So I've been thinking about the talent pool thing, especially in light of the fact that the former D-1 player from the 90's ITT that seems to think moves being executed at a level commonly seen in AAU U12 tournaments are some amazing next-level stuff. Then embarrassingly posts about Ant while comparing to early MJ, posting videos of MJ improvising random shots that are mainly demonstrative of MJ's poor decision making and lack of counter-moves to get separation that modern top players would have easily managed. While of course ignoring the fact that Ant literally is doing a bunch of things that MJ couldn't dream of, not to mention that Ant pulls off a lot of the same moves MJ did (um, you know, good ones, not the garbage stuff posted recently) with crisper execution.
That made me think - one key reason as to why the effective basketball talent pool has exploded that we don't talk about often enough is the internet. From a baseball thread:
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Originally Posted by candybar
I think it comes down to YouTube (and social media and the internet more generally) - the level of instruction is so much higher because of information that is directly available through these channels and also indirectly because coaches that would otherwise be teaching obsolete nonsense can also learn what they should be teaching instead. It's also easier than ever to find private instructors or to make a living as one because of the internet.
We can see the velocity improvements in baseball as a fairly objective measurement of the effective increase in talent pool. We know the human body hasn't changed that much and raw athleticism can't have improved that much, yet velo at the highest level (or for that matter any other measurement of pitch quality) has gone up substantially even over the last 10 years. We also know hitting has improved significantly because somehow scoring isn't down that much despite absolutely crazy improvements in pitching. And we know that all of this is largely due to significantly better training at the youth level.
While it's difficult to measure this for basketball the same way, the same is likely happening.
Kids are simply exposed to much higher quality instruction much earlier, because the internet democratized access. This likely started in the early 2000's as the internet started to become mainstream but likely significantly accelerated since then. Basketball is also one of those sports where natural talent is so important that so much innovation happens outside of the NBA, and the internet facilitated these skills to be transferred across the world - there are tons of moves that are in wide use today that were either not invented yet or were highly obscure in the 90's. Since learning the game early at a high level increases the skill ceiling, this massievly increased the effective talent pool over that time period. Which explains why the last generation that grew up largely without the benefits of this aged so terribly:
Quote:
Originally Posted by candybar
The thing that's truly amazing about Lebron's longevity, especially as it relates to his GOAT case, isn't just about the athleticism and taking care of your body and being great for so long. Dwight Howard is one year younger than Lebron and has aged fairly well physically. Yet, he went from a perennial MVP candidate to a role player who was benched for an entire playoff series. Even if you brought back peak Dwight Howard from the Orlando days, he would not be one of the top 30 players in the game right now. Not because peak Dwight Howard wasn't amazing but because the game has evolved.
If you look at other stars from his age cohort, part of the reason why most of them aren't even average players today has a lot to do with how the game has changed. Dwyane Wade can neither shoot 3s nor run a modern offense, which makes it difficult to build around him. Carmelo Anthony's iso-ball isn't efficient enough and his size-skill combination has become commoditized, while the evolution in defensive schemes made both his inability to read defenses and his own lack of defensive effort and skills quite problematic. Likewise, some of Dwight Howard's defensive skills have become obsolete due to the change in the game and Dwight Howard at his best never had the skills to run an efficient modern offense.
A lot of players that are much younger than Lebron that have already declined significantly also owe their declines more to the change in the game. Peak Westbrook relied on pushing pace and other players providing spacing, but now nearly every team pushes pace for extra efficiency and knows how to space and also defend against spacing, taking away Westbrook's strengths and leaving his own inability to shoot a glaring weakness. Kevin Love was one of the earlier versatile bigs to embrace 3-ball, which made him quite dangerous offensively, but his offensive value declined once everyone else could shoot 3's and his versatility became unimportant as the continued evolution of the game made his post game quite marginal without the advanced playmaking abilities which he lacked.
Conversely, many top players in MJ's age cohort played well into their mid-30's. The season after MJ retired (which would've been MJ's age-35 season), Karl Malone led the league in VORP at age 35, David Robinson was 7th at age 33, John Stockton was 13th at 36, Charles Barkley was 16th at 35, Reggie Miller was 20th at 33 and Hakeem Olajuwon was 21st at age 36 and Scottie Pippen was 23rd at 33. Out of top 50 players in 98-99 season, 17 were 32 or older and 8 were 35 or older. On the other hand, in the 2020-21 season, out of the top 50 players in VORP, just 4 were 32 or older and only Lebron was 35 or older. Given the advancement in sports science, this is quite unexpected - the evolution of the game has more or less obsoleted Lebron's generation entirely, leaving him standing alone.
From the standpoint of how they learned to play, not much changed from MJ to Lebron. However, because Lebron was basically part of the last generation before the internet changed everything, he had to compete against the next generation that was far more skilled. This meant Lebron's generation, as a group, appeared to age extremely poorly. Yet Lebron still remains a top player.
I think this is also an underrated part of what we think of as the 3-point revolution. Sure, coaches and front offices were sometimes being dumb about mid-range shots, but a huge part of this was that there just weren't that many good 3-point shooters and because there weren't that many good 3-point shooters (not just NBA, but all levels), and basketball tactics around utilizing 3-point shots were somewhat primitive. It's probably not a coincidence that the 3-point revolution only really started as the new internet generation (i.e. KD and Curry age cohort) came into their own in the league.