I'm giving you the same energy you gave me. Nothing I said in my initial post should've been offensive, and yet you chose to go out of you way and quote me (when I wasn't even talking to you), coming at me sideways, talking all this nonsense about younger generations and being disrespectful, in general.
You know you could've just broached it in a more tactful manner, right? But instead here we are arguing about some trivial shyt.
But I digress.
Well, here's the thing with this.
The cat who I quoted said Jokic resembled "a 80’s-early 90’s type of ball player", which I took to mean the style of his play in combination with his size, as if that was the norm back then (or at least common), when players like Jokic were never the norm back then. You named me 4 players, which is an outlier to begin with, and most of whom don't really fit the style and size of Jokic. The only thing that someone like DRob had in common with Jokic was they were similar in height (and even then that's more relative to bigs, than of height, in isolation).
Jokic does NOT resemble DRob in any way, shape or form, past that, so why would you even think to bring him up as an example? One is a face-up big, whose offensive existence was using his athleticism in every way that he possibly could and supplementing it with jumpshots. The other is a slow, methodical all-encompassing post-scoring and playmaking big. They're at either ends of the spectrum in terms of how they play the game.
If someone asks you what past player resembles Jokic, are you really going to bring up DRob?
There really isn't a player from the 80s/early 90s who resembles his state (let alone players), so it's strange to me why anyone would argue that point, let alone take exception like you did when I said there weren't players like that. Shaq would be the closest one, in real time, and like I said, that is an outlier, and not what was typical of that era. The closest player comparison had he come into the NBA earlier (and not had all the injuries) would've been the OG Sabonis, and that would've been the prototype to what we see what Jokic is doing today. Not any of these other players you're referencing.
See, now, instead of asking me to clarify what I meant when I said "cats his size", you took it as to mean bigs, in general, when that's not what I was talking about.
This isn't the hill to die on.
After I specificially said in my initial post that cats Jokic's size weren't running up and down the floor for 40 minutes regularly during the playoffs, you mention a player whose minutes capped off between 28-30 during the postseason. In Smits' three main playoff runs as a main option scorer for the Pacers, he averaged 28, 32 and 30 minutes, respectively. Whereas Jokic averages 38 minutes for his postseason career (meaning, he regularly has games where he plays 40+ minutes); the same cat who holds the record for most minutes in a playoff game at 65.
And that's before we get into the overarching point of Jokic's offensive load, where Smits' doesn't even remotely compare.
Smits is such a strange player to reference in comparison to Jokic. Even stranger why you'd keep doubling down on the example. Only on TheColi are nxggas willing to sacrifice themselves to land a point by comparing Smits to Jokic. Lord have mercy.
Now you're just proving my point even further.
All three of those players had smaller roles compared to Jokic.
But let's just take Duckworth as the nail to hammer my point home here. His prime years were so finite because of his health issues, that if he was asked to play a role like Jokic, whilst playing 40 minutes regular in the playoffs, he probably would've
literally died on the court -- even more abruptly that he did.
Which again, overlays my position that players Jokic's size back then weren't tasked with being the lead playmaker and lead scorer of their teams, all the while playing maximum minutes. This is why I made it known that Jokic isn't really comparable to players of that era. The fact that you think this is a wild position for me to take is
wild. This conversation around how Jokic compares (physically and stylistically) to players of the past didn't need to be this serious until you turned it into some nonsensical shyt about this 'younger generations' bullshyt.
If you're an old head, then you're all the more proof that being misinformed isn't isolated to young cats, as evidence by you tripping over every single point you've tried to make during our exchange.
makes me wonder if gil was just his era's ant edwards
