If the league was full of plumbers and teachers why didn’t other stars replicate what Jordan did?

MJs first step and quick decision making was what terrorized defenses. It would be as indefensible today as it was then because of how much spacing there is. Nobody was guarding the perimeter and you had bigs camping the paint (a lot of these ISO scoring plays were finished at the rim)

Another consideration is that fouls are easier to draw now. You just cock your head back and get awarded shots at the charity stripe. That increases ISO efficiency especially for foul baiters like Harden in his prime. Then you also add the fact that 3pt shots are like 50% of offense for some stars.

How many years were players allowed to pump fake into literally jumping into their defender and being awarded free throws?

Zones? Double teaming was a common tactic in the 90s because as I mentioned nobody was guarding the perimeter. The game wasn’t a 3 pt shooting clown fiesta at the time. About athleticism? They say the best measure of athleticism is who would win in a fight. Who’s winning my 90s rebounding goon or some 3 pt shooter from today’s league? Today’s NBA has more
athleticism for narrow skills - specifically shooting the 3 and being switchable.

NBA rules have never been so offensively friendly in any era as they are now. Defenses were more empowered to make plays on the ball/ball handler in the 90s. And to reiterate defenses were much more adaptive to clamp down a streaking player because they were not at all concerned with the 3 pt line. They could easily shift to an iso side play since they were less stretched out by 4s and 5s who could shoot.

The fouls is because the European invasion where they have 100 generations of flopping in soccer it has evolved them to be able to flop well. Jokic pro flopper its in his genes

what a great thread 🧵

Insanely good iso scoring in the toughest era to do it. 10 x scoring titles while also being 9× NBA All-Defensive First Team, DPoY and 3 x steals leader.

He was ridiuclous.

A whole wall of text just to cope with the fact that Jordan played in an expansion era when defenses were simple and relatively easy to play against.

The NBA required teams to play man-to-man defense in his day, which meant everyone on the court has to guard someone. You could double team one player and then recover to your man, but you could not be caught between players guarding no one or shading over like we see in the complexity of modern NBA defense. No such thing as a strong-side overload defense back then. This in turn would allow great players, like Jordan, to iso and essentially go 1 on 1 most of the time without seeing different looks from a defense like we see today. Not to mentioned you weren't allowed to double a player without the ball, which again, made it easy for Jordan.

Michael Jordan's own words said his career wouldn't have been the same if these defensive rules weren't in place. 💯


Also, as far as Jordan in today's era? He was a mid range scorer. He'd be DeMar DeRozan in the modern NBA

From the same man who thinks Embiid is a superior player to Shaq, this can safely be discarded. LMAO Jordan would be DeMar DeRozan right

hold up using imagination

Euro players flop?!

Lollll Lebron is the queen of flopping
Not even debatable

people who use the plumbers, teachers, and electricians cop out are just coding that they don't know/care about old school ball. recency bias is all that matters, which is why young fans think that stats are somehow more important than winning and more importantly the context behind how winning was accomplished

👆

spittin fax