Quote:
Originally Posted by VincentVega
Yes I'm following the conversation from the last two pages. I mean this thread is generally unreadable so I feel pretty accomplished being able to do that. But posting Gobert hitting a hailmary fade away and arguing "because he showed the proper footwork" shows how offensive players have vastly improved is just not a very sound argument.
It wasn't meant as an argument - it's just something that illustrates a vast skill gap between today's game and MJ's era. Rudy Gobert - literally one of the least skilled players in the game - was out there doing something that MJ himself could not do when he was young, despite being an MVP-caliber offensive player as a guard. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, I don't expect you to understand.
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Originally Posted by VincentVega
There's A LOT of "rim runners" in today's game who could not hit that outside of the 6 of 100 stat that was posted.
The point is that in 84, back when MJ entered the league, most NBA players didn't know how to do that at all, never mind the accuracy.
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Originally Posted by smartDFS
gobert makes that shot maybe 6 times out of 100, so not the best example of how the bar for efficiency has been raised in today's game. unless youre just trolling fg in which case bravo
No, he's done this before and he looks efficient enough by 90's half-court offense standards and that's without having the benefit of specifically looking for this shot. It's obviously terrible offense in today's NBA and in this case he only took the shot because of the shot clocking running down.
I assume you guys are simply unfamiliar with the game (so you have no idea what I'm saying really) but 6 out of 100 is a terrible estimate. Once the footwork is there, a shot is a shot - the hard part of the execution is having consistent footwork that lets you get the separation so that the shot becomes repeatable (i.e. you don't have to improvise to get the shot off like young MJ often did before developing these shots, this is the entire point of all these skill moves). That's what you look for here and the point is that it looks repeatable. I mean a contested in-game shot is rarely going to be high-percentage and Rudy Gobert not being a good shooter makes this a novelty, but it's a clean look, so wouldn't be much worse than 30% and could very well be higher.
Again, the point is that today's players are so skilled that Rudy Gobert - who only gets to do this probably like once every 20 games or so and is famously unskilled - can do this, whereas many star players in 80's who would've become vastly better had they worked on this shot and were considered highly skilled compared to their peers, couldn't. Obviously you can use just about every skill to demonstrate this, but twog literally called this out as some kind of ultimate basketball skill, so it's funny that Gobert did this.
If anything, the worse you think Rudy Gobert is at making the shot, the stronger this becomes as evidence of gap between today's game and 80's/90's basketball.
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Originally Posted by VincentVega
The difference in talent is the 6'7 to 6'10 swingmen in today's game imo
The difference in skill is just massive everywhere.
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Originally Posted by VincentVega
And it's because they are generally not as bulky
This is a myth - today's players are generally bigger than when MJ played. There was a brief period of time in the late 90's and 00's when teams started carrying huge centers but big men for most of MJ's career were quite a bit skinnier than today's big men.
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Originally Posted by VincentVega
and are faster
Raw athleticism is probably the thing that improved the least, in part because some raw athletes that would've easily been able to play in 80's or 90's NBA are no longer welcome in a league that requires a much higher skill level as a baseline. Also I think you're thinking late 90's / 00's when the game slowed down and more teams had these lumbering giants as backup centers.
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Originally Posted by VincentVega
and grew up shooting 3s.
This is a lazy perspective. It's more that they grew up playing basketball and received incomparably better basketball instruction from when they were young. The overall skill level outside of 3-point shooting probably improved even more. 3-point shooting is something that casual fans can see easily but practically every star forward in today's game would be a complete outlier from a skill perspective in the 80's and 90's even without the 3-point shooting. Consider how Carmelo Anthony would be perceived in the 80's/90's (an outlier from a skill/size combination perspective) and how he would be perceived in today's game (yikes).
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Originally Posted by VincentVega
But back then they were "power forwards ". And you know what PFs did? Guard and rebound
And today's big men are substantially more skilled at these things too. If you watch a random 80's game, it's shocking how often the defense just breaks down or players literally don't know how to do basic things. And this is despite the scheme being much simpler - there wasn't even much to do in the first place.