huh, i actually do have one set up for europe, but i'd have to watch on my browser which is 2.0 audio right? I want 5.1 But anything to have no commercials which kills the flow and emotional momentum.
hated jordan and the bulls, but turning on wgn and hearing that music was legendary. somehow made them even more intimidating.
if there's anything i didn't need 10 more hours of, it was people slurping the 90's bulls. maybe next we can get 10 more hours on the 80's celtics/lakers rivalry. i mean i'm sure i'll end up watching it at some point (what else is left at this point?), but watching everyone make a big deal out of every bit of minutia from that team is annoying. they were a great team, we've talked about them for about 30 years at this point. is it possible to talk about something else? i guess it gets the ratings. hilarious hearing MJ simultaneously complain people will think he's horrible then basically say "i wanted to win, you've never won anything, so that's why i'm so horrible." while i know everyone has their own personality and MJ probably couldn't change his approach (i.e. being horrible), people always hold it up as some obvious approach. "well they won, so that must be how it's done." does anyone ever call tim duncan a horrible person? magic or bird? driven, competitive, probably not afraid to get on their teammates, but horrible? bill russell's got 11 without being horrible. generally being one of the 2 best players in the league with great teammates is how you win a championship. pretending like being an ******* is a prerequisite is just a narrative. in the same vein as "10 more hours of the 90's bulls? really?", i keep checking nbatv's schedule of hardwood classics games every few days and they seem to have only acquired the rights to about 40 games in nba history (as the network of the nba, do they not have the ability to literally show any game ever?). when it's not a celtics/laker/bulls game they've shown 30 times before, it's always the closing game of a finals series even if it's uncompetitive. hint, you can show the best games from the series, not just the last one like they do us in 1995 or even lakers/celtics in 1987 which was just on. they've got a treasure trove of amazing 60+ point games, individual/team records, random double or triple OT games that they could show but it's the same damn ones every time. show something else!!! i haven't watched the clip yet, but jordan at his peak is just a combination of instinct and coordination (like perfectly slapping the ball away from someone without fouling) that has basically never been seen before and may never be seen again. like i've always thought prime dwade and also ginobili made big plays in an instinctual/fearless way that just couldn't be taught, but jordan is like that while easily being the most athletic/coordinated/fundamentally sound player on the court. it just gives his game this level of control that you just don't see, even from someone like lebron who has time and again orchestrated whole playoff games from a physical and bball IQ perspective. watching jordan in big moments just calmly get to his spot and rise up like it was the middle of the first quarter is just so unparalleled. then you throw in the 3 to 5 otherworldly moments per game that he can create and it's unfair. and again, i hate jordan and always rooted against him. but the highlight reels and big moment calmness are a huge reason why i just can't put anyone above him on the all-time list. it was amazing how the jazz could just eviscerate certain teams with their precision and discipline. and yet... it totally felt like we were in their head in 1998 even though they beat us the year before. i think it was the first quarter of game 4, before barkley got hurt, where the jazz scored something like 12 points and we were just hounding them relentlessly on defense. it's like the memories of '94 and '95 came flooding back and they couldn't believe they were about to lose to the rockets again as an 8th seed. the barkley injury saved them just long enough to be remembered for getting beat by jordan again. kinda like the 2014 spurs, it's amazing to see a 1 seed trail an 8th seed, but then just power straight to the finals (with the spurs even dismantling the heat). honestly, if dajuan blair of all people hadn't kicked someone in game 4, the spurs might have lost that series.
This is repackaging content 101. 30 by 30 did the same thing. A lot of re-packaging. You want to do something new, you do the 24 hour documentary on how JORDAN CRACKED in 1995. Tell the truth. Interview Shaq. Interview Penny. Ask Pippen what happened. And remind everyone. Nick Anderson took it right out of his hands. I'll watch that. To Jordan's credit he's never said he would have won those years. But the media needs to be reminded he LOST. He cracked.
exactly. one of the marks of true competitors in professional sports is knowing and admitting when you got beat and not looking for made-up excuses (which is not to say there are never legitimate excuses). he knew he was healthy, on the court, and lost fair and square. then he came back hungrier than ever and led some of the most dominant teams ever (with the help of a HOF'er being added to the roster). for some reason the media has a bigger need to make excuses for 1995 than jordan does.
after watching this video, i went down a youtube nba hole that led me to rockets/spurs game 6. in the middle of arguably hakeem's greatest game highlight ever, we suddenly get 10 seconds of nbc panning to celebrity camera man...donald trump.
I'm sure it's the only 17 games after a year and a half not touching a basketball and the way he came back the following year that excuses that season. Though i'm not sure a fully seasoned MJ helps the Bulls overcome their holes after Grant left and Orlando's size with Grant still the difference in that series(MJ still averaged 31ppg on nice efficiency but both Shaq and Grant avg'd 10+rpg while no one on the Bulls did), but i would never bet against MJ personally. I mean the Bulls just couldn't close 3 close games. We don't normally see that from them. That series could have easily been 4-1 Bulls. But, as far as reminding anyone. No one forgot. Everyone knows. The only time everyone conveniently forgets is when the Rockets are mentioned as b2b champs.
it's weird watching 90s basketball and seeing all of the mid-range fadeaway jumpers and post up play was that just a function of the defensive rules, or did teams not know how to play efficiently?
I don’t know what it is, but I still love watching it. The variety, the physicality the personalities, the fewer apoplectic fits over missed calls.
while zone defenses being allowed has probably contributed a little, a lot of it was definitely teams not knowing how to play efficiently. the way teams guarded the pick and roll or just guys dribbling up the court, there was no shortage of opportunities to launch all the 3's you wanted to, it's just that no one thought that's how you play. and that's where the second part comes in. inertia. for a huge part of basketball history, there was no 3 pointer, so posting up with big guys made a ton of sense. then even after 3's were introduced, you still had a whole generation of guys who had never practiced a 3 or gameplanned to take a 3 so trying to tell them all to suddenly launch 3's would be weird and probably throw them off their game. and you just have the ever prevalent "old school" way of thinking that pervades any sport and keeps new techniques from being tried. but same as it ever was, the rockets taught everyone you could go to a 3-heavy attack and win (and by 3-heavy i mean 15 3's a game). and as we have seen in recent history, lots of guys who have never shot an nba 3 can suddenly become perfectly viable 3 point shooters if they really practice it (brook lopez being a great example). and with analytics and coaches being more open to new things, we've seen massive changes in shot selection in just a few years. but back then if your coach says he's going to bench you if you shoot a 3, then you're never going to try it. so it was just a slow, but steady grind of getting rid of old school thinking, bringing up each new generation of players that was more used to seeing 3's attempted than the previous generation, and then finally analytics breaking the dam at a time when 3's were ingrained enough and you had reached a critical mass of overall shooting so that you could say "take all the 3's you want". kind of similar to passing the ball in football. why did everyone run the damn ball every play for like a 100 years when scores like 13-10 were common and why do we now have everyone throw for 300 yards a game with scores like 35-31 when it should have seemed so obvious that each pass gained more than a rush. even ignoring more recent rule changes that favor offense, it was still obvious. but if you've never seen someone pass the ball a lot, it's hard to convince people to change. and even if you want to change, you've got that whole generation of talent that's never done it so where are you going to get the QB's and receivers and offensive coaches who know how to do it and teach it? good luck recruiting from a bunch of option qb's to run your pass-heavy college offense. but at some point, enough pioneers show everyone what can be done, enough qb's in the talent pool are throwing the ball their whole life, and then you reach that critical mass and then you can never go back because it's so obvious what is the more potent strategy.
I want people to listen to what MJ said, when talking about Chicago winning a title in 94, 95, or 99 or how the Bulls would steamroll the Rockets. Or, even the Spurs.
It’s not called the lost art of the midrange jumper for no reason. How is having a midrange game/postgame inefficient? Being dominant on either one or both of those have been recipes for championships for many years. Just over the last 30 years here are the names of guys that have won rings. With the exception of a couple guys most have multiple Championships. MJ Hakeem Duncan Shaq Kobe Rip Hamilton Wade Dirk Duncan Parker Ginobili Kawhi Lebron Warriors* (anomaly) The common denominator between all those guys is that they had killer midrange games. Even Rip Hamilton whose name looks out of place if you go back and watch him during that Pistons run he’d wreck shop with that midrange game. Guys that had a a midrange game and dominant post game All have multiple championships. Peoples idea of efficiency is skewed because of what the Warriors accomplished by making a lot of 3’a at a high clip but even they had multiple guys that not only took but could knock down the midrange jumper on a regular basis between Steph, Klay, and especially KD that’s like 75% of his offensive game. Even Shaun Livingston I cant count how many times I wanted to break things when he’d come off the bench and knock down every mid range jump or post up one of our shorter guards and shoot a J right over them.
I just wonder, even for an elite midrange player, how do there mid-range points per possession compare to attempts from other areas (by elite or even average players)
Of course getting a basket right at the hoop would be most efficient but most guys don’t get the same calls once you get to the playoffs and defenses also crack down to stop easy buckets at the rim. Prime example is MJ. Pistons used to beat the **** out of him if he made it to the paint. He wasn’t a 3 point shooter. He didn’t become truly dominant until he mastered that midrange game but especially his go to move the post up fade-away jumper. That’s why Kobe was so smart/cerebral to copy that move. Something I always wished Harden would’ve done. If we can agree that the part above is true you’ll notice the rest of the guys in my list with the exception of Steph/Klay we’re either non 3 point shooters or they could shoot 3’s but shot less than you might have imagined (Dirk, KD). Steph is especially an anomaly because he’s actually worse at the basket than from distance. Dirk career FGA’s per game 15.6 Out of those attempts only 3.4 were from three. KD is at 18.7 FA’s and 4.9 were from deep. If either of these guys played for our Rockets during the last few years there 3PA’s would be way up no doubt but would they be more efficient? That’s a no from me. They were both 38% from 3 which is above league average but that’s not their bread and butter. They were so much more efficient from elsewhere (midrange).
So I've just check Jordan's wiki page and I was shocked when I learned that he had scored 37ppg once in a single season with a fg% of 48. How is that even possible in an era that is more focus on slow, half court defensive style of play? Was he really that great individually or was he just a product of a good system ala Steph Curry with GS Warrior?
yeah, but almost all of them did it against a league that also took midrange jumpers and posted up. it's like pointing out that power rushing teams have won a lot of super bowls. that's what everyone did. whoever did it best won. but it wouldn't necessarily work today (without a freak like lamar jackson). basically every recent champion from toronto to the warriors to lebron's cleveland/miami teams tried to get as many three point shooters on the court as possible. and i don't think anyone would credit lebron's mid-range game as a reason for winning. people backed off of him and begged him to take them in a way that nobody is going to do with james harden. sure, people might overplay a harden drive and make a step back jumper possible with a light contest, but nobody is just going to stare harden down from 4 or 5 feet away and dare him to shoot. if people were willing to just let harden have wide open 18 footers, then i would certainly criticize us if we called those bad shots. back to today, there's a reason the rockets are barely ahead of several teams in 3 point attempts these days. and it can't be a coincidence the 3 teams that take the most 3's have the 3 most efficient offenses and rarely try post-ups or mid-range shots (houston/milwaukee/dallas). either it just so happens that the teams with all the offensive talent are also taking the most 3's and skewing the results, or it means finding ways to take tons of 3's is part and parcel with having a good offense. i mean even the spurs best offensive era occurred when they started shooting way more 3's. back to your list, hakeem/duncan/shaq are 3 of the most dominant post players ever and would presumably get plenty of touches today, but even they did all their work before rule changes practically made it impossible for big men to post up any more. that's another big reason people don't post up. post-ups just have such low efficiency values based on the current way of playing. you can double and harass immobile big men much easier in a zone and small defenders are allowed to foul the crap out of post guys in ways that weren't allowed in the past (watch the '95 finals to see how easily hakeem and shaq just run straight to the left block with almost no resistance). even someone like boogie who would have probably been more dominant in other eras tends to come out as a low-efficiency player. your best bet is probably to be a lebron/kawhi/giannis-sized player who is agile like a guard to make double teams difficult but strong enough to punish people and tall enough to get the shot off. traditional big men have a very difficult time. and james harden simply doesn't have the height to be like one of those guys. and none of our recent bigs were even close to being worth posting up. but the rockets/analytics were pushing the idea of taking 3's well before the warriors came along. and i would argue steph and klay would almost never shoot a mid-range shot if it weren't for people pressing up on them to a ridiculous degree at the 3 point line (because defenses know how scary the 3's are). they take a mid-range when they can't get a 3, not necessarily because it's the best idea. and i don't think they make them because they have decided to be mid-range players, but because they are just insanely good shooters no matter where they are. but we're talking exceptions, not the rule. you either have to be a crazy accurate overall shooter or a rare big man like bosh/scola who are so good at the mid-range and who so often find themselves open at that range that it's actually worth it. and even bosh and scola would almost certainly be taking way more 3's today. is it possible if james harden perfectly refined his game to add in 1-3 pull-up mid-range jumpers per game for the rare instance a drive wasn't ideal that he could be even better? maybe. but james harden isn't a knock-down mid-range shooter. and knowing the exact time a mid-range shot beats out a drive would be difficult at best to determine. and is it possible that somewhere in a 100 possessions that the rockets might be passing up a good mid-range shot to take a bad 3? possibly. but even if that were true, almost no numbers would point to it being a common situation where it should be anything the rockets turn to on a significant number of possessions.
