Would NBA stars now be Stars in the 70's, 80's or 90's?

Some would . ..some would not
I think some would still be good but their impact would be reduced

Take Calvin Murphy . . . .I think in todays game
He would probably have a three point shot
and been able to do more at his stature
than he could at those times

Rocket River

 

well that is one of the dumbest videos i have seen in quite a while.

so they are going to use famous fouls that were so hard and blatant that ended up in altercations to be examples of fouls in the past.

uhm ok, way to make a point??

 

I cannot stand when people say "the game was so much tougher back then", and then show video clips and gifs of blatant flagrant fouls by the 90's Pistons or something like that.

It's an idiotic point because that was not legal.

And about the hand-checking... yeah, there was some hand checking going on back then, but they also had illegal defense rules. I don't think a lot of people understand exactly what they were.

You had to stick on a man 1 on 1. There was no hanging out in space on the court. There was no "packing the paint". There was no soft double team man/zone hybrids. You literally had to stick on one man the whole time and there were rules as to how far off of him you could play depending where the ball was on the court.

This gave individual players much more space to work. Hand-checking is not going to stop a great player when he has more space to work. The effectiveness of hand-checking is greatly overblown.

 

In every sport, every industry, every ANYTHING.

There will always be people from the previous generation DESPERATE to dismantle or downplay the achievements of the new one. Its so ****ing annoying.

 

What you said is only true in 1v1 play. Hand-checking makes a big difference when you can bump a player on the perimeter to prevent him from moving cleanly around a pick.

Compared to the 90s, the lack of illegal defense calls has crushed post play, and the hand check rule has freed up the perimeter-based cuts and PnRs.

That's why the 2-man perimeter attack is everywhere now.

 

True. In any generation, people optimize to the current rules of the game. And then when rules change (in basketball or anything else), some people can accept the new rules and some people can't.

In the context of games, you see this cycle happen much faster in video games than in sports. Videogames like Dota, Halo, etc. have new balance patches every several months, and with the same types of responses. Compared to other sports, basketball is in the middle. It changes faster than baseball or soccer, but slower than football.

 

Yea, exactly what I thought. Pretty stupid video. I'm still curious as to what fouls were actually like back then, too.

 

Both Curry and Harden would get theirs in any era.

 

Cant compare flopping from today to flagrant fouls from then. Stupid video, apples to oranges.

Pacers-Pistons wasn't too long ago.

 

I'm sure the star pool would look a bit differently, for example someone like Valanciunas might be a multiple times all star because there would be less defensive help inside, so teams would feature a scoring big man like Valanciunas more. Cousins would be a mega super duper star. LeBron would still be awesome, maybe the best of all time, I think the old rules play into his hands. Many of the small guys wouldn't be stars, because teams simply wouldn't feature them as much, but a few of them would still be great. I'm sure Curry would be fantastic.

 

Do we assume the players back in the day would inherit all the knowledge the new era guys have from the rise in analytics?

If you plopped Curry or Harden back into the days when no one really shot 3s or knew the value of them over the long range 2 I think they would destroy.

Bring a guy from the non 3 point shooting age and put him in today's game and he just keeps taking his midrange 2s then I don't think we are going to look at that player the same way.

Now if you gave the old school guys the knowledge of how today's game works and they spent their careers focusing on the things to make them better for today's game then I think they would do just fine.

 

Eras don't matter regarding elite players. They're gonna be good basketball players regardless.

 

Well, if Curry was playing in the 70s, one could argue he'd be scoring 25 ppg instead of 30 ppg, since 5 of his FGM/gm today are 3 pointers, which would only count 2 back then.

 

Yes. Maybe they were tougher but today's stars are so much smarter. Seven footers today can make threes.

And the NBA sucked in the 70s. The league was on life support from 1976-79. The 1981 NBA finals were on tape delay. The league didn't truly take off until 1983-84 season.

 

I'm kind of sick of these arguments to, the great players aren't really the ones who would suffer in a time period change. The rule difference matter, but not as much as people think. Outside of the 90s, defense in the NBA was notorious bad.


Someone like LeBron, Kobe. Duncan, Durant, Harden, Westbrook, or Curry are all going to average what they've always averaged.

There are rules that work against them. yet there are just as many rules that work in their favor. Like, you said about the defensive rules.


There was a time these type of threads used to be fun, but now it's almost always to single certain players who someone thinks is overrated or has some type undeserved success. I'm not saying that is the case in this thread.


Virtually in most team sports, it would point to players being better for the advanced regiment, scouting

Look at football, for example. The players at each position weigh on average anywhere from 15-40 pounds more on average than did say 20 to 40 years ago. I dare say that they are probably more athletic, now as well. I know 300 pound DT rarely existed in the NFL, during the 1980s, except for the Fridge. Now, there are many high school DL who collectively average 300 pounds and alot of the modern guys are probably lighting fast and much more agile. Look at someone like JJ Watt, he'd be unstoppable playing the 1980s or 1990s NFL. I think even an average starting tight end or wide receiver may have been occasional pro bowler in 1980s and 1990s. Possibly, perennial all-pro 1970 earlier.

With that being said, I don't think certain positions have changed all that much in certain sports, like quarterback, center (basketball), in-fielders (baseball), defensemen (hockey), and few others.

 

Harden, maybe (although probably not). Curry, hell no.

I would love to see Bev fight over an illegal screen, knock Curry to the ground and it get called a common foul. You take six of those and Curry is done.

 

Also, the league was still developing, itself. FG% were still fairly low in the 1970s... compared to 1980s until now.

 

Bogut/Green would set a pick to end Bev's career if that's what he had in mind.

Harden would still be good, but not close to where he is now since he wouldn't get to FT line too many times. Curry would be just as good, just think about Reggie Miller who was a worse shooter with limited skill.