Illegal defense was such a dumb rule. It also made the mental game of playing defense much easier than today’s game.

Wdym by defense? It was a much easier defense to play against due to rule changes.

Defense is much more in tune and able to double off the ball now.

90s defense was handcuffed.

The players today would average over 40 if you couldn’t double without the ball. Steph would be unguardable.

I do think the players were tougher but only because medical science wasn’t as advanced back then. Playing through everything was just the norm

The defense was 100x simpler back then

Say 90s and back

the Knicks organist can stay tho, he’s pretty cool

The music just makes the whole league feels cheap and fake tbh. I hate how much the NBA and other american sports league is about other things than the sport itself.

I’m european and had a friend who doesn’t watch basketball over when a early game was on. He was so confused and straight up asked me “why are they playing music during the game?”

Guess it will never change as long as the commissioner says the NBA is a “highlight sport” or whatever he said.

I specifically mean the actual music. Don’t mind the organ like the Knicks do it. Been to MSG and it was a fun experience.

My small pet peeve has always been the Mario coin sound during fts. I think it’s so lame

I personally cant stand the stupid exaggerated squeaking from the shoes

Idk what it’s like at other arenas or if the Suns still do it but it was a constant stream of music whenever the Suns had the ball and “DEFENSE” when the other team had the ball. Like can we please get some silence once in a while?

It’s way too loud at games. Gives me a headache abd just another reason (besides $$$) why I don’t want to go to a game

i feel like i’m going crazy when you have guys like lamelo palming the ball every dribble and im like “how’re you supposed to guard that when he can do that”

Does anyone remember that Shaqtin a Fool clip where Bron gets away with a quintuple carry lol. I think the refs missed that he was already out of steps when he sets a new pivot foot, then he jab steps a few times, then he drives to the rim

Pretty soon it’ll just be rugby style

x10000

I’m probably the oldest guy on this sub and this bothers me more than it should. Visiting team wearing white is just wrong.

Well that and the ads, gambling, music, etc.

Lakers wearing yellow on the road just looks so wrong

I hate that I can’t turn on a game (any sport) and tell who the teams are just by the uniforms.

Wasn’t there once a Knicks vs Celtics game where the Knicks had some sort of green jerseys? Might’ve been another team, was so confusing.

How will Nike make money this way? Poor small business.

Another thing Nike ruined. Home was supposed to be white jersey.

I never got the focus on jerseys. I don’t care what color they are as long as I can tell the teams apart

Also, alts that last for more than one year.

Hot take: I actually disagree with white at home. It’s cool to have different colored home jerseys around the league, unless it’s an absolute classic like the Lakers whites

I also haven’t gotten used to the extra amount of ads.

Still looks like shit. Look up a finals game from 12 years ago. It’s depressing to compare.

This is definitely mine. Nike coming out with 20 stupid jerseys every year and then teams always wearing white on the road drives me insane. The Lakers wearing yellow in Boston is a crime.

Its why dribbling looks so stiff before the 90s. They called every single carry call.

Didn’t the US Olympic team basically have to relearn how to dribble before the Olympics since the NBA rules are so lax that they’d get nonstop traveling calls if they didn’t?

Enforce carries and the gather rule makes more sense. With basically no carries being called, the gathers with the hand under the ball are ridiculous. The gather rules make sense, though.

KAT looking more like a fullback than a center as he crashes to the basket

Easiest way to enforce the carry rule: if your middle finger is below the equator of the ball it’s a carry. Still allows some players to do these crazy cross overs and such but everyone and there momma ain’t gonna have the ball on a string.

I hate that they started allowing gather steps away from the basket. Gather steps should just be for layups and dunks to make them less awkward. Gathering backwards seems against the spirit of the rule.

Other than the different timing structure, I vastly prefer NCAA rules. Picking up the ball establishes the pivot. I imagine some amount of people thinking a gather is a travel is that a gather IS a travel if you ever played basketball at school.

Bold take, stunning and brave

(ಠ_ಠ)

You guys are cutting open the bottom of your peach baskets?!?

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Worst part of the game

We want to see the hoop plus the harm

Not the flailing and crying to refs

Tee up anybody complaining to the refs too

Denver gets away with it with Jokic

And they don’t really “get away with it,” given that Denver consistently falls short in the playoffs.

The single playoff run they had was also a perfect storm of factors, including having one of the statistically easiest runs to a chip with zero 50+ win opponents.

The reality is the Jokic’s defensive shortcomings are a constant hamstring on the Nuggets. It’s unfortunate bc while poor defensive guards can be covered for easily, your center being mediocre defensively is hard to get around. Not Jokic’s fault that he’s a center; but it’s the reality of the situation.

And it’s always going to be an issue for a Jokic team, as much as he’s an otherworldly offensive player and one of the best ever on that end.

Denver gets away with it with Jokic

Denver got away with it once with Jokic, but it took everything falling into place perfectly for them to win a title. There is a reason Denver has only made one Final appearance and has consistently been bounced in the first and second round throughout Jokic’s career

Andrew Bogut, Javale McGee, and Kevon Looneybwould beg to differ. Warriors dynasty survived these men

The thing is we can have all four of those but the modern rules in game make it so that posting up and mid-range aren’t as valuable. Getting rid of the illegal defense rules hurt posting up too because you couldn’t double a guy until he got the ball. So if a guy is posting up now, people can just sag into his lap and makes it harder to get the ball in good post position now

Feeding the post is entertaining in moderation. Feeding the post and watching the centers go at it while everyone else just stands there is not entertaining when it’s happening for a good chunk of the game.

I think great ball movement leading to open threes is great to watch, but when it turns into “Let’s see which team can chuck and hit more contested threes” it turns into really shitty product from an entertainment perspective.

They still do this though, but only to the best players. Gotta have spacers out on the 3 because if not, then help defense would just jam up their space.

A midrange jumper is basketball in its purest form. People only take them for the love of the game. It’d be so easy to step out further and shoot, or be a little more aggressive and go to the cup, but a purest takes the open space and lofts it up. A three pointer takes forever to come down and obviously there’s hardly any hangtime for the ball when shot in the paint, save for the floater, but the midrange jumper has the crispest arc, just the right amount of time going up and splashing down.

The problem is that it’s just so much harder to feed the post without illegal defense and catch and shoot midranges to me are the same as catch and shoot threes.

Hey man it worked for you guys

If you only watch Celtics then that would get repetitive they shoot a ton, but I never saw the difference three and long twos entertainment wise it’s the same shot just a foot longer. They still get to the rim at the same rate.

Eh, yeah the end result of the possession is a 3, but there’s a lot more nuance and variety on how the shooter gets the 3 now. Offensive and defensive gameplans are much more complex than decades past

Seems to be a Celtics problem

I genuinely don’t know how Celtics fans enjoy watching their team play. It’s like all of the least enjoyable parts of basketball jammed into a single team. Can’t stand it

Tell me you don’t watch games without telling me.

There’s more variety in play styles than there was in 2019. The Celtics are also on the extreme end of jacking 3s.

The current back to back MVP is known for having a mid-range game highly reminiscent of the 2000s. You don’t watch basketball lol

You were pretty spot on. I looked it up and of the last 15 NBA champions, they average a rank of 5.7 in the regular season.

Only 3 10 or worse

* 22-23 Nuggets, 15th

* 17-18 Warriors, 11th

* 15-16 Cavs, 10th

Yeah, people that argue against that are crazy

The way Jordan drove to the rim he’d get even more free throws now then he did back then.

The fact that someone with Chet Holmgren’s build can be a meaningful contributor on a contender is an indictment on the rules that have made defenses softer and less physical

Did you uh watch the Western Conference Finals

If they built a team around fouling Shaq these days they’d be in for a rude awakening once they found out he’d been retired for 15 years.

1990s guys on average were skinnier than today.  Manute Bol? Reggie Miller? Ralph Sampson? Allen Iverson? Young Kevin Garnett? Kenny Anderson?

partially correct because chet is the reason why okc is pretty much fucked unless wemby is hurt in the playoffs

I mean the league is pretty much drafting any halfway nimble 7 footer in the first round to counter Wendy. Every team is going to need 2 or 3 of those.

I disagree completely,. Someone with Chet’s build playing CENTER is an indictment of defense, He has the skillset to play 3-4. He’s about the same size as KD was at that point in his career. Chet is really an over sized wing whose specialty is defense not offense.

Well but he plays against big guys anyway and is able to score and send them home. It is agility vs strenght. I think Wemby would eat Shaq for breakfast.

It really is crazy how they’ve done so much stuff to juice the offensive stats

Trying to coach my high schoolers is a nightmare because of what they see and try to emulate lmao. It’s even worse when they watch the trash Basketball Influencers who only know how to play 1s and travel 95% of every possession.

This. This is what I think has driven off some “old heads”. I have family members who used to be big basketball/NBA fans who don’t want to watch anymore because “it’s not basketball anymore” to quote one of them.

The pace of the game has increased significantly. Watch a game from the 90s. Almost every possession is in the half court following slowly dribbling the ball up.

Players are playing hard, the pace of play just means requiring more rest or finding ways to recuperate in other ways.

Who’s not playing hard compared to players in the 90s? If you compare games side by side you’ll way more activity now than back. Defenses especially are flying around back and forth.

When I watch 90s games on YouTube, it fascinated me how 1.) there’s ZERO foul baiting & 2.) when there’s hard fouls, they just fucking get up and keep playing. They’re not laying on the ground for 30 seconds

They robbed the Pistons of the title in 88 with that Lambier phantom foul on Kareem. Wasted a hall of fame performance from Isiah Thomas.

How do I enjoy my 30s?

Franz? Paolo? Suggs? Anthony Black?

Nephew take

This is not an old head take. This is a nephew on r/nba take.

Kobe is one of my favorite players of all time but I see some kids now saying he’s a top 10 and even some have said top 5 player of all time! Thats insane. Hes the 4th best Laker of all time, let alone top 5 player all time.

Upvote to the moon