NBA - Main

A lot of people are posting comments about players stats from decades and eras ago and comparing them to modern NBA. A lot of them are not remotely fair comparisons.

The NBA used to be much harder to score as you go progressively further back and much more difficult to score at high efficiency including from the 3. The defense used to be way more intensive with less spacing. I guarantee a lot of modern players including top tier players would've been way worse even like 15 years ago compared to 20 or 30. For the longest time very few players in the league would break 25+ ppg and nowadays multiple break 30+.

Positive: MJ. He surprised me with how efficient he was for the position and era he played in along with his game.

Negative: what comes to mind is the late 2000s scoring guards that felt like a big deal growing up. I know Jamal Crawford and Monta Ellis weren’t great defensively but they weren’t really that efficient. It’s funny how people call Jamal Crawford a bucket but when you look at his stats he really wasn’t that efficient.

Not fully related but LeBron’s only 30ppg seasons were in 2005, 2008, and 2022. He was able to do it when he was extremely young and when he was 37 but not once during the 2010’s which was his prime. Hell he didn’t even average more than 27.5ppg once in the 2010’s

moses malone

This isn’t about any particular player, but the article for Kenyon Martin’s draft class has this great bit:

Using the WARP (wins above replacement player) metric, the 2000 NBA draft class collectively produced at a rate of 17.3 wins worse than a group of "average replacement players", effectively making this draft class the only one in NBA history to leave the league's talent pool worse than it had been on the morning of the draft.

John Stockton steals number is always wild to me. Especially being a Sonics fan and growing up with The Glove

Mike James averaged 20 points in 2005-06 season. I knew he had not nights then but didn't expect his average to be that high.

[Devin Booker's defensive stats in the finals against Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton as the primary defender.] (https://i.imgur.com/ZhN3hew.png)

There's this idea that Book didn't learn how to play defense until recently, and that he was neutral at best until even just this last playoff run. Book has been able to lock up at the highest level but rarely gets recognized for it because of elimination game stats, which is silly because when does a 3-game sample size define a player's entire postseason reputation?

Kevin Love averaged 20-15 while shooting 42% from 3 in 2010-11.

Grew up watching the Rockets when Calvin Murphy was one of the commentators. Knew he was a Hall of Famer, one of the best free throw shooters ever, etc. But I was blown away when I looked up his college stats and saw that he averaged 48.9 points per game as a freshman. I don't care what level or league or conference it is, basically averaging 50 for a season is stuff of legend.

Nets Jayson Williams having been good for an absolute maximum of three seasons was crazy to me.

I assumed since he had been an All-Star that he had at least been a guy. Nope. And because of the injury, there was nothing on the back end either.