Anyone who thinks the game's been ruined should go back and watch some typical games from 94-03 or so. Not highlights, the full games, every last grueling, tedious, bricky possession.
I learned the other day that Houston, who draws fouls at the highest rate in the NBA this year, would've been 21st by the same measure 20 years ago. And that's on top of the far slower pace back then.
Amen. I hated the style of play and had pretty much stopped watching the NBA by the end of the 90's aside from the C's (and even them I was less die hard than I have been since the 2000's).
The Rick Adelman Sacramento Kings and their style of play was a breath of fresh air that sucked me back in to the rest of the league a bit, and then the Steve Nash/Mike D'Antoni Suns did so even more. Finally, after that team the rest of the leagues style of play gradually started to improve and teams finally started to value ball movement and passing again.
The current league isn't perfect (I'd like to see the way the post/fouls in the post be called more consistently to offset the additional attention that 3-point shooting gets) but I think it is so much more watchable than the decades that the Bad Boys and Riley Knicks/Heat ruined. I think the NBA is as good as ever.
Yup.
David Stern milked the Jordan/Kobe/Lakers cow for easy money and he hurt the quality of play terribly.
A few rules/officiating shifts later and we have a watchable product again. And what at least appears to be a more honest one as well, Stern was a snake.
What he did to the Kings - and to a lesser extent the Mavs, Suns, and Celtics - was criminal. Glad the league isn't punishing teams anymore for moving the ball.
Agree on the Kings + Suns being the forerunners of the new more wide-open style.
But the ugly style wasn't just Stern or league officials - teams copied what worked and after years of watching Jordan win titles by isolating a lot down the stretch, they tried a lot of that too. Problem was nobody else was Jordan.
Defenses also became very good at exploiting the kinds of contact allowed under the written and unwritten rules of the league, especially the handcheck. Teams copied the Bad Boy Pistons there, and made the game steadily slower and uglier on both ends (look up some of the offense/defense stats of the Mike Fratello Cavs for maybe the most extreme example). The rule changes were largely a reaction to the old rules getting taken advantage of to the detriment of the product.
Overall I wish the 3-line was a bit farther back because it's just too easy for NBA players for a shot worth 50% more points. You'd see more variety of play with that. But the game now is much more enjoyable than the game I grew up with.