PAOerfulone said:
Magic Johnson never made an All NBA Defensive team in his career and his jump shot was inconsistent. He was strictly a floor general and the vast majority of his scoring came off layups, dunks, and transition offense. So in a sense, he was one dimensional. Is Magic not a Top 10 player? Jerry West (I assume the Mitch Richmond example didn't work out? Why am I not surprised?) played in an era where there were only 8 teams in his rookie year and 17 teams in his final year. Not 30 like today. And only 6-8 teams made the playoffs. Not 16 teams (not counting the Play-In tournament) The level of competition was MUCH smaller and nowhere near as diverse as it is now. You think ANY team in ANY sport, let alone the modern NBA, will come close to winning 8 straight or 11 in 13 years like Bill Russell's Celtics did back then? There's a reason why no team in any sport has been able to 3-peat since the Shaq/Kobe Lakers and the one team that came the closest to doing it since was... the Golden State Warriors... The team Steph plays for and was built around HIM. Three titles in a row seems so far fetched in today's league. 8 in a row? 11 in 13 years? Forget about it! Same goes for a player averaging 50 and 26 while playing all every minute of every game like Wilt Chamberlain did. Seeing as how you were the one who brought up the "If he played in this era" narrative. You think that 60s Celtics team still wins 8 in a row if the competition back then was a diverse and as fierce as it is now where we have elite, superstar players from all over the world? Russell, Wilt, Jerry, and Oscar would still be great players, but they would struggle and they wouldn't have the same level of success just because it's more taxing and demanding to play in today's league and competition compared to back then. And even with that lack of competition back then, Jerry is a whopping 1-8 in NBA Finals appearances. Winning matters and Jerry certainly didn't win nearly enough to warrant a place in a Top 10 over many of his peers or successors who all accomplished and did more than him. Even with Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor on his team for two of those trips and Game 7 on his home floor for the first one, they STILL couldn't beat an old, aging Celtics team or a hobbled Knicks team with their All Star center injured. You're so fixated on stats that I genuinely question if you've ever actually seen a game or if you even take a moment to stop and think about the context behind all those stats you love to pull. |
Actually, you are completely wrong it was way more taxing to play in the 60s than it is today teams didn't have charter planes to get them from game to game they didn't have elite trainers and assistant coaches plus most of the player had jobs in the off seasons so they couldn't focus on being in elite playing shape 365 days of the year. And on top of all that most of the players played a lot more minutes per game than they do now.
NBA & ABA Single Season Leaders and Records for Minutes Played | Basketball-Reference.com
