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What is the NBA’s equivalent to “Can he do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke?” (alien.top)

submitted 10 months ago by elchico97@alien.top to c/nba@nba.space

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For those who aren’t familiar, british soccer commentator Andy Gray said this of Messi back in 2010/11, questioning whether Messi could dominate in tough conditions against a physical premier league club. It’s now a popular joke within the soccer and internet community.

For the NBA, is it “Can he do it after a night out in Miami?” “Can he do it on the second night of a back to back in Denver?” “Can he do it after the Lakers sent missed foul call video evidence to the league?” Something else?

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[–] wjbc@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This comes up more when ranking all time NBA greats — could he do it back when the game was more physical and soft players got trounced? People even ask this about LeBron James, but more often they ask it about Steph Curry.

[–] tridentboy3@alien.top 1 points 10 months ago

It's actually a pretty good point regarding Curry. Like any pantheon player, Curry would be amazing in any era. The thing is though it's unclear how well his body would hold up. Curry isn't particularly strong and has dealt with tons of injuries. Back in the 80's, it was a legit "accepted" basketball play to absolutely body smaller guys like Curry if you couldn't defend them otherwise. Fragrant fouls only started being a thing in 1990/1991 so if they were going to foul Curry it would always be a very very hard foul same as they did to MJ. MJ's body of course was capable of taking the beating since he was an athletic freak and ironman but it's unclear if Stephs would.

Further, his off ball movement also wouldn't be as good given that the rules for impeding movement of off ball players were only strengthened after 2004. Obviously there were great off ball players in the 80's and 90's (particularly Reggie Miller) but it was much much harder especially given Currys size.

Curry would still be great, of course, but likely not as great relative to that era as he is in this one.