yet the moment Lebron gets involved all that shyt goes out the window and you’re arguing the opposite and the first words out your mouth are “bu bu bu pace
“....never mind the fact that the difference in pace is closer with rookie bron/luka (+9) than pip/harden (+12) and the same with difference in mpg
This is why arguments with y'all are so annoying, you constantly misrepresent shyt.
I never claimed LeBron's ppg would go up by 5-6 easy in this era due to pace alone. The difference in pace between 2004 and 2019 would only account for a couple points. Y'all make wild exaggerated claims like that every time around, you never catch me making those wild exaggerations because the evidence doesn't support them.
There's actually a decent handful of players in harden’s position...not all of them play his specific horrible brand of it, but there’s a bunch of guys dominating the ball being both the primary distributor and scorer...what we’ve called bron ball over the years, I’ve seen the cac analytic types start calling it the “heliocentric” offense ...bron, obviously...Luka, Giannis, Trae, thunder post-Durant Russ, etc all play a form of it...it’s something that is not specific to harden and that is heavily a part of this era...
But you weren't using Harden's example of ball dominance, you were using his pace, and Giannis is the only other one of the players you mentioned who is playing at that league-leading pace. Again, you can't say, "If Scottie played in this era he would" when you're actually only talking about what 2 guys in this era are doing. You can't automatically give him the highest pace in the entire NBA.
I wouldn’t put playing like Harden on my worst enemy, as I’m of the opinion that he doesn’t play winning basketball...no one was saying pip would need to take 15 3s a game...Pippen’s point was that he could average 40 if he hogged the ball and controlled every play like harden does...which everyone agrees is ridiculous...but in a high pace league where point wings like Pippen are allowed insane usage, rules changed to facilitate scoring, and wide open spacing due the death of post play...Pippen would see a significant jump in his scoring numbers...in that instance you retroactively constructed every excuse imaginable as to why it’d be impossible for a great player like pip to see his stats inflated in this era...
But he wouldn't, because damn near everything you say doesn't apply to Pippen and you ignore the shyt that DOES apply.
Spacing isn't "wide open" now compared to the 1990s. Back then players actually had to play on their man or they'd get called for illegal defense. You couldn't hedge towards scorers, you couldn't fill passing lanes, you couldn't shift other guys to cut off the drive. You either had to guard your man or commit to the double-team (leaving your man wide open). Add in the fact that players of that era weren't taught to switch constantly on drives (nor did teams have the personnel to do it), and what you actually had in the 1990s was defenders constantly getting clumped in one part of the floor while other parts were wide open. And if a guy got cooked on iso or in the post, he was cooked, he didn't have guys hedging over to help.
Defensive spacing is MUCH better now than it was in the 1990s. Things have only opened up recently in comparison to 2004-2015 or so, when illegal defense became legal and zones were allowed but teams hadn't filled the court with three-point shooters to match. Probably the worst period was 2010-2014, when teams like the Spurs, Mavs, Bulls, and Heat had developed really intelligent zone defenses that swarmed everywhere and really took away the other team's best options.
Add in that Scottie played in the triangle, one of the most open offenses of his era, and add in that Scottie relied a lot on his post game, which is the part of the game that's died the most (because it's relatively inefficient and takes time, making it too easy for players to slide over to harass the posting player and then slide back to their guy), and you don't have any evidence that anything Scottie did well would actually be easier to do today.
Y'all keep saying these dumb platitudes "The rules facilitate scoring now!" but you don't know how to apply them, because they're just platitudes. When we talk about the actual shyt that's true (how the 3pt line was moved in during Pippen's era because shooting was so bad, how talent was diluted by 6 expansion teams, how jump shots and threes weren't being challenging by defenders, how fast breaks were much more common, how zone defenses were illegal), you ignore ALL that shyt.
...the best defense in the universe that exist back then (or let me guess, they started defending jump shots in exactly 2004 lol) ... where those arguments in this thread at???
No, the defense of jump shots was a gradual progression but you saw the biggest leap in the late 1990s and early 2000s, well before LeBron's time. TBH Kobe was hurt more than LeBron by that cause his era matches up with the clampdown of defenses a lot more precisely.
Everyone else notice how this post is so different from his other posts in this thread regarding Luka vs LeBron?
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