ITT we learn that sorting by birthyear is the epitome of sports logic, yet proof that a Dream Teamer was still dominating at almost the halfway point between the two eras while way past his peak is irrelevant.

And as Nicholasp pointed out, maybe if simple arguments weren't way over your head so you kept bringing up Malone's dominance at almost 36 I wouldn't have to keep going over it. Would you like me to try drawing out the argument in your coloring book for you?

Who's the most condescending?

lol, well this post is pretty funny considering the post you made directly before it, but I wasn't actually talking about you.

Its just as fallacious if you use "improve dramatically" as "improve"

From ages 25-27 in what are obviously peak years for a professional basketball player, Dan Issel put up the following averages:
21.8 PP36, 9.9 RP36, 2.1 AP36, 19.8 PER, .536 TS%

Then, late in his career at age 32-34 when all scientific research will show he obviously COULDN'T have been as good, he put up these numbers:
26.2 PP36, 9.0 RP36, 2.7 AP36, 22.1 PER, .585 TS%

I think this scientifically shows that there was no improvement whatsoever from the ABA in the mid-70s to the NBA in the Dream Team era. After all, if Issel did better in the NBA at almost the halfway point in time and after the merger was fully complete than he did in the ABA, the game couldn't have evolved significantly over that time period.

I wonder if you could find the right chain of guys who posted better seasons in their 30s than mid-20s to scientifically prove that the quality of basketball play has not changed in the past 70 years

It would be trivial to do it going forward from Issel to now, and you can go back another decade or so with Lenny Wilkens, but you can't do it back to the '50s, just because pretty much no one played into their mid-30s until the late 60s/early 70s.

looks like this guy

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...mcguidi01.html

went from a 8.8/6.0/5.7 line per 36/15.4 PER/.445 TS% in 1952 at age 27

to

11.8/8.8/6.5 per 36/16.4 PER/.491 TS% in 1959 at age 34

seems like a good starting point, and we can extrapolate from those 7 years to conclude no one improved from 1952 to 1972.

Its just the law of the contrapositive guys, pretty basic stuff really

But how did track times change during that period?

And another one bites the debating dust. Typical take your ball and go home guy.

You admit to not following bassketball, yet then preach about how much you know.

Really? Where was the 50% shooting against Lithuania?? Or against any team that knows how to play defense.

What scientific research? Why didn't you post this?

He meant that it's theoretically impossible in this thread to get better with age in basketball in your 30s. You guys like to point out outliers but the normal thing is for players to improve until peak which is around 27 and then decline--when there are some players whose career trajectory doesnt do that and that's the proof you guys are using and it's so ****ing stupid. There are examples which are normally outliers that can prove the points either way but using one or two outliers literally proves nothing but many of you are oblivious to this. I was going to stay out of this thread. ****.