, and Its hard to even watch sports center highlights anymore.
Im only 21 and started watching the NBA in 1994 (Im an Aussie by the way). I look at todays NBA and its just not that good to watch. I have not watched a fun game for years (I also have not seen the Rockets going on 2 seasons, so this isnt a Rockets thing). I gauge the NBA today against the way it was between 94 and 98. I think what happened is that the NBA has slowly gone from a shooting style of game to an athletic style of game. During the mid 90s in my opinion the balance was just right. You had guys who could hit their shots, guys who could dunk. I also think todays top players are not as skilled as they used to be. Kobe Bryant is good, but outside of that I dont think any of todays stars have that all round game. I think back to the mid 90s when Houston had Olajuwon, Utah had Malone, Chicago had Jordan, Seattle had Kemp, The Suns had Barkley, the Magic had a young and hungry Shaq, SA had Robinson. These days you dont have thoes great showdowns. It use to be that you played Utah and it was a war that the refs screwed you out of. You took on Chicago and it was a possible finals preview. Go against Barkley and the Suns and not only did you get a great show but a damn good game with a playoff edge. Now you can see the Lakers take on the 76'ers and you see Shaq acting like he does not want to be there, Kobe faking some sort of injury and the only player that is exciting at all is Iverson. I think the fact that guys like Jordan, Malone and Olajuwon are still playing says alot. If you put them at their current form against 94-98 opposition I dont think they would even be in the league. Also the refs....they just dont allow the players to play the game. A center can no longer take on a guard trying a flashy dunk without getting a foul called. You take down a rebound aggressivly and you get called. It makes for soft basketball... I thought it was just me, but NBA basketball is as boring as hell. I love the Rockets, I watch for there games to be shown, I visit this site every day, I read as much Rockets news as possible. But its just the NBA today that bores the hell out of me. Anyway that just my opinion. You dont have to agree with me, you might love watching the game. But I dont, not the way its being played right now. Christopher
Great post <b>Dreamshake</b> and long overdue. I'll go you one better: the NBA of the 60's was a far better game than anything since. It was more of a team game by nature and in promotion. Players didn't earn calls; the refs called the game the way it happened without prejudice. This cult of superstars has ruined the game. It may have bolstered the business but it ruined the game. In the end, if you ruin the game you eventually kill the business.
Great post Dreamshake! You did leave one thing off of your list that has contributed more to the low level of play that is occuring today...and that is the league office. These guys literally control the game of professional basketball and how it evolves. As the NBA was growing enormously in the mid to late 80's, the focus became on continuing to force pro basketball to grow at the same rate as previous. Somewhere around the mid 90's, the NBA game lost touch with the common, bandwagonning, "I like it because everyone else does" fan. Ever since then, the league office has been tinkering with the rules in order to draw back the same level of fans that they previously had achieved. At some point, (like everything else in the world) what comes around, goes around. The NBA will go through another cycle where the play will get better, the fans will come back, and life will never seem better. I suspect this will happen some time within the next five or so years. The current cast of young stars (Kobe, Vince, Stevie, McGrady, etc...) will develop into the Birds and Magics of the early 2000's. I'm really hoping this happens...my first memories of NBA basketball were from the Rockets playoffs in 1981. I was 10 years old and I didn't watch the games. But I do remember seeing the very end of one of the games, and from that point, I had a connection to the Rockets. As I got older, the NBA began to expand (fanbase-wise) and the game became more popular, and as I got into junior high and high school, the NBA was the league to be into. I thoroughly enjoyed the Lakers/Celtics battles and how much I wanted the Rockets to beat the Celtics in 1986. Those guys were goliaths in terms of good teams in the history of the NBA. We'll never see teams like the Lakers and Celtics of the mid 80's. So...all in all...I'm just waiting for the cycle to come back around and the level of play to pick back up. I really think it is rebounding from the late 90's.
You should catch a Mavs game. The score is always high. There's a ton of running. They consistently hit the mid-range jumper, and three point shot. Plus you are guarenteed to see plenty of dunks (from both teams). The defense is not overly agrressive which leads to a faster paced more exciting game.
Dallas may score what 106 points per if even that, maybe 104. ITs funny that 104 points in the entire 80's and early 90's would be considered a low score. I understand the idea of cycles, but does anyone honestly believe that baseball is going to cycle back to respetibility? My fear is that Basketball is tumbling, and tumbling fast. Much like baseball. Id absolutely hate life if basketball becomes anything like MLB. To me, their on the same path of destruction.
