The league's biggest stars are in the West - SGA, Joker, Luka, .... oldsters KD, LBJ, Curry, Harden Youngsters like Chet, Wemby, Flagg, Antman Felt like every VIP is in the West. Who you got, Brunson, Cade, Ingram, Spida, Tatum, Maxey.... Gone are the days when Lebron only wanted to stay in the East.
I would give anything outside of Sengun and Amen for Maxey lol. You might be able to talk me into Amen though
I said before the Clippers took Denver SEVEN games last season in the First Round !!! Clippers would have been favored against every East team (sans BOS wTatum). Replace LAC with SA this season. Lawd have mercy it had to be San Antonio. And somehow, someway, OKC is better this year. Life on the West Side !!!
Yeah - finding a weak link in the modern NBA is more and more difficult. It used to be "oh, let's just get Shawn Bradley matched up on Tmac in the corner" and now the reality is that is much more difficult because even the modern "Shawn Bradley" is a guy like Bol Bol who has some skills to guard on the perimeter, can block shots at the rim, and even has some ball handling skills and a 3 point shot...and we aren't even talking about how team defense concepts are so much more coordinated now. You got teams running defense schemes dynamically according to who has the ball. Players have to be super smart AND super skilled to play in the league these days. You can't be good at a few things and awful at others - you really have to be at a certain level on all things just to get on the court - the "floor" is definitely higher.
...also going on the ignore list. Someone who says something that ignorant doesn't deserve any more of my time.
Oh look, another bleeding heart snowflake liberal who can’t accept that Females are emotionally charged. It’s confirmed now that that ugly b**** Natalie Sago lost us the game.
Are you talking specifically about the East? Because I think, overall, the league has never had more talent than right now.
Uhh...what? There's Jokic, a few aging greats past their primes and then a bunch of NBA Street Vol 2 randoms.
You ignore mentalities are completely different when you ask modern teams to handle older teams. It absolutely does matter. The game slows down and gets very physical in the playoffs-even today it does in comparison to its regular season and we've seen the biggest stars of today crumble and look subpar when they're allowed to be harassed physically. They hate it. They can't handle it. They crumble. They complain. Just take them out of their comfort zone. And we Rockets fan will hate it when we see what it does to KD as it's happened to him before just as we saw it happen to Harden-**** go all the way back to T-Mac. The first signs of stars becoming bigger than their britches. Euros were the softies back in the day, now they are the hard tough ones today. A lot of these euro stars, i don't see much different than the Euro player role players of yesterday tbh. Tell me Kukoc wouldn't be regularly getting 30 pt triple doubles today. Detlef too. Sarunas would probably be an all star. Petrovic/Klay Thompson? AK47 might be the first ever to get a quintuple double if he played today(Wilt prob did it). They just play in a league now catered to them and their style(a league old players can still look like stars). That's not to say Jokic wouldn't be a star. He's amazing and to me the best player since Jordan-yes better than LeBron and Duncan and Kobe and Curry and Shaq, but even i see him bully little guys for little gimmies for a big chunk of his efficient pts and tons of assists racked up from basic passes to 3 pt shooters. Its the eye test why i say he is so amazing, not the completely inflated stats. He's in my starting 5 next to Hakeem if i'm building a team for a reason. Curry would be my PG even though Magic is still the GOAT PG. I'm not a hater of all the players today. That's not at all it. I let my eyes be the judge. Also positionless basketball isn't going to lend itself well to defending TRUE CENTERS AND POWER Fs, but 3s and 1s probably have the edge as they've trended toward longer and more versatile. MJ or Kobe is still going to completely dominate any 2 today. Ant. Too short. Shai. Too weak. Reeves? Stop it. To me, it's just a 2x SG, 2x SF, 1 PF lineup these days. Lean but still brutally powerful Orlando Shaq would be a joke. There's not a single player starter or bench that could handle that man. Not Steven Adams. Not Wemby. No one. Lakers Shaq, you maybe can tire out of the game. Giannis? He's a smaller David Robinson thats allowed to handle and attack downhill. Robinson afforded the same luxury, could mimic and outdo anything Giannis does imho. Shaq rag dolls both. OKC would dominate all the greatest teams ever? Can anyone really look at Hartenstein and Chet and tell me if they were playing in the past, those teams would fear the most dominant front court defenders of the future? I think they'd take one look and laugh and proceed to completely bully them. In general, i think most teams today get completely bullied mentally and physically even if taller and longer, but yeah, of course, the 3 is dynamic. It can bury a team in a matter of minutes, but they still live and die by it....and die by it they do. Shooting is at a premium at a loss of avoiding contact-opting now to sell fake contact to get to the line. -ugly horizontal game. Side to side avoidance rather than vertical or head on collision/confrontation. It's boring and uninteresting and a lot of it is travel back in the day. In air creativity is gone outside of a few freak athletes and Kyrie/Curry Handling is at a premium-factoring in that the NBA has allowed these players to have far more freedom than previous generations. You watch closely and many can't even bring the ball up court alone without cupping the ball..i mean ffs Alpy cups the ball in the post constantly. These guys can travel, carry/palm at will. No restrictions allowing all positions to train like a PG/SG to the detriment again-aesthetically where everyone plays and looks the same. Stats are at a premium-return to fast pace + space and open lanes and positionless lineups=little guys getting double digit rebounds, double digit assists off chest passes to players who just immediately launch a 3= POINT GOD! Yes. Players got more versatile as they weren't limited and forced into a box, but that doesn't tell me anything. Tell Shaq he can handle the rock, and he's allowed to train that area, he's going to play like Magic just like he always wanted and now he's a completely different monster. We watched non 3pt shooters adapt over summers-remember when Gasol, Ibaka etc just turned into threats after never taking any? Why do we think the 3 ball can't be learned and have we forgotten that even the players you think of as non shooters could spot up in their spots and shoot mid range? Be it Luc Longley, or Charles Oakley. ****in Bill Wennington. Manute Bol. All the bigs you remember as big oak trees were regularly hitting open deep 2s, but were supposed to believe they can't take a few steps back and train to hit the open 3? I hate the current NBA. I've fallen completely out of love with the NBA. I see a bunch of dudes putting up stupid numbers that were bums just years ago. What do i want to see? Summer Olympics style basketball. You can see the stars will still be stars, but low scoring-every basket counts, physical-high intensity basketball with none of the bullshit NBA selling you offensive stars and allowing them to do whatever they want and defenses to be handicapped. It was the closest to pure basketball i've seen in a long, long time and hey! There were still taking a lot of 3's. Adam Silvers NBA? The one with inflated stats now resembling the 60s and 70s era which so happens to be Adam Silvers childhood era? Silvers NBA sells its stars with stats. Look at the box score! He's done something that hasn't been done since WIlt! All while the eye test underwhelms. Those inflated stats only inflated egos while deflating ratings and effort on defense. Yeah, this is modern ABA basketball and i'm not a fan.
