I will go on record as the high point of the NBA was the mid 1980s. The Days of Bird v. Magic. Of Showtime. Of Skyhooks. The Fabled Boston Garden and its crappy floor (I maintain that it was painted dirt). Beyond the marque teams there were a host of other teams that could (hold your breath) score. Before the Knicks and others aligned NBA game speed with that of a geriatric hallway race, Run TMC of Golden State routinely scored 120 points a game. Tim Hardway, Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond were a thing of beauty. While they never won anything major they showed that you could win without utilizing an isolation for the big man strategy.
By the 1990s equaling the scoring output of the previous decade would be the equivalent of Mauritania getting a man on the Moon, it just wasn't happening. Even the lowly Cavs had multiple players (including Larry "The Last of High Socks" Nance) that could hit the legendary mid range jump shot. The 1990s players couldn't find a mind range jump shot if they had a road map and a flashlight. This year's playoff, out West, there has been a rebirth of scoring. The recent Mavs - Suns matchup was a case in point of high scoring, passing and international style defense (read strong language was the only thing used). Hopefully that trend will continue. I am hopeful because today in the NBA the most valuable position belongs to the point guard. Even the mighty Spurs or Heat will only go as far as Tony Parker and Dwayne Wade respectively takes them. As more teams realize the importance of this position perhaps there is hope for the NBA after all.
Rising/Falling
This week's rising team: San Diego Padres - The MLC predicted playoff, while starting off slow, is red hot and hopefully will not let down San Diego or me.
This week's falling team: Houston. Stick a fork in this team. Begin the rebuilding. Or we can always sell Texas for beer money.
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3 comments:
I must respectfully disagree with the author. I believe the high point of the NBA extends beyond Magic and Larry and goes into the stratosphere that Air Jordan played at.
Magic and Bird brought the NBA from the dark ages into modernity but MJ made the league more exciting than any other professional sport. Each game he played was an event, not just a ballgame.
Further along those lines, I think the Knicks receive far too much blame for the slow-down ball that was played in the NBA. Slow-down ball and isolation offense was more a product of unpolished players coming out of school and unimaginative coaching before the implementation of the zone defense. The Knicks-Bulls rivalry of the early 1990's was the best thing to ever happen to the NBA. It allowed the game's best player, MJ, a stage on which to perform and on which to cruelly break the spirit of his biggest rival year after year. The Larry-Magic drama wasn't nearly as deep since there was a profound respect among those two. MJ, the Bulls, their staff and all of the fans in Chicago hated their counterparts in NY.
The NBA didn't miss a beat when Larry and Magic retired. The NBA sucked from 1999 until last year. No MJ meant no entertainment value in the NBA. Thank god for LeBron and the death of the Lakers mini-dynasty.
I agree with Mo, generally. First, Mikey, while Chris Mullin's first season was 1985-86, Richmond didn't get to the league until 1988, and Hardaway until 1989 - by which time the new dynasty was that of Detroit, not Boston. If you check basketballreference.com, you'll note that while Golden St scored 116 pts or so per game in those first few years of Run TMC, they fell below 110 in 1991-92 and continued that decline through the decade. So I think your chronology is a bit miscalculated.
Second, while scoring is fun, the first few years of the defensive-dominated game were actually quite good times for quality basketball. The Knicks may have been best known for it, but the Heat and Bulls were also key participants. The sheer ability of players on those (and other) teams to shut down guys who used to be able to score at will was, I think, something to be seen.
The problem came, as Mo recognized, when the "unpolished players" entered the league. Too many players who weren't good enough to be drafted out of high school thought that a year or two of college would be enough - and thus we found guys like Jamal Crawford and Stromile Swift coming out when they should have stayed in and received better instruction in school. It's no accident that many of these players (see also Eddy Curry) don't become significant contributors until they've had 3-5 years in the NBA; that fits the timeline in which these guys should be learning more than having such pressure thrust upon them. Ultimately, what we've seen since the late 1990s, only dissipating in the last two years or so, is an influx of players that don't YET belong. Some of them flame out early, and a few manage to stick it out and become decent players. But the net effect is to bring down the quality of the game played.
Why it's a bit better now, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe Mo's right - that newer coaching techniques and the zone defense have helped correct for the inexperience of today's draftees. Whatever the reason, the NBA is at least watchable again.
I will agree with part, and disagree with other parts. The NBA was still great during the mid-90s. After Jordan's first retirement was when things got slow, and Hakeem, Ewing, & Shaq made the isolation play the standard. Even though the Bulls came back in '96-98 for 3 more championships, the league was not as much fun other than the pick 'n roll of the Utah Jazz.
Allowing zone defense was a major step in the right direction. The Houston Rockets practically were playing zone anyways when they were winning championships. The fact was, neither the refs, the fans, nor the league office could actually determine when "illegal defense" was occurring.
Really, by 2000, the NBA was on the way back up again, due to a combination of zone and Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady carrying the league by themselves for a couple of seasons. At the same time, the GMs started to realize the skill level of the international players (Dirk-98, Kirilenko - 99, Tony Parker - 2001, Gasol - 2001, Yao-2002.) and within 2 years the quality of play improved dramatically. The international players helped spur the team defense concept and actually knew fundamentals.
So I think things already were looking up by 2000, with the super-draft of 2003 (Lebron, Carmelo, Wade, Bosh, Darko) obviously being the high point of this era. We're still on the way up!
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