We’ve been hearing a lot of rambling going on from all of these old players. I can barely watch an NBA game without having to hear some commentators whine about how star players now do not play as many minutes as back in the “good old days”. It doesn’t just stop there, you get the occasional analyst on any of these networks saying the same thing. You can get the occasional article with quotes from some old geezer sprouting the same nonsense. All these guys keep saying how before 2010s and especially in the 80’s and 90’s, star players played well over 40 minutes, always powered through back-to-backs, and played all 82 games. Congratulations.
Now I have to deal with some of you clowns buying into that silly narrative. Some of you use it as one of your many dubious examples as to how the current players and the current state of the NBA sucks compared to how it was 20 years ago or even just 10 years ago when your precious Kobe was still in his prime. If you must insist on seeing some reference, check out this link. It shows the minutes many of the top players played each year from 1999 to now (because apparently ESPN doesn’t know sports were around before the 90s as also evident with the unavailability of player stats before that time).
http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/minutes/sort/avgMinutes/seasontype/2
It’s amazing how a lot of these old guys neglect how the game now is different from how it was 10 or even 20 years ago depending on different rule changes. It was so much easier for old farts to play 48 minutes on back-to-back games when they weren’t even required to play zone defense or roam until the 02 season. That means if a player is covering someone that isn’t good or at least isn’t an offensive threat, they can essentially take the play off early in the shot clock if that guy isn’t being thrown the ball to. Dennis Rodman was a great rebounder and defender but I’m pretty sure the guys tasked with defending him weren’t exactly sweating from exhaustion. He wasn’t much of an offensive threat. With zone defenses that some employ nowadays, those players would still need to move around and be active.
Another key component going on now is the proliferation of switching. A lot of teams run pick and rolls now so as a result, many teams on defense switch players instead of double teaming. A lot of teams on offense would run a pick and roll intentionally to force a mediocre or bad defender into being forced to play defense against a top offensive threat. In the Rockets Warriors series, the Rockets would have Paul or Harden (the ball handler), call for a pick and roll with whoever Stephen Curry was guarding. As a result, it would force Curry to guard the primary ball handler. The increase use of the pick and roll further forces players to “take plays off”.
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Sometimes if a player is forced to cover a ball handler because of those pick and rolls, a third teammate on defense would run up to take the match while the player will quick run back to cover who his teammate was covering. Let me give you give you guys an example if you’re getting confused. The Cavaliers would run pick and rolls to have Terry Rozier from the Celtics on LeBron James during the 2018 Easter Conference Finals. Later in the series, the Celtics would have other players on the court such as Aron Baynes come up to guard LeBron while Rozier would sprint to cover the Cavalier player Baynes was previously on. All of the activity by those two defenders are stuff that the players back in the day weren’t tasked to do on a daily basis.
Many other factors affect how guys on defense are being asked to defend at every play. Those factors include the increase talent level across the league. As much as you guys and those old farts some of you younger kids didn’t even watch don’t want to admit, the players now are faster, stronger, and athletic now then they were back then. It’s progress. As result, there were less offensive players for defenders to take plays off on. Not to mention, players on defense now can roam more. Also, since the days of Reggie Miller 3 point shooting, we’ve see more 3 point specialist such as Klay Thompson, Stephen Curry, Ray Allen, J.J. Reddick, and Kyle Korver in the last 10 years. They often run around screens to create separation when shooting 3s. As a result, defenders on these guys have to run the baseline constantly to keep up with those shooters. That’s a workout.
To wrap this all up, it seems like these former players continue to show their ignorance as to the differences between their era and the era that these current guys play in. You don’t see fans and old players trash the current players in the other major leagues as much as they do in the NBA. Many of you following the NBA only focus on advantages guys have now such as no hand checking and big men not being able to camp out in the paint for more than 3 seconds. However, they don’t pay attention to other disadvantages guy have now such as what’s ask of them on defense on every possession.
