pierce is better than luka overall and will have a full career. luka is hitting more now but only because he has more experience younger and the green light. Pierce is better defender and has more heart
What exactly do you mean by "overall"? I'm trying to work out exactly how you're penalizing Luka for having more experience sooner and the green light. That would seemingly contradict what you're saying about Pierce being better.
What are you basing "heart" on? Because Pierce had some pretty damn low moments during his postseason career when he couldn't get over the hump and went into his shell, during the weak ass period of the early-to-mid 2000s in the Eastern conference; before he teamed up with KG and Allen, and it was the former who was the
heart and soul of that Big Three Celtics squad, and not Pierce. Luka may complain more, but he's a killer, and has demonstrated far more fight and grit than Pierce ever did (sometimes to the detriment of his own team).
Pierce being a better defender is inconsequential. I don't even know why you'd bring it up. He was above average at best, but didn't have any signifcant impact on that end. Whatever margin you think Pierce has on Luka on defense, it's dwarfed by the margin that Luka has on him at the other end of the floor.
I never understand at age 37 how kids can be so dumb in convo... I played in 90s and won and still beating 18 year olds. The game is way more soft and terrible now. People cry and call contact and no travel all day... its like tennis out there. 90s you had to win mentally and physically. My era added And1 and shakes to the physical game and people started carrying. But players like McGrady didnt need that shyt. On one hand the new players would score, but in the handcheck era they would get abused. You were supposed to abuse players and hit them... if you had arm injury they would use fouls to chop that shyt. Spacing and creation were different, not harder really but different pace and shots.
Honestly it comes down to heart... anyone could play in any era with the will to adapt and score.
but rules matter.
Steph would be benched for shooting deep 3s on stacked teams. Only Reggie by himself on trash Pacers could get away with that. You couldnt just abuse shots, coaches would pull you. He would be amazing but used as a decoy... Klay is a good pair because it would revolutionize the 3 ball still.
But they couldnt defend physical enough. Dudes would muscle them and put them in the cup on cuts, Klay would be a legend but tired as fukk and
Curry would be getting physically abused... it would be alot harder
they could all do it but physicality would adapt
Here you admit that Reggie was allowed to take these shots, but why wouldn't a team/coach let Steph do the same, considering he's an even better shooter?
Players much smaller than Steph like Mark Price and A.I. had All-NBA/superstar careers, and they were much less physically inclined on the defensive end, but Steph would be physically abused to the point where he'd be less effective, to where he'd be better off as a decoy?
Y'all lie too damn much about how physical defense was back then. Someone like Reggie was allowed to come off pin-downs with nobody even touching him, and there'd be minimal effort to contest his shots. Whereas Steph, particularly during his peak years, was pulled and dragged just trying to get around screens, because of the sheer threat of him getting open. Players like Reggie didn't have to worry about that because defense for those actions were in their infancy.
In fact, since switches are a recent phenomenon, Steph has had to deal with a greater defensive workload than he would back in the day, where he'd largely just be defending his opposite (and if he was defending point guards, he wouldn't have to worry about them scoring as much). No greater example of this than in the 2018 WCF, where the Rockets actively targetted Steph (hence him defending more shots than any other Warriors player during that series), and Harden ISO'd him over and over again, using his much larger frame to tire him out. That wouldn't have happened in the 90s.
You're also underrating how physically strong Steph is too. He was deadlifting between 400-450lbs when he was rebuilding his body. There wouldn't be too many point guards back in the day that had that kind of strength.
