Barkley after beating the 96 bulls mentions the bulls are going to walk through the regular season because there’s alot of bad teams due to the expansion
Expansion fundamentally changes the talent pool where not only are the expansion teams weaker but they strip away talent from every other teams in the league such that teams that retain top end talent have an more advantage over depth based teams
So by this logic the 60s were the toughest era
Bill Russell was playing against gods not plumbers
Bill was the god
LOL
Bill Russell had to battle Thor in the post. SMH my head players these days don’t know how easy they have it.
I’m also shaking my head my head
SMHSMHMH
He also did it wearing chuck Taylor’s
No. He got all the god ones with him
Barkley shared the court with Moses and the second coming of Black Jesus.
People really struggle with reading comprehension in this subreddit lmao
Reddit in general doesn’t really have a lot of communicative intelligence
And just think, AIs are being trained on it
Someone talks about the sky being blue and the next comment is, but that means there are never any clouds.
Unfortunately it’s mainly American users lol
Can you imagine if we only had 12 teams now like they did in 1968? Guys like Jabari Smith or Grayson Allen might not even make it in the league, and they were solid role players last year
Only the top 180 players would have roster spots. Potential would get some guys spots obviously… but still.
In this scenario are there zero non-American players in the league like there were in the 60s?
No. The game still exploded internationally following the 92 Olympics in this alternate reality. The allure of the NBA was only heightened by the exclusivity. Only the biggest cities have teams, plus Minneapolis still has the Lakers. LA can have the Kings instead of Sacramento ending up with them.
Don’t you put that evil on me Ricky Bobby.
Guys like Jarrett Allen, Trae Young and Brandon Ingram could very wel be coming off the bench if talent is spread out evenyl between the teams.
Did you see how they were forced to dribble back then? Just might be
Did you see how that they were forced to actually dribble instead of carry the basketball back then?
FTFY. You also forgot to mention that there were no such thing as gather steps, so two steps was really two steps most of the time.
Do you know what the word “logic” means? It doesnt mean you can extrapolate any given trend infinitely in either direction.
Yes and that’s why Bill is the goat and not some puny malteser that managed to convince others winning 6 means more than 11.
I feel like a lot more changed since the 60s than # of NBA teams…
but if you were to revert the league back to like 10 teams today then it would be a tougher league to play in no doubt.
You have to compare between immediately pre and post expansion.
No.
Legitimately though people discredit the Celtics insane run back then, but think about how hard it is to win 9 in a row when there’s so much consolidated talent in the league.
Like they weren’t some super team or even the favorites in many of their finals, Russell is just the single greatest winner in sports history.
The toughest era for what exactly? It was statistically a much easier era to win a championship in because the 1960s maxed out at 14 teams and being the best team out of 14 is much easier than being the best out of 30.
Or it was more difficult because the talent pool was more concentrated
No one believes that
Celtics flair duh
Thats not how it works lol
That’s only true if you assume the amount of talent available to the NBA has not changed since the last expansion.
Which it absolutely has, and I’ve been watching the nba for over 40 years.
If nothing else, think of the influx of top tier European talent. How many teams have one or two AWESOME players from Europe. 30 years ago most of those guys weren’t playing in the nba and someone on the bench is starting ahead of them.
Also longevity, which means the best players play more seasons. Look at the high level guys like LeBron, KD, Curry etc still play at almost 2 decades into their NBA careers. If Magic and Bird had that longevity, we would have had an NBA where Magic, Kobe, and Iverson were all high level NBA players at the same time.
The number of talents keeps increasing, but adding two more teams out of nowhere still has an impact. The league takes a few years to adjust.
The expansion teams were all pretty terrible for their first few years in the league though
It’s really hard to properly balance the mechanics of adding expansion teams. Most owners seem to want to make the expansion teams suck because it protects their assets.
You can occasionally see the opposite though, like the most recent NHL expansion where Vegas was completely overpowered.
As I understand it, VGK’s success at the expansion draft was, at the time, totally unexpected and had a whole lot of creativity that exposed a loophole.
Can’t remember the specifics of how it was a loophole, but they made handshake agreements with other teams to not take their best players, and in return, they got draft capital.
This upcoming season will only be year 3 of being into hockey/NHL and only in the past year have I started learning more about the history.
It wasn’t a loophole. Making the side deals they did was legal and only worked because the other GMs vastly overvalued protecting current roster players - eg we’ll trade you Player B (incentive), if you agree to choose Player C (other exposed player) instead of Players XYZ (that GMs couldn’t use their default protections on but wanted to ensure weren’t picked). Not only that, but the player they offered as incentive were often better than the ones that were being protected!
It had been a long time since an expansion draft and the Vegas GM absolutely fleeced with some of those trades. More detail here: Out of the Loop
Vegas also did a superb job of talent identification, taking the maximum available, and flipping the assets they acquired aggressively.
Funny enough, Vegas wasn’t the last NHL expansion. Seattle was - but clearly they did so poorly that no one remembers them, LOL. That was part buffoonery by their new GM in being far too aggressive trying to make deals, part backlash to how badly the rest of the league got fleeced by Vegas that other GMs overcorrected hard and weren’t willing to make deals.
Holy shit, thanks dude!
I appreciate the correction and thorough explanation.
MJ fans will bring up bullshit like “killer mentality” every time you mention the diluted talent pool of the 90’s though lol
Bron stans (oh god, he has a whole new fanbase stanning for him now) constantly bring up expansion as some excuse for why Jordan won so many rings, but they fail to offer any explanation of how expansion made it easier for the Bulls to beat other contenders.
Because it didn’t make it easier to win championships. It made it easier to but up gaudy stats and to increase regular season wins, but it didn’t affect the top teams playing against each other.
The number 1 pick in the 1995 expansion draft was … BJ Armstrong, the Bulls All Star starting point guard.
Lol.
He had already 3 peated before the expansion.
Sure, they prob won more regular season games but other top level talented teams were in the exact same situation as the bulls.
Why didn’t they beat the bulls?
It’s a disengenuous argument.
That’s really not true, brush up on your history buddy. The modern expansion era began in 1988 with the Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat being added to the league. Then the very next season two more teams were added with the Timberwolves and Magic. So for his first three-peat there were 4 new teams added within the last 2-3 seasons.
And then right before he rejoined the league from his first retirement they added 2 more teams with the Raptors and Grizzlies.
Expansion started in 88….
To people talking about the bad teams not being in the playoffs: the expansion draft weakened every team, and made it much harder for an almost-there team to get its last piece. So a top-heavy contender who is already built will be the least affected and most advantaged, and MJs bulls definitely fit the description.
Some of the other teams at the time may also have been similarly advantaged, but it’s a much lower competition pool overall. Like last year raptors were one piece away so they added Kawhi, or two years ago the rockets weren’t there so they went for Durant (which probably would have worked had FVV and Adams not gotten injured). Expansion draft era with a tighter talent pool and bottom teams desperate to get established, those pickups are much much harder.
This is also with the Draft. Look at how impactful Harper was with the Spurs. A team that might have drafted the last piece they needed to compete now had expansion and other weakened teams clogging it up.
Even as a player Barkley had some great commentary skills. He was definitely destined for the role he has today.
His book Outrageous is super funny
It’s insane to me that there are actual people in the world who don’t like Chuck lol like I don’t get how it’s even possible
I like Chuck. I find it a bit annoying that people act like he is always spitting the truth when in reality he just says what is on his mind all the time and doesn’t always think it all the way through.
I like Chuck, he’s a great entertainer. He also seems to not care about watching basketball, which is part of his job. I don’t care about it because the end product is still enjoyable, but I can understand why people would be annoyed by a basketball analyst who doesn’t watch the basketball he’s supposed to analyze.
Dude puts up 35⁄15 and almost the first thing he says in the postgame is props to Danny Manning and Elliot Perry
The biggest joke in all of this “drama” is that people are genuinely caring so much about Charles Barkley’s words that they’re posting his old quotes. He’s an old head who is funny and is paid for his humor.
People dislike hypocrites, it ain’t that hard.
big week for the unemployed
Cherry picked too since right after he says the thread title he says “they’re not going to cake walk through the NBA like everybody thinks they are”
Nuance and context is dead lmao
Are you really being offended for someone else right now?
It’s to the point where I feel like these are Nike bots or Nike paid these randoms to ensure their GOAT’s (get on another team) constant hopping from stacked team to another stacked team is justified. Rent free
The Bulls vs one of those expansion teams:
https://www.espn.com/nba/game/_/gameId/160324028/bulls-raptors
Still remember watching this game live. They couldn’t do anything with Damon Stoudamire. Little quick guards always tore that 96-98 Bulls team up
Mighty Mouse!
Bailed out by Steve Kerr
Are you bailed out by someone who is open because of you
No, unless it’s LeBron, then yes.
Shooting 65% from 3 helps
The Raptors won 18 games that year. Lol.
They went 15-3 in the playoffs and only lost two of those games because they let up and they were up 3-0 against Seattle so they did kind of cakewalk through the playoffs
Horace Grant’s injury in Game 1 definitely impacted the series against Orlando. Probably prevented a loss or maybe two from occurring in that series.
But a dominant run.
Yeah that’s underrated. I think they were like 8-1 in the playoffs, Orlando before he hurt his elbow. To be fair, they were down like 35 points in the third quarter iirc when he hurt his elbow. But that was an awesome starting lineup. Penny, Dennis Scott, Nick Anderson, Horace Grant, and Shaq that’s really good for any era. All the pieces were really complimentary and fit well together too
That Horace Grant guy was pretty good. Bulls could have used a guy like that
I mean everyone know this yeah? Like they had 72 and 69 win seasons back to back. But even take out the expansion and both are still legendary seasons (still high 60s I’d imagine) capped off by championships. Hell, both seasons had multiple 60 win teams outside of the bulls as well.
They were legendary seasons, but their playoff dominance (when they were only playing good teams) wasn’t quite what you’d expect of a 70 win squad, which itself only really matters if you want to get into silly hypotheticals about the best NBA team ever.
It’s that lack of total domination in the playoffs that makes me lean heavily toward the 17 Warriors as the best team ever.
I mean they lost 3 games the entire playoffs, 2 of those were against a 68 win Sonics team in the Finals. Still pretty dominant, but 17 Warriors still probably get by on pure talent alone.
Didn’t 2001 Lakers only lose 1 game all playoffs
There’s been two 70 win teams, and they outperformed the other one’s postseason by a wide margin
So what 70 win squad did you see dominate playoffs? The warriors?? 😂
The 2017 warriors won a pathetic 67 games against a much stronger league than the 1996 Bulls faced, and their regular season differential was actually higher than 2016 (though still lower than the Bulls). Where they REALLY shined was in the playoffs where they went 16-1 with a differential of +13.5 (which was actually surpassed by this year’s Knicks).
Maybe the bulls should have signed Karl Malone or Shaq after winning 70 games and they could have been as dominant as those warriors…
Well yeah but they didn’t so they aren’t. I’m not arguing about whether the Warriors were fair or not (they weren’t imo) just who was the superior team in absolute terms.
No everyone does not know this because MJ/bulls fans know that it will dilute their argument for how “tough” that era was, when in reality, it was a weakened talent pool and the teams who were top heavy had massive advantages after the drafts, most notably the bulls.
This is just pathetic excuse making. Not surprising given the lack of maturity on this sub
It makes sense that you’d have multiple 60 game winners with all the trash teams to beat up on (I was a fan of a trash team back then, btw).
No people dont. They compare them to the 73 warriors when they were playing trash teams. People discredit Lebrons 8 finals saying weak east. But MJ cakewalked with a great team against weak teams.
Chuck in this clips says multiple things. He said “its not Jordan the bulls are a great team.” That team was insanely deep and expansion made alot of teams insanely weak.
I believe lets enjoy each for what they do. But for those that dont its important to get context
The difference is that the Bulls didn’t lose in the finals. If they did, then you could point to the weak conference. But since they beat everyone in front of them en route to the titles, it’s tougher to make that argument.
Who did they beat that won anything. MJ was only there 6 years in a 10+ years span. Other than Aids Magic with no Kareem(where we could claim expansion and weak conference) who won anything.
They beat the Bad Boy Pistons.
And “AIDS” Magic is intellectually dishonest since AIDS didn’t limit Magic physically. And who cares if Kareem was gone? For Kareem’s last title, wasn’t he a role player?
But your argument disproves itself. The reason you can’t claim he had a weak conference (like Lebron) is because he also beat the western conference teams in the finals.
I mean Utah losing Dell Curry in expansion draft likely hurt our championship window until we got Hornacek. Jazz needed some more scoring when Mailman didn’t have it that night. Ah well.
They didn’t lose Dell to expansion, they traded him to Cleveland the season before.
Didn’t the dogshit expansion Raptors win a game against the Bulls?
Why he say fuck me for?
And yes we did. At Skydome in front of like 40k fans haha
Yes but that doesn’t change the point. The Raptors only won 18 games that year.
[deleted]
Did you post this clip so you could make this “gotcha” joke?
lol actual peak reddit hey
Best unemployed moments
I don’t know why there’s so much content shitting on Chuck for old quotes today. But I’ll take this one too
Nobody thinks players today couldn’t play in the 80s and 90s due to their skill. They think it because in the 80s and 90s the game was grittier, more contact, more roughing up stars, and without any science supporting load management.
Few of those “old” quotes are from within the past 2 weeks
And it’s the opposite when it comes to roughness and contact, the league is much faster, they are moving so much more, defending and scoring at higher levels it’s reaching a point superstars can’t even make it to the post season without having downright tears.
I both agree with and disagree with this. The game takes much more of a physical toll but that’s because the pace is so much greater. The “more physical” play in Chuck’s generation was slower because of the amount of contact allowed. They’re different and I don’t think any player from any era could be transported magically to any other era without issue, but I do think any player who is in the league now would have excelled if they came up and learned to play during the older eras.
Also, the quotes I’m talking about are this one and the one of him demanding a trade
I always think it’s hilarious that the argument for 80’s & 90’s players is always, “We would’ve beat him the fuck up” basically.
Like yeah brother, yall weren’t better at basketball so you would’ve HAD TO just literally beat the person up that’s our whole point lmao
Basketball is physical, the way the NBA currently plays is not similar to how people play outside in the real world.
The NBA should not resemble “how people play in the real world” IMO, they’re fuckin NBA players lol
People dont play full contact football like how the NFL plays, pulling out whole playbooks nshit, “in real life” either.
This is why the league is plagued with flopping and 3 pointers.
I would believe all of that until you see guys like Muggsy Bogues can average 12/8/3 at 5’3”. If they were all so rough and tough they would have laid him out like they always talk about in their “glory days”
I like that his career best season he averaged 11.1 and you decided to characterize it as home averaging 12 for his career. Also, it’s PTS/REB/AST and I didn’t need to look shit up to home you got that wrong lol
So your argument is “if that’s true why didn’t they rough up the 5’ tall guy averaging a triple single” which, if that’s really your logic, then I guess go ahead and think that
Do you think anyone 5’3” could average more than 5 points a game in today’s league?
Curry would literally get beat up and would have to retire due to injury.
uhmm he literally gets beat up almost every game in today’s game? I get it the old NBA had a lot more physicality in the post but we’re starting to REALLY exaggerate it now. I’ve rewatched a lot of 90s and early 2000s NBA and I really don’t see the “beating up” players every possession like y’all love to talk about.
They have skirmishes from time to time just like today. A lot of the dirty stuff that were called regular fouls back then died down during the 90s after the flagrant addition and the bad boys getting old 🤷♂️
> 90s and early 2000s
The 80s were the peak of it I believe, with the Pistons strategy of “let’s just murder MJ” in 88-90 lol
Exactly, that over-the-top physicality was mostly the Pistons’ thing, and it wasn’t just directed at MJ and the Bulls either. The Celtics for example, probably had an even worse time dealing with the Bad Boys which is why the league eventually started to retaliate.
Once the Pistons declined and the flagrant foul was introduced, the league gradually moved away from that level and frequency of “physicality”.
When people talk about the ‘90s like it was some kind of fight club where guys were getting their limbs ripped off and heads taken off every possession, it’s just ridiculous.
There’s no way you guys believe this shit when guys like Muggsy Bogues (wouldn’t even sniff the league today) were dominating the league 🤣
With illegal defense rules in place, Curry would not be able to get beat up and mauled off the ball like he does today and he would average 50 on 75% TS because you’d only be able to guard him in single coverage. He would promptly be banned from the league on suspicion of witchcraft and wizardry after a season or two
Like I said in my response to the other comment, I think Curry would have been a solid NBA player in any era. I’m not sure he would have ever developed the exact skill set he has now though if he came up playing in the 80s. His off ball movement and seemingly unlimited motor would be what made him great in the 80s. I just don’t know that any program would have allowed a player to take as many threes as Curry would need to be what he is now in the 80s
Ey P, dis dude thinks teams were worried about mugsy.
Curry already missed a ton of time in todays league due to injury. Back then it was malicious. He’d probably put up zeke numbers. But all teams would quickly aim for his ankles and there were no major repercussions if you seriously hurt someone.
All that dribbling he does would result in his ass on the floor.
Barkley is Stephen A. with better punchlines. Most of the 90s guys would be desperate to get a call from the G League today.
“Jump shooting teams don’t win titles” - Warriors immediately win four titles
And they needed 2 of the greatest jump shooters to ever play basketball to win one and then added another all time jump shooter after the fact. The warriors are an outlier. Chuck was right until he wasn’t.
The Spurs literally fondled the Heat from 3 in B2B finals series just a year(s) before the Warriors began their run lmao
Those teams hat Tim Duncan and Tony Parker
Except that in real time everyone could see that they were special - except him
He stuck to his guns and made for great TV.
Sure - but he doesn’t provide a better understanding of the game. His takes are always the most casual shit you’ve ever heard. He doesn’t provide insight at all.
Brother he’s on a pregame/halftime show. You are expecting too much from that type of platform. It’s just ad space between games. There’s actual guys breaking down the games out there but most fans just wanna see the guys on TV be wrong.
I don’t disagree. My point is just that no one should take him seriously.
Chuck was sort of right until KD pulled the biggest cupcake move of all time. 4 titles is a lot on paper, but 2 of those were from the worst era of all time in basketball when KD took the hardest road. He was really only wrong twice, the other 2 were a complete outlier.
He’s right, they’re too cute. Malone would’ve made taken them.
Nah too old for him by the time they hit the league, they’re safe
Zing!
We all know he liked em young & cute you dont have to remind us
And how many of those bad teams were in the playoffs?
No bad teams, obviously, but a lot of bad players. If you weren’t a kid back then, you’d remember plenty of bums playing for the Bulls, like Bill Wennington, a guy that wouldn’t have been in the NBA if the Bulls didn’t need 6 extra fouls against Shaq.
“They not just gonna cakewalk through the NBA like everyone thinks they are”—right after saying they would “walk through the regular season” because of expansion. This was peak Barclay. The Bulls went 72-10, and 15-3 in the Playoffs. Sounds like a cakewalk, but not because of expansion teams. If you include all the teams added since 1988, the Bulls were 20-2 against them that season, which means they went 52-8 against non-expansion teams, which is a 86.6% win percentage. Over an entire season that’s a 71-win pace against non-expansion teams. They finished with 72 wins. Yeah. The expansion teams helped. Sort of.
Context is key. Thank you.
God this debate of who the goat is and whose era was better is exhausting.
I’m really just an NBA fan and I sort of follow pro cycling. I cheer for the Detroit Lions in the NFL but I don’t really follow any other sport. Is this sort of constant GOAT debate a thing in sports in general, or just an NBA thing? It IS exhausting.
It IS a thing in sports in general, however, the NBA takes it to a whole new level where just about every discussion somehow ends up being about who is the GOAT.
Yes, but expansion also weakens the non expansion teams.
Funny how all these videos were never brought up the last few decades. Now all of a sudden they are coming out
It’s old news for fans that lived through it.
They’ve buried as much expansion footage/discussion as they could to protect MJ’s legacy lol. Why do you think it’s NEVER brought up on ESPN or Ringer podcasts? MJ guys will fight tooth and nail to argue that the 90’s era was soooooo tough and hard to win in
Bill has brought up the ‘96 Bulls winning a lot of Regular Season games due to expansion quite a lot.
90’s were a strange era because despite the huge amount of talent the league felt the urgency to help the teams and increase the scoring with the closer 3pt line that actually helped many players to achieve their career high in 3pt.
Expansion definitely created a lot of weak teams and a clear imbalance between contenders and too many bad teams.
The closer 3 point line was put in because scoring was going down due to the increase in contact that was being allowed… which finally started bottoming out when the reverted the line back in 1998. From 1998 to 2003-2004 we had a dead ball era where league ORTG fell below the traditional 106-108 range it had been in since the early 1980s. Then the handcheck rules were changed in 2004-2005 and ORTG went right back into that range where it stayed until the freedom of movement rules in 2018-2019 caused it to skyrocket.
You can see it quite clearly in the year by year data:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats_per_game.html
RIP, Craig Sager. You were awesome, especially your suits.
You probably shouldn’t look up what he did to his family.
Turned out to be not awesome.
I didn’t know that he cheated on his wife and left her for a Bulls dancer, as well as cutting off his three children from his first marriage from his inheritance. I feel bad for what he did to his first wife and his children from that marriage. However, he was fun to watch on TV. Many of us flawed and make bad mistakes.
Hmm. But once you get into the playoffs you tend to play those good teams, right? Also the Bulls weren’t the only team benefiting from the expansion.
Well the bulls ended up winning 72 games that year and going 15-3 in the playoffs, sweeping Orlando and only losing 2 games to the Sonics in the finals after going up 3-0.
I’d say they were pretty comfortably better than every other team that year and would qualify as “exceptional”
There is a problem with the ‘96 Bulls were overrated due to Expansion Theory, which is that the Bulls themselves were also “diluted” due to expansion.
Championship winning starter BJ Armstrong was snagged by Toronto in the ‘95 Expansion Draft (then flipped to Golden State) and Championship winning borderline All Star/All-Defensive Player Horace Grant was signed as a Free Agent by a recent expansion team, the Orlando Magic, that had cash to burn.
So any “league is diluted” effects would also be applicable for the Bulls that season, who had two starters taken away from newer teams and needed to replace them.
Yes, the Bulls had bums in their rotation, too, as I’ve mentioned in other comments here. They had the most dominant core at the time, though.
Losing Grant helped in the long run because Rodman was a much better fit and a true small ball 5
The new Raptors beat that Bulls team handedly in Toronto
Raptors beating the 95⁄96 Bulls deserves to be up there in terms of greatest upsets.
An expansion team beat arguably the greatest team in NBA history who lost 13 games TOTAL between the regular season and playoffs.
Jordan played 39 mins, got 36 points on 14⁄22 shooting and 9 rebounds. Bulls went 40-1 that year in games Jordan shot at least 50% from the field.
The Bulls shot 50% from the field vs the Raptors 46.7%. They were 60-1 that year in regular season/playoff games they shot at least 45% from the field.
As a hardcore Timberwolves and NBA fan since back then, Charles is 100% right about this. In ‘93-‘94 the Timberwolves’ starting center for much of the year was Mike Brown. He played 82 games and started 40. In 23.4 minutes per game, he averaged 3.6 points and 5.5 rebounds, and less than 1 of anything else. He shot 42.7% from the field despite never shooting a 3-pointer. His BPM was -3.4 and his PER was 7.2. Brown did almost nothing well, although he did once make a shot while sitting on the ground due to a loose ball scrum, and our announcer at the time, Kevin Harlan, went absolutely bonkers.
Mike Brown was not an anomaly. I vividly remember how bad the depth of talent in the league was. The Chicago Bulls were a great team, but even they had bums in their rotation due to the lack of talent in the league. It undeniably played a part in them winning 72 games in ‘95-96 and 6 championships during the era.
Last I heard winning games in the regular season isn’t what gets you a championship.
There’s always plenty of bad teams in the league, so bad that they start losing on purpose to get better draft picks. Still doesn’t mean that the teams they tank against get a ring though.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/199603240TOR.html
Raps beat the bulls in 96
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the Raptors and Grizzlies as they were the expansion teams in 95-96. He’s not talking about the late 80s expansion teams like the Magic, Wolves, Hornets. Magic and Hornets were already pretty competitive by 95-96
Its both. Expansion depleted teams in late 80 and then again. Every expansion means expansion draft
idk, they also threepeated before the expansion…
The Heat, Magic, Timberwolves and Hornets were added just before the first 3-peat
true, although it was two years before
It took many, many years for the league’s talent depth to recover from that, so it is absolutely relevant. Jordan was still awesome, though. I am not putting him down by pointing out the reality of the situation.
im sure it had an effect, but honestly i’m not sure what the relevance is when we’re talking about teams playing in the nba finals or semifinals
There were a lot of bad players that got minutes on those teams, even the great teams. Real fans from back then remember Bill Wennington from the Bulls, Danny Schayes on the Suns, Frank Brickowski on the Sonics, etc.
Sure, but the playoffs exist explicitly to avoid soft regular season schedules dictating who the champion is. While an easy road to the playoffs is always nice, any given playoff team in the NBA still has to beat a run of good-to-great teams to win the finals. And, yeah, evaluating any championship team is always done within the context of the season they won and no two championships are truly equal. Somebody has to win it all every season, after all, even if any given season has overall softer competition than others. But to imply the Bulls threepeats are somehow diminished due to recent expansion is a bit naive. They were near-unstoppable and would have won over anybody.
I need to see these socks.
On the other hand there weren’t five teams intentionally tanking as many games as possible
You don’t think teams were tanking for Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson back then? They had to create the draft lottery back in the early 80s due to rampant tanking.
It’s always happened but it is far worse now
How old are you? One of the reasons the draft was created was the Rockets blatantly tanking by going 14-68 in ‘82-‘83 to get Ralph Sampson, the Wemby of his era.
It seems like you have created a made-up statement “no teams tanked in the past” and are responding to that. That is not what I said. And I’m guessing you might continue responding to that. I’m good with the fact that you can find specific teams that tanked in the past.
It is so obviously on a larger scale now than it was in the past it is indisputable. In 82-83 was a fifth of the league actively sitting their teams’ best players in large amounts of their games?
You never answered my question about your age. You seem a bit new to the NBA. To put it simply, yes, a lot of teams used to tank, all at the same time.
Cool. You don’t seem very observant, though, if you think tanking like last season is new. As I said in another comment, the league is finally making a big deal about it because they are partnered with gambling companies.
You seem like a guy that listens to talking heads and headlines and doesn’t think for himself if you don’t realize the 90s NBA was watered down talent wise and teams weren’t tanking like crazy during the Jordan Bulls era for guys like Shaq and Duncan.
Tanking is not new. A bunch of teams tanking simultaneously is not new. The league making a big deal about it because they are partnered with gambling companies is new. You also seem new.
I think Charles’ (at times) silly demeanor has caused people to undervalue what a gem of a personality he is and always was. Will be missed sorely when he’s gone. Charles always kept it a 100.
There are just a lot of bad teams. A 60 win eastern team is worse than a 60 win western team nowadays, but also it’s a crapshoot as to how many tanking teams are in your conference, excluding the forever-tanking Wizards, Bulls, Nets vs. the forever-tanking Jazz, Kings Pels.
Nowadays they walk through the regular season because 40% of the league is tanking. So it evens out.
People are such babies about the expansion draft. Michael Jordan’s Bulls lost their starting point guard in both the 1989 and 1995 expansion drafts. The literal #1 pick in the 1995 expansion draft was the Bulls starting point guard, and then the Bulls 3peated without him.
Imagine making this much of a fuss about Pelle Larsson or Jaxson Hayes or Baylor Scheierman lmfao
My fucking left ear.
Teams now have a cake walk compared to teams in the 2030s
This makes LeBron the goat?!??
The 72 win season was in an expansion year when 24 guys were in the NBA who would have been in the CBA or bagging groceries/substitute teaching and doing local runs at the YMCA to stay in shape.
The Jordan fans dont want to admit expansion greatly benefited Jordan. Thats why when he left the NBA was lost the talent was terrible. Lack of player movement plus expansion made teams bottom feeders for years.
That 89 Expasion diluted the NBA quality until 2005 Jordan plus Knicks being good covered it up to the public but to everyone outside those markets you knew the product was suffering.
Now expansion wasn’t the only issue having multiple draft classes from 1986-1991 where players had drug issues, attitudes, and injuries stopping them from realizing their potential basically removed a whole crop of new talent coming into the league to ride the growth. Thats why the NBA had to get more underclassmen and eventually HS players and foreigners.
The big joke about the Dream Team was it was really the NBA putting up a ‘Help Wanted’ sign, the NBA was advertising to the world we needed players and this was the standard of competition.
The NBA basically was sucking air for talent until the foreign players really came online as reliable source in about 2005 and 1996⁄2003 drafts produced talent that sustained the league for nearly 25 years. Go look at those drafts from 1986-1991…that was horrific.
Shocking, yet nobody talks about that when discussing Jordan…
Cream rises to the top, expansion talk is dumb
“The talk of expansion teams watering down the league doesn’t support my personal narrative, so it’s stupid”
Earlier in the 90s, Larry Bird exposed the 90s, saying that expansion heavily diluted the league
Jordan stans will never afmit it tho lol
The 75th best player in the league today is 10x better than the 75th best player in 1996.
Very scientific analysis. How did you calculate this discovery?