Today's average kid possesses more knowledge than Aristotle. Do they have greater minds than one of the greatest philosophers of all time? Was Carl Lewis a greater athlete than Jesse Owens? Could Chris Paul play his "peak" if he had the basketball knowledge of 40 years ago, had the training and medical care, wore the same shoes in the old days? I've always thought that comparing players from different eras is futile. The old folks like to romanticize the old heroes. The younglings don't know how to appreciate what the players in the past eras had to overcome to be that good, and they never actually watched those guys play. The fact is, there is no objective ways to compare them because the game is very different and the conditions are very different. I am pretty sure Morey was just talking statistically because that's the only thing he could judge by.
Mike Tyson had two good points. Yes, today's basketball players are better athletes. But that doesn't make them better players necessarily. Magic Johnson's ability to go win basketball games was incredible. His teams won a minimum of 54 games every year he played before HIV kicked him out of the league. Comparing him to CP3 is kind of silly though. CP3 is a badass on his own. He just probably needs a few chips to change people's minds but dude has at least as good of vision as Magic. He's the better shooter, better defender, but Magic was a better rebounder, scored more and got more assists. Who would be better probably would be dictated by who's on the team. Either way, these are two visionaries we're comparing. I'm just glad we have one of them.
Absolutely, and people just remember old Magic against the Bulls. In his early days the dude certainly had a turbo button and could get around anyone. Watch Ben Simmons for 5 seconds, and realize that Magic was more skilled with both hands, and he also had a much higher basketball intelligence and a wicked post game.
Huh? Weaker opponents? According to who? Magic and Julius played against Jordan and played well, as old ass Men. Wilt battled a prime Kareem as an old man. Kareem battled Olajuwon. Olajuwon battled Shaq, Shaq battled Yao. Yao destroyed Dwight Howard. ALL of the above are better than Andre Drummond, and all these players overlap SO THERE IS EVIDENCE that Wilt and Kareem would still be dominating today. Andre Drummond would be the Billy Paultz of the 70s. Legend no doubt, but for different reasons. JK, Billy is GOAT.
You said players in the past were midgets. No they weren't. Players were measured barefoot pre 80s-late 70s. If you add the usual 1-2 inches (and sometimes as much as 3 inches) most players today are given with their in shoe measurements, height is still around the same. The average NBA player size is actually smaller today due to lack of bigs and the game going smaller. Go check out some of your favorite players bare foot measurements and look at older players regular measurements(which were barefoot) and you'll see it's not much different. Hell, they even rounded down a lot back then like Bill Russell being just a hair under 6'10 barefoot but listed at 6'9. Oscar at 6'5 barefoot playing PG. Wilt at 7'1.25 barefoot, would be 7'3+ with today's measurements compared to someone like Shaq who is 7'1 IN shoes. : Spoiler Weight was also almost never updated from rookie listing. That's why you have Karl Malone, David Robinson and a bunch of bigs as recent as the 90s dating back to the 50s weighing less than LeBron when they clearly look like they would break LeBron like a twig. Today's physical stats are exaggerated be it from unofficial stats or wearing certain shoes for added height to hype up the draft position and earn more money. I've been arguing for official barefoot measurements and regular weight updates for the record books myself, but it will never happen. Spoiler LeBron at his heaviest in Miami: Strength is certainly one thing you'd expect to be better as a whole, but this is basketball, not football or boxing. With the added strength, conditioning seems to be an issue(nagging injuries also common with PED usage). Players in worse conditions and garbage shoes were playing 40+mpg for 82 games at faster pace their entire career. Now today, these apparently bigger and badder athletes do nothing but rest for weak reasons or no reason at all except to rest. Hell, they all want shorter seasons and more breaks still all while making more per season than many of the past players made in their entire career while also having many more luxuries like personal chefs, high end gyms and recovery equipment and even shoe and body protection technology. You can probably name all the really strong players of past eras off the top of your head, true. Most were wiry and built for long distance running. That is an advantage in this sport you can't simply dismiss as "worse athletes" because they don't have big rippling muscles or because you think someone doing 360 dunks today or crazy handles means they are more athletic when it just wasn't invented yet back then and majority of today's fancy moves evolved from 70s-80s and 90s anyway. You can't really expect crazy dunks to be born of an era where dunking a lot of was frowned upon and even outlawed in college for a time. You really think AND-1 mixtape type of handles would be around when for the longest time the NBA refereed players to dribble the ball palm down? None of today's players would adapt to those rules back then. They'd turn the ball over every trip because they're so used to the freedom of movement that wasn't really allowed back then. The Allen Iverson type of crossover where he carries the ball every time...sorry no. Not allowed. As a whole, rules for basic fundamentals are extremely lenient. You don't want to insult anyone, but you do just that by insulting athletes who are not of YOUR generation. In doing so, you trash all my favorite athletes and older fans athletes of their eras. Look, EVERY era had their amazing athletes with the majority of the league being above avg to below avg athletes relative to the elite. I'm not ignorant either. I'm fully aware that there's probably more explosiveness and agility due to advancements in training and nutrition and times changing to use those tools to its fullest potential: ie crazy handles and dunks. That said, if todays athletes are more athletic, it's not by so much so that the past athletes couldn't have trained to become equals under the same circumstances. Gets tiring having to defend historic players from fans of today who act like every NBA player today is LeBron and Westbrook level athletically. It's just not true.
Have we gotten to the point where people are now questioning Magic Johnson? Magic was ****ing amazing. My goodness. Wow. I expect it with Larry because he was white, and people seem to think he was not athletic for someone at 6'10(he was perfectly fine athletically pre back injury), but Magic now? Never thought i'd see the day. Just like Larry popping right into any NBA team today at stretch 4(he played PF his whole college career and his first 4 NBA seasons), Magic could pop right into any NBA team today as a point forward, but with guys like Giannis, LeBron, Harden, Simmons playing point, you better believe Magic would be a full time PG. And to the person who said he couldn't shoot probably because you don't like his shot form, he was making over 90% FT his last years and even shot over 38% from 3 while taking 3.5 attempts his 2nd last season. His form probably kept him from consistently having a good shot, but even with it broke like that, he could beat you with it and was amazing in the clutch. He would no doubt drive you insane with that crazy one handed push off shot that would seem to find the bottom of the net when it mattered.
Either way- Morey isn’t dumb enough to mention Stockton unless it is to remind everyone that the won ZERO RINGS.
Lol, I love how no one here has brought up Stockton - only Magic. This is obviously a Rockets forum haha
CP3 and Stockton are the 2 best PURE point guards ever IMO and very, very similar in a lot of ways. They can fit and thrive in any system and be the general. Stockton doesn't have the PER I guess because he doesn't shoot enough and PER doesn't reward that. Magics PER is lower because his 3pt% probably doesn't help and he also didn't shoot enough to make up for his lower 3PT% like some other high PER guys with low 3PT%. Of course Morey knows and watched the older point guards, his favorite player ever is Mark Price who was one hell of a point guard perfect for todays league.
Provided we have video recordings, it's actually pretty easy to compare a lot of players across generation. Numbers and math don't like. You can easily calculate things like shot release time, jump height, physical measurements, speed, etc.
Building a team and having the choice to select only a PG to start with as the rest of the team is already built, I take CP3. Building a team and having the choice to select only 1 player and fill out the team afterwards, I take Magic. CP3 is the better PG, but Magic had advantages CP3 never could with his height. In today’s nba Magic would be a Point forward like lebron, except he isn’t as good as lebron. Magic was fantastic but he seems to get wayyyy too much love and media bias. He’s not the goat, sorry...
They were more paced then I’m pretty sure He was pretty ball dominate tho, just not Westbrook harden dominate.
