I'm not gonna argue that LeBron didn't have more talent around him or that he was better than MJ. But to have Kobe way ahead of LeBron and Shaq is psychotic.

Not sure what your fetish is with the idea of the 2-point jump shooter, twog, but w/e man, you do you.

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. 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 difference in talent is the 6'7 to 6'10 swingmen in today's game imo

And it's because they are generally not as bulky and are faster and grew up shooting 3s. See: Davis brothers as examples. Those guys would be stretch 5s today if they grew up in that environment. But back then they were "power forwards ". And you know what PFs did? Guard and rebound

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.

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.

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.

The difference in skill is just massive everywhere.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Well, I'm 38. So I can't speak too much on 80s basketball. If you want to criticize my knowledge of basketball, ok...but you don't know me and I'm not typing out these ridiculously long dissertations that are mostly insulting.

Do you realize that growing up in the 90s I was flat out told that a 3 point shot was "a bad shot"? Just the way it was.

But honestly, to assume that because you didn't see Jordan shoot these shots doesn't mean he couldn't. That's just silly. The dude made a living as the greatest jump shooter ever and you think at 23 years old he would struggle to shoot fadeaways? I'm guessing you saw a tremendous amount of NBA games in the 80s and early 90s and specifically Bulls games. I grew up in Indiana and got WGN on cable so I got to see the majority of Bulls games throughout the early to late 90s.

I am not going to argue the overall skill of a random player in the league today isn't better than 30 years ago. That's just nonsense and I can't imagine anyone outside of TWD is arguing that. I do agree with some of his thoughts in how Lebron decides to run offenses and his presence guts franchises future but I can't exactly blame that on him. His copy and pasting **** is ridiculous. But your rather quick to try and insult and as someone mentioned the yin to his yang.

You literally believe you know more about ball than any random you run into here and automatically assume you have more experience? That alone calls into question the validity of your claims.

if you watched the series you'd know rudy shot about 25% on clean floaters in the lane over a decent sample. i'll bet my life he can't replicate that shot at 30%. just look at wolves bench player afterward... he reacts exactly like someone who just won the lottery.

fact is wolves were on some angels in the outfield **** in that 2nd half. if you watch the replay in slow motion you can see the angel guide it into the hoop. i'm with you that relative skill level of players today is higher, ant is jordan 2.0, etc. this is just a terrible illustrative example.

Jordan would eat antman alive. And I like Edwards a lot and said a couple years ago this dude has the build and rythym MJ has. He's gonna be great.

Everything else I 100% agree with you

.
Most SG's in today's game are 6'2" to 6'4" - Scotty Barnes is the only SG listed at 6'7", whereas there were tons of 6'7" shooting guards in Jordan's era:

6'7" REGGIE LEWIS










6'7" DALE ELLIS (one of the greatest 3-point bombers ever with He-Man physique in the 80's):










"THUNDER" DAN MAJERLE:

Tons of other 6'7" shooting guards like Clyde Drexler, Reggie Miller, Reggie Theus, Gervin, Willie Anderson, Malik Sealy, Michael Finley, and more.

Since they didn't allow the traveling and carrying in previous eras, shooting guards didn't have the kind of handle that today's players have, so SG's were taller back then to make up for it and more rugged overall.. This is just another reason Jordan would average 40 today - the league-average height in today's game is a full inch shorter, in addition to the spaced-out, hands-off, open paint beginner format.

It's okay. I found evidence that they were better at shooting 3s in the 90s because Rodman made one.

Today's game takes 40 threes per game compared to basically zero in the 80's.. In the absence of three-point strategy or use, turnarounds from mid-range were the primary and preeminent way to score - everyone had a great turnaround and this includes role players... James Edwards had one of the best turnaround jumpers of all-time... Vinnie Johnson had a killer turnaround... Players were forced to take more turnarounds because the hand-checking forced them to turn their back to defenders and offenses ran through the post, not perimeter drive-and-kick like today's game.. Today's game shuns the mid-range, so turnarounds are shunned and few players are good at them or even allowed to take them... When someone makes a turnaround in today's game, it's a highlight like Gobert's shot... Whereas previous eras literally lived off the shot - they usually weren't highlights.. So you couldn't be more wrong - role players had great turnarounds and obviously any good scorer had a killer turnaround - Bernard King, Alex English, Dominique, Jordan, Bird, Kiki Vandeweghe - amazing turnaround jumpers.. Rookie Jordan already had a great turnaround although he didn't need it as often due to his athleticism at that time.. Don't make me start posting a bunch of Jordan turnarounds, but he was doing the windshield wiper move from COLLEGE, let alone the NBA.

lol

Dennis Rodman 3 point percentage - 23%
Rudy from beyond 10 feet - 22%

Proof that players shot better from 3 than today's big men shoot from mid-range.

Case closed.

If you don't understand the topic at hand and don't want to be insulted, maybe don't write a mostly insulting post in a hostile tone:

If you don't understand the point, maybe ask actual questions instead of that?

Not practicing a 3-point shot growing up doesn't have much impact on your ceiling as as a shooter, as long as you understand and work on the shooting fundamentals. If anything, it's very easy to get into bad habits (you see this all the time) trying to shoot 3's when you're not ready and don't have the fundamentals mastered. For players that end up being really tall (i.e. most NBA players), this is even more true - your mechanics will change a ton as you grow anyway, so it's much more important to understand the fundamentals, since specifics will change.

Now, today's players are way better at shooting, but it's not because kids are chucking up 3's from when they are little, but rather because players are taught better shooting fundamentals that then later translate as they increase their range.

No, we know this because we saw MJ's evolution as a jump-shooter and a post-player. It's not like we didn't see a turnaround jumper early on - we saw MJ execute it incorrectly by today's standards, he didn't know how to get separation with his feet or with the post-up, so he would either go up and awkwardly maneuver his upper body to get the shot off or just rely on the quickness / vertical.

Michael Jordan came into the league at 21, but yeah that's the point - he was an unpolished jump-shooter at the time. This is fairly well-known, you could literally look this up and is kind of the entire point. It's also important to distinguish touch from footwork and skill moves (which in turn are distinct from shooting mechanics) - I think this is where you're getting confused. MJ always had great shooting touch - this doesn't mean he mastered the footwork for various skill moves he came to be known later for.

Again, this is ironic coming from someone who started the interaction with "Ever heard of Sabonis or Hakeem"

No, I don't have to assume, because I can read your posts and infer lack of certain knowledge.

The shot in question is a 13-footer and Gobert is .275 from 10-16 over the past 5 years and .324 over the past 3. And .381 from 3-10 over the past 5 and .414 over the past 3. Gobert is also 3 of 8 from 3-10 and 5 of 7 from 10-16 in the playoffs this year.

I'm not sure why you think your (almost certainly incorrect) guess as to how often Rudy Gobert made floaters over a single playoff series is particularly meaningful.

Again, if you want to understand, this is probably the most important point. The worse Gobert's shooting touch is, the less useful this shot is for him (not just at the moment, but at any point in Gobert's basketball career) and the more impressive it is that he knows how to execute it. As in today's basketball players are so skilled that they know how to do all sorts of things at a high level even though they don't have the complementary skills to make them useful.

Whereas, tons of guys in the 80's for whom this actually would've been extremely useful, didn't know how to do it. That's the skill gap we're talking about.

Americans - who are mostly idiots - badly underrate Pau and overrated Kobe.

Pua was two decades ahead of his time interns of skill set. And he was a winner with a killer mentality.

So let's take this as an example:



Most of these jumpshots are poorly executed by today's standards - poor footwork leading to poor alignment and poor separation despite less athletic and shorter defenders, leading to that weird shooting motion where he has to extend arms all the way and flick to get the shot off. Keep in mind, you see rookie MJ doing similar things - to his credit, MJ figured out everything out over time and looked like a modern player by the early 90's. Or should I say, modern players now look like MJ.

There's a reason why one of the most skilled scorers of his era with an incredible shooting touch who was a physical mismatch for the league at 6-8, against terrible defenses of the time put up just .550 TS for his career. You give him modern skills and footwork and he'd probably put up like .650+ TS.

Again, this is extremely unfair because the game hadn't evolved enough for people to understand what you were even supposed to do. Coaches back then couldn't tell you what you were supposed to do.

There certainly wasn't a video like this you could watch:



I mean you were lucky if someone wasn't trying to get you to do things incorrectly. I'm sure the proper footwork as we understand literally came from earlier players like Alex English messing around with different things and the basketball world collectively figuring out what's effective. But that's the point - the game evolves.

Wait, your impression is that NBA players are shorter nowadays? They are generally taller, with the major difference that players nowadays are generally listed at height without shoes, whereas in the past they were generally listed at whatever they wished their height was with shoes.

Kobe was awesome in those years with Pau. That shouldn't be taken away from him. They were probably his best seasons. But Pau was a lot of help toward the chips and that shouldn't be taken away from him, either.

+1
Not forgetting it’s not jokic fault , like LeBron .
His team let him down …(that remind me someone playing a certain game 7 in 1990 vs the pistons ..)

FWIW u will always find some events where the best player didn’t win because of outside variables .
But at least we can say jokic didn’t had a meltdown .
34/19/7 seem an ok performance for a game 7 ….

At least it's official that LeBron is no longer LAL best player.

Regular season:

Lebron EPM: 5.9 (T-5 amongst qualifying players)
AD EPM: 4.5 (17th)

Lebron BPM: 6.5 (6th)
AD BPM: 5.1 (13th)

Lebron Net Rating: +9.8
AD Net Rating: +6

Playoffs:

Lebron BPM: 10.6
AD BPM: 7.3

The all nba voters are a bunch of twogs. Lebron has a decent argument for 1st team all nba and should have been second team at worst.

The "next MJ" just had 4 games under 20 points in his last 6, and 3 of those games were sub-30% shooting.

A shrimp with baby steps and hands compared to MJ

Wow, and Ant is a horrible defender - horrific fundamentals - doesn't get low enough to play elite D

Wow guys really?... I hadn't watched Tatum in a while but he looks more like MJ than anyone else as far as the way he's scoring - the moves that he's using to score and where he's catching the ball - the 36 second mark to the 52 second marks says it all but he scores the ways that MJ does all game long:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BYfbf5oIm0


How in the hell is that not a lot like MJ as far as where he's catching the ball and the types of moves and shots that he's taking?... He's even fighting for good post position and sealing his man for an easy finish - kicking it back out and getting better position for a re-entry - I don't see anyone else in the league doing these things or playing that way - such an off-ball clinic and low ball-domination.. I see why he said that he's the best player in the league earlier this year.. Boston should win this easily.. I hope it's Tatum and Luka in the Finals... I'll watch that one.