And what's funny is as of a year or 2 ago Melo was about 3x more clutch than Kobe. And I do not like Melo personally btw

Kobe was under the avg for clutch situations. I don't have the stats but Lebatard made a huge deal of the statistic and read the list b/c he hate's the avg fan's derp derp narrative so much - I've DL his radio show periodically for years

well yea, people are dumb. Show them Kobe hitting one ridic tough fadeaway that he made tougher on himself for no reason to win the game once, and they will forget about the other 10 he missed.

Lebron
Kobe
Howard
Rose
Durant
KG
Melo - maybe bad example
Chandler
Love

... That's off the top of my head

I know that's the common Meme but these guys are better off getting pro tutelage IMO

Who cares if some guy who might have been a career 8th man flames out?

Eddy Curry and John Wall are going to be knuckleheads no matter how much school they go thru. The Derrick Coleman's have always existed

Bynum too.

Sure if OJ Mayo or Rudy Gay had gone to college longer maybe they'd be a little better, then again, maybe not and it's ez to point to lack of additional college as reasons for any flaw in their game.

If only Mateen Cleaves and Adam Morrison would've stayed longer ... o wait

Men's records set in 1992 or before:

400m hurdles
long jump
shot put
discus
hammer throw

Bump the time to 1996, you add
3000m
high jump
pole vault
triple jump
4x400m relay

In 1992, the world record for 100m was 9.86, which was faster than anyone ran in the last World Championships. It would have been good for second in the 2008 Olympics.

melo is definitely a bad example, but the guys who would be rotation players who still made the pros for a few years then flamed out would make all of the above even better had they stayed in school. The better the weaker players are the better the elite ones would be.

The only thing staying in school does is make it easier for GM's to draft and builds a Q rating for college players entering the league.

For the most part pro tutelage/S&N programs/amount of time to devote to bball is so much greater in the NBA than college it's not close.

If only Terrence Morris would've stayed in school he would've improved leaps and bounds as opposed to being a lottery pick.

- Reality was nope he didn't improve and got drafted in the 2nd round and ended up in Europe.

Like I said, it only makes the evaulations better.

Mike Dunleavy Jr wishes he would've left earlier b/c of NBA coaching and etc

Yeah, definitely. This is a big pro for the modern game. Guys like Blake Griffin and James Harden would just be raw rookies next year if they had to stay through 4 years of college, but instead they're already polished professionals.

For anyone interested, here is the entire game 2 of the 1991 Finals between the Bulls and Lakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC9ozsRRabU

I am getting an error message when trying to watch it on youtube ATM, but I was able to download it and watch it.

Even Magic Johnson thinks this thread has AIDS.

Some questions: Do you guys think that "basketball ability" has a plateau? Like, over time, is the elite of the basketball playing population just getting better and better without bound, or are they approaching some limit? In 50 years are we going to see 7' tall point guards with 50" verticals and 60% 3PT%'s? If the answer to this is HURR DURR NO, what does that imply about the "basketball ability is constantly increasing lineurrrly over time" arguments? If the sort by birthyear method of measuring basketball ability is valid, why is the average height of NBA players shorter now?

This is just wrong. Seriously, how did you come up with this? High jump is one of the most "athletically pure" events there is, along with the sprints. There aren't too many confounding factors in measuring how high you can jump over a bar, it's basically just... how high you can jump. Once you master the proper "form", like in running, it's just pure muscle power.

Despite this "constant expansion among the elite", the year's best performance in high jump was 1 inch less last year than it was 20 years ago. The world record in the high jump was set in 1993. The 2 previous world records were set by the same guy, in 1988 and 1989.

Constant expansion? I mean, are we just making stuff up now or is there actually some thought put into these made up sort by birthyear assertions? Did you just notice that records are broken in track and field occasionally, therefore the top 12'ish basketball players in 2012 can jump a whopping fraction of an inch higher than the top 12'ish basketball players in 1992 (actually, probably not apparently), therefore they'd get trounced? If the whole 15-year-old 2012 pwns all side is based on this "constant expansion of athleticism without bound" argument, you may at least want to check your lol assumption that the 2012 team jumps a fraction of an inch higher.

As for sprinting, Usain Bolt's performances over 2008 - 2009 were some of the most insane statistical outliers of any athletic performance in history. He CRUSHED every single other elite sprinter in the world in the events he set the world record in. Guess how much lower the record is in 2012 than in 1991 for the 100 meters? 2.8%. Guess how much lower the world record is in the 200 m compared to 1979? 2.7%. This isn't even including Michael Johnson's other crazy statistical outlier (at the time) in 1996. This is from Pietro Mennea's world record ffs. In 1979.

So basically in the high jump the best jumps are actually lower now than 20 years ago and the WR has stood for 20'ish years. In the sprints, we have one of the biggest genetic freaks of the last 100 years, running for a country that does not have year round drug testing, running a few races over 2008-2009 that amounted to some of the biggest statistical outliers in any athletic performance in history, and he lowers the records by a whopping 2.8 and 2.7% over some Italian dude named Pietro who set one of the records in 1979. And this doesn't even take into account that tracks are way more technologically advanced now and perfectly optimized for traction and energy return.

Why again are we using track and field to compare the 1992 Dream Team to the 2012 Olympic basketball team? Someone remind me. OH YEAH LBJ >>> ALL SORT BY PER AND 100 METER TIMES.

But the differences ARENT negligible, at the very tail end, of every sport that is objectively measured, like sprinting, distance running, swimming, weightlifting, etc. At the very, very absolute tail end, the athletes progressively improve, relentlessly.

Stop saying "tail end" like its some magic thing where logic doesnt apply.

I know you think that. I just dont know why. Because as the mean increases, so does performance at the extreme tails, for basically every other sport. You are asking for special pleading for basketball, and the only reason it isnt patently obvious that you are wrong is because basketball is measured as a RELATIVE accomplishment, and not an absolute, objective "race against the clock."

So....would you like some examples of human beings in skill-based, non-athletic endeavors, consistently improving over the last 20 years, even at the "tail ends," so that you can have some confidence that this phenomenon doesnt just apply to vertical leap?

It must just be an amazing coincidence that the first thing that came to your mind, the high jump, just happened to be the single example that helps your point.

It is very likely there is some plateau, it is very unlikely we reached it in 1992.

vhawk, progressively being more wrong, relentlessly.

I know you think athleticism improves constantly over time such that we can say for certain it has improved in basketball over the last 20 years, I'm just not sure why.

It's also pretty lol that you think the tail ends of a distribution somehow behave like the mean. How many 8'11" people do we have in the world like we did in 1930? You do realize that all of your approximations and assumptions are wrong, don't you?

Funnily enough, considering we were talking about leaping ability in basketball, it WAS The first thing that came to my mind! I thought you guys would have actually checked something as fundamental as world high jump performances over time, but apparently I was wrong.

Now, spend a little more time thinking about what the fact that these world records have stood since 1990'ish implies about this "plateau" (that you concede probably exists) and how close we are now relative to 20 years ago.

20 years aint **** man. Might start really noticing a difference in a hundred years.

re 1st bolded: raw athleticism /= playing ability

also, the progression is far from relentless or orderly, and often it comes from innovations in technique, equipment and (I would argue) training rather than the inherent superiority of the sport's latest athletes.

re 2nd bolded: by your logic, the best player in the history of each professional sport would be playing right now, which is clearly not true in baseball and basketball, and debatable in football (by position ofc) and soccer (don't follow it much, but understand that messi may be > pele).

eta: I'm saying "very tail end" to describe extreme outliers. we're talking about players who would be stars in any era.

I would like to point out to the 2012'ers that you are now, in fact, arguing that the 2012 team would beat (for some extra special posters, trounce) the 1992 Dream Team because 100 meter times are a tiiiiny bit faster now in track and field.

LOL @ using percents on the 100m and 200m times like they mean something. It's like if I say I can run the 100 in 12 seconds, Usain Bolt's only 25% faster than me or something. It's a stupid, meaningless number. All 2.7% means there is that if the best runner in 1979 ran against the best today, he'd still have 5.4 meters left when the other guy finished. I don't see why I should be impressed by that.

And this thing about Usain Bolt just being a once in a lifetime athlete isn't true either. 4 other guys have also beaten the old world record since Bolt set his record in 2009. Basically, of the 5 fastest sprinters of all-time, 5 of them have peaked in the last 4 years. And if you look across all track and field records, while there are some occasional old marks that still hold up, the majority of track and field records have been set in the last decade, which would give the impression that on the whole, people from this decade have outperformed people in every other decade combined. In swimming, it's even more pronounced, even if you exclude records achieved with the bodysuits that are now banned.

The simple fact is that sport doesn't remain static. It's constantly advancing, as people are looking for every edge, and coming up with new innovations, be they in training, nutrition, or strategy. The simple fact that the Dream Teamers didn't understand the value of the corner 3 would definitely hurt them a lot if they were to play the 2012 team, as would the leaner physiques on the perimeter players. These are all advancements that have been made over the last 20 years that would make the 2012 team play better basketball, just like the 2012 track athletes run faster, and the 2012 swimmers swim faster. It's not 100% that every single player's better, Jordan would still be the best guard playing in the game just like Javier Sotomayor was the best high jumper even though he's from the 90s, but as a whole, the 2012 team would be superior, just like the '92 USA track team would get trounced by the 2012 team.

Half the dream team was getting all-star-level player efficiency ratings in the late 90s and early 2000s, at the end of their careers. Yeah athletes today are on average better than 20 years ago but wtf at it being a blowout or evolution having anything to do with it. Seriously, evolution? Over twenty years? These are basketball players, not fruit flies or x-men.

Oldest speed-skating record: 2005
Oldest weightlifting record: 1999
Oldest swimming world record: 2001

Why is it in your opinion that all these sports have progressed forward to the point that not one world record holder is from as far back as Jordan's time, but basketball has somehow remained static and seen no change whatsoever over the course of 20 years?

BTW, when people talk about "evolution" they don't mean Darwinian evolution through natural selection. They mean evolution of the sport (i.e. teams learning about the value of the corner 3, more perimeter players doing weight training from an early age, etc., etc.)

Thats reasonable, and as mentioned, I'm in the DT>2012 camp, and definitely in the MJ>LBJ camp (for now).

This is irrelevant unless a team takes advantage of it, which few do. For the purpose of this example: do you know whether 2012 is taking more corner 3s?