[Highlight] Magic Johnson dunks on Julius Irving in Game 1 of the 1983 NBA Finals but is called for an offensive foul.
Offensive fouls were called completely differently. Any dislodging of a defender was an offensive foul, as well as the use of the off arm, especially while finishing.
Nowadays you can push the defender with your off arm and THEY get called for a foul. It’s awful.
Arguably, the game today is more physical just because the players keep pushing the bounds of what the refs will allow. Defenders are allowed to dislodge big men from the post, hold shooters and cutters, and offensive players push off and barrel through contact. Old school basketball may have more static strength physicality, but the prevention of movement and screening today would not be allowed unders 80s rules.
I’ve tried to argue that before. The hard fouls were harder back in the day, but the every-play physicality is higher today in my opinion.
Hard defensive fouls were harder back in the day, hard offensive fouls are a lot harder now than in the past if you remove the elbows to the head and other hits to the head that are called flagrant 2s nowadays.
Shaq with todays rules would be interesting, getting rid of illegal defense clearly had a large impact on his ability to score in volume as his attempts went down a lot the year it went into effect (ewntry passes became a lot harder when teams could hedge into the passing lanes), but then again, with today’s shooting it may be harder to hedge that much. On the other end, he could be even more physical than he already was which is just scary, and make it harder to sop him, like, give him the gather step and the ability to dislodge players of today and he basically doesn’t need deep post position, he can catch it at the FT line and bully his way to the basket with the ‘gather step’ with maybe one dribble while moving the player out of the way and using his quickness to have it be at a slight angle to not be an offensive foul, and then dunk it. Like, even with help, if he is holding the ball with both of his massive hands I don’t see swiping at the ball dislodging it close to the basket so it would be unstoppable, throw in continuation and fouling is not a siolution because he would get the basket by dunking, and fouling him hard enough to prevent that risks a flagrant because of his size and strength requiring a huge windup just to make it have a chance to be hard enough to prevent the dunk.
Agreed. GSW dynasty completely took it to another level.
In here, there would be hard contacts if you are getting fouled or in post-up. But in modern times you have chase Steph Curry running three laps over half court while fighting through Draymond Green and Bogut’s screens. And all that for guy who dont even have a ball. Players just move more now. More movement means more contact
“screens”
Yup, even Andrew Bogut admits he got away with illegal screens
“I’ll just punch someone in the face on the screen, knock them out and they wouldn’t call it,” he hilariously recalled.
I haven’t seen a non moving screen in years
Blake Griffin ruined the game
as well as the use of the off arm, especially while finishing.
TIL all my masturbation sessions were offensive fouls
Impressive
it’s so you can use the main arm for controlling the mouse
most impressive
Cringe
Which is why I found Shaq so frustrating. The league completely changed how it called offensive fouls to allow Shaq to just bulldoze everyone, even inventing the little circle which eventually changed to apply to only help defenders, but initially was framed as a way for Shaq to just use his elbow and shoulder to pulverize people once he backed them into the circle.
Shaq was an all time player, but the league turned its rules upside down to accommodate him.
the restricted zone was created to stop players from drawing charge calls by standing close to the basket.
It wasn’t meant to apply to low post offensive fouls
It was for perimeter wings and drivers getting undercut by help defenders.
They did legalize zone defense cause man to man defense was pointless against him
Yep. Mario Elie broke both wrists by being undercut going for a dunk.
There were a lot of those types of injuries, something needed to be done.
They already had a rule that you had to be stationary before the offensive player left his feet, but that wasn’t being strictly called. Eurosteos were still illegal, so players were jumping vertically rather than sideways, so players would leave their feet very early, making it hard to really just stand under the basket. There was also the fact that illegal defense was still a thing. So you couldn’t sift double players like you can now.
They did add the circle for that reason, I’m just saying that it initially was ruled in a different way outside if that. It was a common refrain to look at Shaq just oblitering his primary defender, but youd check if one if his feet was in the circle.
The way the rule was enforced changed after Shaq.
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Can you explain how it didn’t help Shaq? Those were offensive fouls before and after Shaq.
Shaq on Dudley is one of his greatest highlights but is an offensive foul and a flagrant afterwards. How that was not called was ridiculous
Nothing worse than NBA fans who think they’re rules police.
Phil Jackson bitched and whined to Stern on Shaqs behalf when he came to the Lakers. Dude was allowed to put divets into Smits, Divac, Dikembe and Sabonis most of all. It was boring watching this kind of ball back then where one player could plow into another and no call.
Sabonis most of all
100 per cent.
The way he allowed to dip his shoulder into Sabonis chest was crazy especially in that 2000 series. Look at the Orlando years vs the lakers period. It was 2 different styles for him.
Sabonis had the size and strength to defend against Crap, but Crap would just elbow Sabonis in the solar plexus and the ref would call a defensive foul. And Sabonis would look at the ref with an expression like ‘what am I supposed to do, get out of his way?’ and the ref would pretty much say ‘yep’. And then Crap, Toby and that piece of shit Fisher would jump around like it was some sort of accomplishment.
Toby lol
Plenty of calls against Sabonis for receiving Shaws elbow to his chest.
Some examples: https://youtu.be/FJ3FXLyNFew?is=EcQ2YyYV4hsZqoNC
If Shaq’s dunk on Chris Dudley happened in ‘83, he may have been thrown out of the game, with a potential lifetime ban for an attempted homicide.
Thats a good point. People know offensive players have advantages due to the officiating now, but the lack of consistency of calls on both sides of the ball is what really frustrates me and it seems like a lot of the players. Players would adjust if contact was called a foul on either side of the ball. Most foul baiting moves would be offfensive fouls.
The changes to how players are allowed to dribble, combined with how players are allowed to dislodge defenders, really makes comparisons of modern bigs to older eras unfair. Giannis is obviously one of the greats, but I can also see that if your Kareem it’s like, can you imagine what he would’ve done if he was allowed to palm the ball like that?
The idea that wilt was just running around dunking on plumbers is largely based on the fact that modern audiences are applying current rules to previous eras. Wilt dominated despite the rules working against at his play style.
Bullshit. The NBA literally got rid of illegal defense to help teams guard Shaq. The circle in the key was to codify how deep someone could be standing to draw an offensive foul. Sure it helped Shaq at times, but overall in the league it was a big issue in terms officiating conststency.
Are we finally moving on from the eurostep/traveling discourse?
Between the gather step the third step and this, seems like LeBron would’ve had to really altered his game. Magic looked like LeBron there
Can we go back to this?
ref makes a clearly bad call today = refs don’t know the rules / nba is rigged
ref makes a clearly bad call but it’s 40 years ago = the game was just different, man
Its a great highlight, but it is called differently. Off arm on dunks was almost always an offensive foul.
As it should be
I wouldn’t have thrived in that era. I usually finish using my arms and hands. If you know what I mean.
Never seen a ref jump that high
Modern refs wouldn’t be able to keep up with the legends in the 80s
If they were as hopped up on coke as everyone in the ‘80s, then they would.
Zero lies in this statement.
Zoomers love their coke jokes
Boomers take their coke very seriously
It wasn’t as prevalent as you think
Or maybe it was more prevalent than you yourself realized.
That’s a lie, war on drugs happened because of how prevalent and common drugs were in America.
There’s many different sources of media that say different.
https://www.basketballnetwork.net/old-school/jeanie-buss-opened-up-about-wild-cocaine-culture-during-the-lakers-showtime-era
https://english.elpais.com/sports/2024-11-06/when-cocaine-ruled-the-nba-drugs-were-everywhere-it-was-like-a-fad.html?outputType=amp
https://youtube.com/shorts/uHpPYAqhRFM?is=6cdaxG5R435_V8Bd
today’s refs are mailmen and milkmaids
Plumbers. All of them.
If that’s Jack Madden, he was a great college basketball player and was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds as a pitcher. He was a good athlete.
Also, fun fact, he had glowing things to say about Dr J, calling him the classiest person he ever officiated. He called a lot of players whiners and had the moment with Wilt. I think he didn’t like seeing his favorite player get boomed by a young, brash phenom.
NBA Refs in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s were way more enthusiastic with their calls then they are now. Earl Strom was one of the great refs of all time and he put on an absolute show with his calls.
This subreddit jokes about “ref fans” and lo and behold, a bonifide ref fan.
I wouldn’t say I’m a fan in the traditional sense, like I don’t root for them to make themselves bigger than the game. But I do appreciate the difference in styles throughout the years. It adds some variety.
Soft era, in the 2020s they would’ve counted it!
Giannis does this on most drives lol.
Blake Griffin
Infuriating to watch at the time and now all his highlights are ruined for me
The game would be just fine without allowing that.
Tell that to Ant.
Bullshit ass calls.
incredible defense by Dr J this is why they say the players today could never survive
Really indicative of how much veterans were protected by officials back in the old days.
Magic is 23 here and was already a 2 X Champ yet he still got BS calls like this lol.
Magic was held to the highest standard of any player ever until at least LeBron. Got the nickname tragic Johnson for choking in one series after being a 2 time finals MVP and being 24
Refs sucked then, too. Nothing new. They’ve been blowing calls since before I was born and that’s sneaking up on six decades. It’s all I know.
Someone call a doctor
Dr J got bodied
Erving. Damn man, spell his name correctly
Lol my phone literally autocorrected to Irving and i noticed after i posted.
Home cooking right there.
Let’s hope the kids got theor grandmother’s ethics.
Sure it is pal. My uncle works at Nintendo 🤓
For all the terrible decisions that get made these days, no ref ever, EVER, in the world, would call that an offensive foul. W T F
And no ref then would ever let offense get away with all of the off arm clearing that happens nowadays.
Why did the ref do a pirouette?
Nasty dunk tho
Absolute joke of a call there.
Damn, how are they getting replays on controversial calls in 1983 & in 2026 we get Doris glazing SGA while cutting to commercial?!
Drunk and blind referee
Terrible call.
This dunk was clean.
While I think this is absurd, I’d prefer this over allowing offensive players to fully stiff arm defenders like it is now.
*Julius Erving
I love the Dr but that’s a shady call since no feet were planted.
They called Magic warding off with his off arm, don’t need feet set for that
Magic was such a beast
That minimally contested mid range jumper just feels so wrong
Damn the clearout was not even close to being as bad as it is now and they never call it
Example 2,541,798 of why you can’t compare eras.
Now this is the 2nd best player of all-time
Man, Blake griffin would been banished outta the league after his second season if this ref was still around
Yet another example why comparing eras is dumb. Just look at the poor transition defense. 1 on 3, no need to guard the 3pt line. Can’t even stop the ball
Kyrie Abdul-Jabbar looking on..
We’ve reached my favorite part of the r/reddit annual cycle where we just post old clips and talk about the players in them. Honestly, the best time to be on this sub lol.
His name is Julius Erving.
Defenders back then were too soft compared to the modern nba, they couldn’t handle any real physicality /s
What a terrible call. Irving just threw his body at MJ midair. MJ got punished for absorbing the contact and finishing.
Terrible call
I find it more crazy how you could be considered the GOAT PG while only being able to dribble with one hand.
Bob Cousy may well have had no left hand, but Magic apparently didn’t either.
“Bob Cousy had no left hand” was the downfall of many an opponent…
https://youtube.com/shorts/0jKLwjfkkQw?si=0DM5CNigQcX5xbHY
He used it when he needed it early in the move
Magic clears Curry. Curry’s differentiator is a skill that can be taught. There will only ever be one Magic.
I mean there is already better Magic.
LeBron James.
Thank you for confirming you aren’t familiar with Magic’s game without me having to ask!