This shouldn't even be a thread, anybody with half the wits of knowing NBA history would know Bird would wipe the floor with these chumps in today's standards...
Basically this. No one will admit it though. Defense just wasn't asked for and played the way it is today. The Pistons invented collapsing in the paint and started all the rotations which was awesome. But now every team has to do it because everyone is so athletic. Bird would still be a superstar but I'm sick of people saying that the NBA is not as good in terms of pure level of play now. If you gave me a choice between Bird coming out of the 80s and this years Lebron, I would have to think about it. In the clutch of course Bird destroys Lebron. But the other 46 minutes?
that's because people who've seen the different eras of ball can tell you the difference. Bird and LeBron aren't similar players. Magic and LeBron are. I'm taking Magic cause he's the best point guard of all time and he's clutch. But LeBron is on his way. The overall league was better in the 80s, there were no charlotte bobcats or extra teams to dilute the talent, plus people were tougher and more polished. Not a huge flux of kids from high school or one year of college. For every Durant and Lebron, you get Kwame and Gerald Green. Most players played several years of college ball and college ball was better. Look at the Center position, Dwight Howard is the best now. He'd be run of the mill in the 80s. Hell an Old 80s Kareem would drop 30 a night easily now.
Yeah cause all Lebron's athleticism really shut down Dirk last year. Dirk destroyed Miami last year. And dude I hate Dallas & like Lebron but its the truth. BTW, Dirk is no Larry Bird!
Dirk was amazing. But this year Lebron has gone from shutting down Pau (and even Dwight on some possessions) to guarding Derrick Rose. And while his athleticism is ridiculous, the guy has amazing basketball skills too./
Probably been said, but I'm not reading 7 pages of a hypothetical, but I think Bird would actually be BETTER with today's rules. Couple today's rules with the flimsy, pretty boy, floppers of the current NBA and you'd have a fantasy basketball machine. His nickname would probably be the Terminator.
The question is, what would Bird be nicknamed in today's NBA? Bird Flu? I'm Like a Bird, I'll Only Fly Away? LB33? Birdsanity? Chad Birdinger?
<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ULvo7__wwBU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> /end thread
You are thinking of the '70s. Chuck Daly and the Pistons invented modern rotation defense in the '80s. It was invented specifically to stop Bird and Magic from killing them when double teamed, and it still didn't work until Bird and McHale developed lingering injuries. Rotation defense does not stop a superstar, double teams do. Rotation helps stop the weakside from burning a double team. Today, yes there is refined rotation defenses...but there are NO CENTERS. There were great defensive teams in the '80s. I'd like to see Lebron play the Bad Boy Pistons. No way he'd be brave like Jordan to drive into that gauntlet. Every one of those championship teams (and every Finals loser, too) was a great defensive team ... because they had interior defense that no rotation defense can really fix if you don't have it.
amusing to see people try to talk about the past years of basketball when they never actually watched it....yet they think they know what the game was like and feel more than free to share their ideas on how it was
HP, I was thinking of asking you this, was just curious on your take because I know you watch defense. So you think the defense in the 80s was better than today's? I agree that we don't have great centers now. But there are still quite a few shot blocking bigs. And I believe today's defense is in general more sophisticated, not to mentioned the abolition of illegal defense, giving the option of double teaming without the ball. And superstar ISO is pretty much a thing in the past because of that.
This is a 7 page thread? Really? Folks, people born in the 1960's aren't some ancient race of left-footed munchkins. It's not like 1980's basketball is the equivalent of playing football with leather helmets. As to points in the thread: As much as I like Chuck, it is absurd to use him to try an illustrate how Bird would fare in today's league. The talent is not close. All this talk about Bird's body when I suspect most people on here never saw the guy in his prime or only remember an older Bird. The guy was deceptively quick, fast enough, and strong. What made him great and what would make him great in any era is his mind. He knows how to play the game. He mastered the little things, knew where people were going before they did, knew exactly what to do to a defender, knew when to cut, and on and on. He lived in the gym and outworked everyone. He was perhaps the cockiest player ever, only he could back it up and get in your head the whole time. Bird would be frozen out by brothers? What? Everyone respects game and Bird had a lot of game. By force of will, he would be the guy and everyone would know it from the first second of the first practice. LeBron? Great, great player, but just insecure enough for Bird to crush him. Remember when Bird and Nique got in a shooting contest in the playoffs? LeBron wilts in that game going against Bird. After Game 6, Bird says the Hawks had their chance and now the Celtics will win. And they did, though it was close. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jxqKLEMTBo4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Oh, and whoever said Nique's dunks would be routine in today's NBA is, well, to not use any of the words I want to use, I'll just say: wrong. Anyway, Bird would own today's NBA and this is a stupid thread.
If you want to compare eras, you have to look at people who spanned different eras and see how they performed. Most of the people on this board would consider Hakeem one of the top centers ever and would think that prime-Hakeem would dominate Dwight Howard and the rest of today's league. If the 80s was so inferior to today's NBA and Larry Bird couldn't hack it in today's NBA, why then did it take until 94 for Hakeem to win the title while Bird had 3 rings in the 80s? Bird had an unblockable shot with ridiculous accuracy, a deep feel for the game, elite passing, excellent length, and good rebounding. The guy would get it done in today's NBA. More so with today's fitness regimen.
yeah, could you imagine lebron, in boston against the celtics, in the 2nd round, in a game 7, getting in a shootout with an all-time celtic great and scoring 45+ like 'nique did? i sure can't. and just as it's funny when people talk about older players like they're from the leather helmets days, it's equally funny to see 7 pages of everyone rushing to defend the sacrosanctity of the older generation by telling us how easily all the old players would crush the mentally weak, unskilled, soft players of today. most likely after they walked uphill both ways in the snow to get to and from the arena. and today's players would just flounder if you dropped them off 30 years ago in an nba with far less athleticism and defense. the quality of play in almost any sport is always rising in an absolute sense. training and healthcare have made it so for a long time now. not to mention better coaching techniques. the only way the upward trend would be broken is if a sport just fell off popularity-wise, but clearly that hasn't happened in basketball. the players playing today pretty much grew up in the most popular era of basketball and thus the population of basketball players as a percentage of the overall population was probably higher for today's era than it was for the 80's. not to mention there are simply more people. not to mention there weren't a lot of dirk's and manu's and yao's running around the 80's nba while they make up 5 or 6 teams worth of players now. in a relative sense, you would think players would generally perform about as well from era to era if they grew up in that era and had all the advantages/disadvantages that come along with that.
