Comments on: Pistons should ignore Tayshaun Prince’s request for a veteran point guard

By: tarsier

tarsier — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:54:00 +0000

I agreed that the Mavs were an old team, even though I thought that had more bearing on their ability to defend the title than their ability to win it. Also, yeah, as I said, of course contenders tend to be old by age/experience. It’s not because old makes a team into a contender (talent does that), it’s because you can get more talent right now for the same asset with old players than young ones.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:02:53 +0000

I think Mosgov said it best after being dunked on by Blake Griffen as a rookie…..he said something like, “The NBA is the only basketball league in the world where if a player runs into you, it’s a foul on you.”

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:55:00 +0000

These days, point guards score all the point and big men can barely score unless they learn to play like a guard like Nowitski. This as much a result of the changes in rules as anything.   Shaq couldn’t quite be the Shaq he was if he was drafted now so I am now making the opposite case and Shaq is of a later generation than Jordan.
Jordan and Isiah would be much better now but Wilt and Shaq would be much worse.   Centers and big men are still of great importance in their role as anchor but titles are rarely now won by dominating big men with their backs to the baskets. Beyond the ever gaining importance of three point shooting, the death of the primacy of centers is about the the ever mounting changes in rules that rewarded face up offense.
Look at the league right now. Point guards have been coming out of college and Europe for half a decade now and have found the NBA rules giving them a big boost right away.   The reason is that no defender ever born, including Pippen, Payton, MJ, Rondo, Shumpert or any defender you want to name can stay in front of a speedy guard with handle under the condition that any touch whatsoever is a foul. It’s been open season since 05 for any player who could drive to the basket to draw fouls at will. It was the best thing Billups did thereafter and its the best thing Stuckey does now.
Jordan and Isiah were lethal killers who no one could stay in front of with handchecking.   The only real hole in my argument that I see is that today’s rules wouldn’t force them to become as skilled as they became. Things would be too easy.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:29:48 +0000

And also, I do blame Stern and them. I hate the rule changes. Play some youtube clips of the Bad Boys and then find a clip of the flagrant foul called on Tyson Chandler for setting a pick a LeBron. It’s pathetic the way the league has gone.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:24:57 +0000

And read Simmons book of basketball before you quote me Simmons or just read the chapter on Joe Dumars alone. That chapter is the opposite of grudging respect and a travesty of poor writing in the context of his great book.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:21:06 +0000

I don’t think old timers could dominate the sport today in general and maybe even think the reverse. Stick Wade in the 60s, exactly as he is, and we might be calling him the greatest wing ever. However, Michael Jordan was one of the greatest athletes in any sport ever and he was much more skilled than any of the players you name and had fewer mental flaws. Isiah Thomas is the greatest ball handler in the history of the game and the only other player who even rates a mention is Pete Maravich. When I say Jordan would dominate more now than he did in the past it is mostly because the rule changes have consistently aided his kind of player.
You ask me if I think Stern was conspiring against the Pistons. I wouldn’t put it like that but I will say that that he wanted Kobe to beat the Spurs and Wade or LeBron to beat the Pistons for the sake of popularity. The Spurs and the Pistons were great defensive teams. Kobe, LeBron and Wade were great individual offensive players who were at their most exciting when they drove to the basket. The league wanted another Jordan ever since Jordan had left and anointed many a player as the next Jordan. However, defense and team was ruling the day as it usually does. This is a cycle in NBA history. Rule changes are implemented to create more scoring. If the rule is serious enough, as with no handchecking or the 24 second shot clock, it will have an immediate and profound effect. However, every time Stern changes the rules, coaches and teams catch up and figure out how to make defense the most important element again. Then come the rule changes. For some reason, the NBA has always been dedicated to punishing the good defensive teams through rule changes that help their more offensive oriented rivals. Nevertheless, there is no way Wade and LeBron score on the the Pistons with 04 rules the way they did from 05 on, That Big LeBron game where he scored a bagillion points in a row during the 4th quarter and overtime—never would have happened without Stern helping him.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 04 May 2012 09:02:48 +0000

Nowitski is old by NBA standards and certainly the standards of this debate which is about giving time to prospects over proven players. Prince is being treated as ancient by this entire crowd and he is younger than Nowitski. Nowitski and Marion are the same age. Beyond that, Terry, Stevenson, Haywood, Peja and Butler were all old last year by NBA standards.   You want to say Tyson Chandler was a young or prime 28 last year. Fine, but he was also a ten year veteran last season.   That’s old. Their nod to youth was a 26 year old Barea.   Frankie D wants to play teenagers.
I was going more by how many seasons a player had played than age and I was completely disregarding how good the player was and whether they were still one of the top players in the league. Kobe just finished second in scoring but he has played a billion minutes. That is why I would call him old.   My overarching point has less to do with age than it does experience and if you look at the history of the league, it is quite an anomaly when the team that wins the title doesn’t have overwhelming experience as well as talent. I’m defending the old by calling them old and saying it is a distinction they carry proudly since it also means they are the only ones with a chance to win the title.
This whole debate grew out of Frankie D’s obsession with handing out roster spots to prospects instead of proven players and my basic argument is that prospects rarely contribute to a title until they have been in the league 4-12 years and the chances are that they are no longer playing for the team that developed them.   When the Pistons last won the title, other teams developed every relevant player but Prince and the Pistons acquired them as they were entering their prime or were in their prime.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:25:16 +0000

I acknowledged that the good teams typically have old players, but you are overstating it considerably.
Last year’s Mavs were old, yes, but the only past-his-prime old players were Kidd and Marion.
For the Lakers two titles, they weren’t all that old. Kobe and Fisher were old. But Pau wasn’t yet 30. Bynum was young. Odom was definitely past his prime. All-around, probably a slightly above average team for age.
The Celtics big three were not ancient. Now they are, 4 years later. But then, they were all coming off of seasons that were clearly still prime years.

I could go on, but I think your idea of old is kinda skewed. In today’s NBA, 30 is not old. It may be getting old, but it’s not usually there yet. Personally, I start thinking of players as old once it becomes clear that they are past their prime, regardless of actual age. So both Nash and Wade I would refer to as old but not ancient (in spite of their wildly different ages). But even if you define it as a certain age, you should probably choose something like 32+ just based on how long players play these days.

Now, obviously championship teams tend to be somewhat on the older end. This isn’t because being older makes you a better contender, it’s because being a contender usually makes you older. You have a good team, so you are not drafting very high. So the influx of youth to your team are not players liable to get major roles. Also, in team construction, you are targeting older players because an older player with the same value as a younger player is better right now. Think of the value of a player as how good he is times how many years you can have that goodness. If somebody only has two productive years in him, he is a lot less valuable than a comparably good player with 10 productive years left. So yeah, if you’re trying to win now, you mortgage the future for the present. It doesn’t mean old vets are necessary, just that they are sometimes what you settle for because they are the best you can get.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:10:30 +0000

By the way, here is a quote from the only specific Piston-hater you mentioned, Bill Simmons, out of his latest column:
“ I hated the ’89 Pistons with every fiber of my body, but they’re probably our no. 1 most underrated great team.”
If that isn’t begrudging respect, I don’t know what is.

By: tarsier

tarsier — Thu, 03 May 2012 21:07:35 +0000

Kobe averaged 35. And it was only once. And there have been a lot of years lately in which the league leading scorer was under 30.I get so sick of all these people claiming that the old timers could dominate in today’s league. How do you know today’s stars aren’t more talented? Sure they may not look as good because the average NBA player is so much better (as a result of more people getting into it from an extremely early age and the talent pool being increasingly large/international). But seriously, guys like Lebron, Wade, Durant, Paul, and Kobe would dominate in any era. Even MJ didn’t lead the league in scoring every year during his prime. So why would he be a sure thing to now?

And ok, there were minor rule changes. And they may have hurt the Pistons and Spurs. But what argument do you have that they were designed to do so? No, they were designed to make the NBA a “better” product in some sense. Scoring was down and it made the game less exciting to watch. You can hardly blame the league, or call it biased, for trying to increase its marketability. Well, maybe you can, but it would be an absurd thing to do.

So tell me, do you honestly believe that Stern or some subset of the media with a lot of influence over him deliberately conspired thinking, “Hmmm, how can we make it harder for Detroit to win? What rule changes can we implement, not to improve the game in any way but just to hurt the Pistons?” Do you really, honestly believe that? You seem reasonably intelligent so I am having a hard time wrapping my head around how you could be such a conspiracy theorist.