everybody complain about 3 pointers until their team is getting killed by a middy maestro

Yeah the spacing and vastly improved shooting has made the offenses better and more challenging for defenses, but that doesn’t mean the league isn’t loaded with incredibly skilled defenders who absolutely bust their ass on defense.

I agree with this. You bring back the hand check and teams would just be getting more fast break buckets.

I think the offense is better, but like… the enforcement of rules and the rules themselves have changed so drastically. Take away lowering the shoulder when driving, shuffling feet while getting the ball, palming, the 2.5 steps, using their off-arm to push off while driving or when shooting layups, the ripthrough, hooking, screening and moving, etc.

If you were to take away every advantage for the offense from the last 30 years but not change the defense I think games would start reliably being sub 100. That doesn’t really make sense; defensives are allowed more physicality to balance out offensive advantages, so reverting one and the other is silly. But 90% of a 2026 offensive possession would’ve been illegal in the 70s, and a lot even compared to the 90s.

Yeah it’s not an issue of defense, it’s how the rules are reffed.

1. Block / Charge are almost entierly ruled Blocks which disincentivies trying to take a charge
2. Offense initiated contact … you used to get called for pushing with a chicken wing or lowering your shoulder through a defender but nowadays you can get away with a stiff arm in many cases.
3. Moving Screens. There are a couple of things here. First the egregious shoves and walks while intercepting a defender but also the ability to set your feet far wider than shoulder width and finally the setting of screens directly against the defeneder rather than giving them space and forcing the ballhandler to manipulate them into the screen.

edit to add defensive clutching and grabbing of cutters is far worse than I recall in the past but that’s a point in favor of them actually playing defense.

the way they handle officiating has changed demonstrably just the last few seasons. offensive players get way more leeway. defensive schemes are way more complicated nowadays but the NBA has made the product worse

Seriously, the offensive skill today is absurd.

You have Naz Reid, a backup big man hitting full sprint corner 3s on the regular.

It doesnt help that the league favors offense. 🤷‍♂️

I have issues with the way the rules are enforced to favor the offense.

I want them to clean up, carrying/palming, sliding pivot travels, extra step after the gather travels (players getting 3+ steps when they should have 2 or 2.5 steps), offensive initiated contact being called as defensive fouls, moving screens, & unnatural landing zone kickouts to when the defender was not actually in the landing zone. And to be clear, none of these are rule changes, these are all things that, by rule, can be interpreted to favor the defense that they chose to enforce in a way that favors the offense.

I also want rules where flops are reviewed after games and given technical fouls. Those technical fouls count towards future game suspensions.

But, even if the league fixed all those things, offense would still be more efficient than any era before the 3 point revolution. Strategies & skills have just advanced that far. Especially the depth of skills. I don’t think Jokic of that much more skilled than Bird, or SGA is more skilled than Kobe, but the random bench guys are WAY more skilled today.

I think if the refs fairly and properly officiated games, the criticisms about the on-court product would plummet.

The issue isn’t offense being too good or defense being irrelevant, it’s the officiating.

Terrible oversight, you are 100% right. Comment edited.

Yes definitely, I saw a comment last week. Less than it used to be.

The current trending ignorant viewpoint is “itS jUSt a tHrEe pOInt cOnTest” as if we don’t have some of the best midrange shooters of all time in the league

See plenty of it in hockey forums whenever the NBA is brought up

Well to start you realize that the whistle isn’t what’s stopping you playing.

Silly train of throught to think good defense comes from a good whistle and not great and smart defenders who know where the line is and now how to defend right at that line. Poor defensive teams often foul more because they make silly mistakes, they put themselves in positions where they have to foul or the offensive team can draw an easy foul off them, they try to copy “physical defense” of good teams but don’t know how to without crossing the line.

Tldr: learn how to play defense, be smart, be incredibly disciplined and focused every time you play.

Lamelo travels, carries and double dribbles in half the possessions he’s involved in. You already have a nice whistle

It’s been inside you all along my friend 

DM me. Drop me 500k and I’ll get it to Adam Silver for you.

i love lamp

I’m loving how Wemby is starting to develop Russel’s blocking superpower; maintaining possession. Swat blocks that send the ball into the third row just aren’t as valuable as a block where you or your team get possession.

The league was totally different back then. They played 500 possessions per game, everyone was bricking everything, and the game was overall closer to the rim. It’s impossible to replicate those RPG and BPG numbers today, but not for a lack of skill. If I remember correctly, Andre Drummond has a couple of per-100 possession rebounding years that were comparable to Wilt Chamberlain.

I mean of course they wouldnt

They played like 120 possesions per game and played in a bad spacing era

And missing JDub, too - NBA second team defense last year!

Maybe other teams should try this strategy if it works so well

They’re ball hawks. They make the other guy uncomfortable. Not sure why the guys who are best at this get labeled as hackers

What would we do without or gambling addictions

first guys off the bench are also elite defenders.

Its an incredible luxury to unleash these guys to give maximum energy full time and never really have to worry about foul trouble.

Even if you include the playoffs, a 49 game sample size, the 04 Pistons still only gave up 80 ppg. Still a smaller sample size than a full season, but more than 25 games.

Thank you Mr. Silver 💪💪💪

We won the championship with the 29th free throw rate btw

I think part of it is that the NBA didn’t start until the 1940s, so people have a perception that professional basketball started more recently than it really did.

In baseball, there are players who started their career at the turn of the 20th century who are often on GOAT lists, despite the game obviously changing in that time.

Pro basketball dates back to the 1890s, but people often act like it was in its infancy in the 1940s. And nobody from the first 60 years of pro basketball really shows up on anyone’s GOAT lists.

Russell and Wilt were absolutely in those conversations with Magic, Bird and Kareem when they were playing

You clearly weren’t on Insidehoops and HoopsTV in the late 90s and early 00s. Oldheads were pushing Wilt and Russell every single day.

The arguments got intense to the point where there were people launching their own webpages (some that are still up) to dedicated to Wilt https://wiltfan.tripod.com and Russell https://airjudden2.tripod.com/russell/index.html being the greatest of all time to win arguments on the message boards.

Bill Simmons was writing about it in the early 00s on Page2. The topic came up a ton on broadcasts when Shaq, Ewing, Hakeem, and Robinson were battling it out in the 90s.

Wrong. 8 in a row back then is more impressive than 3 in a row today, in my opinion. 8 in a row today would be more impressive, yes

Inevitable repeat this year and next year will be a battle but the Thunder roster is too OP

24-1 at the time, have they still been as dominant?

A preface is fine since they’re being upfront right from the beginning. Doing it as a postface is disingenuous and used as a bait and switch tactic.

Yes. The focus wasn’t clearly on OKC last year. Now they can’t hide.

If I had to eat at cattleman’s, I’d fix it the other way.

I looked it up to check, I think he’s right on this stat. But he’s doing per game, you’re doing per possessions, and the Celtics are dead last in pace per game this season while the thunder are 14th

Using the literal reference you linked the Thunder are 107.9 the Celtics are 107, a whole point better, check your own data lol

“sore losers” sorry but all you have to do is watch the thunder play to realize that they get all the calls and nothing is ever called against them. 

Yes I am saying that it’s rigged. 

Anyone who is a fan of the thunder and denies it is literally delusional

What I don’t miss is the Spurs kicking OKC’s shit in

Lakers fan, they probably have the the most casual fans that root for other teams when they aren’t contenders

RIP Thunder “dynasty” 2025-2025