Charles Barkley - "The NBA is the worst it's ever been"

[Professor Emeritus]

Try and explain how two 6'2" tall 35-year-old White Americans can be the clear #2 and #3 on the 2nd-best team in the NBA, and I'll start listening to you defend how 1997 wasn't utter trash compared to 2017.

Save the essays chump. In th '96-97 season you had 10 teams win at least 50 games. This year there's barely 7 on pace to win 50. There were better toms and a higher quality of play back then. Your trying to cloud the issue with your stay boy geek shyt doesn't change that.

What the hell is the "stat boy geek shyt" in my comment?

I love how saying, "you can't compare 5 years to 7 years, you should compare 7 years to 7 years" is "stat boy geek shyt" in your view.


Because that's probably the most difficult "stat" I posted.

1997 was a shyt year at the end of the expansion era where 1/4 of the teams were awful. You had 7 teams with 26 wins or less even though they all played 20 games against other shyt teams...meaning that every decent team in the league was guaranteed 20 wins right off the top. Not to mention that all those guaranteed trash teams to beat, the 30-35 win teams were probably awful too.

Spurs?

Spurs didn't make the Finals in any of those years. By the time the Spurs got Timmy and were actually good, nearly all those teams were gone.




If you're going to try to stretch seven seasons from 1993 to 1999 in order to include the 1993 WCF champ Suns and the 1999 WCF champ Spurs at the same time, then to be fair you have to go from 2011-2017, and then you've got Dallas and the Lakers in your "competitors" window as well on top of Warriors/Spurs/Thunder. Comparing 7 seasons to 5 seasons in order to create the narrative you want is just dumb.




"Look, I can find ONE season from twenty years ago where there was more competition at the top than ONE season from now, therefore the NBA is worse than it's ever been!"



In 1997, the best team in the West had an unathletic 34-year-old 6'1" White American running the point and an unathletic 33-year-old 6'3" White American at the shooting guard, and those were the 2nd and 3rd best players on the team by a LONG shot.

And even then, the only teams in the entire West who could threaten them were a Hakeem-Clyde-Barkley superteam and the Payton-Kemp Sonics, and both of them lost. To a team led by a couple barely-six-feet-tall White guys with a combined age of nearly 70.

Don't even start talking about the Lakers. Kobe was 18 years old and Utah completely washed them.

And in the East, the Bulls were sleepwalking to an 11-2 record over Miami/Atlanta/Washington teams who didn't do a thing in the league before or after Jordan left. So don't talk like there was more than 1 contender on that side.

That's it. Chicago-Utah-Houston-Seattle. Those are your title hopes in your great competitive year. Three teams that had shoved together a trifecta of old talent and one team that has to rely on Shawn fukking Kemp.




You can't compare one year to an entire 7-year-long era. That's just stupid. You keep doing it over and over again.

And "it's obvious the level of play is shyt right now"? How the hell do you get that? Modern players are at the height of NBA history in every meaningful way.

Shooting skills? GOAT
Ballhandling skills? GOAT
Passing skills? GOAT
Offensive schemes? GOAT
Defensive schemes? GOAT

What "level of play" are we missing that was around in the 1990s? Being able to grab guys? Barkley's 15-second-backdown move?






And he's obviously only watched highlights and classic playoff games from that era too. The day-to-day quality of play in that era was so much worse than today that he would have shut his mouth long ago if he could remember it even 50% accurately.

 

[Draje]

nikka you the one bringing up nikkas that got like 20 seasons in like lebron and wade, im talking these new nikkas since the subject is the league of today

Like Deron Williams and MCW? Take out Lebron and Wade then add in Rose and Oladipo. Your still fukking stupid

 

[Gravity]

Try and explain how two 6'2" tall 35-year-old White Americans can be the clear #2 and #3 on the 2nd-best team in the NBA, and I'll start listening to you defend how 1997 wasn't utter trash compared to 2017.

I don't know, maybe the same way that one of the 6'2 white boys could be the all time NBA leader in steals and assists. I mean maybe it's because they could play. Steph Curry isn't but like 6'2 with white boy athleticism and up until recently was being hyped as maybe the goat. You just had JR smith and Tristan Thompson starting on a title team.

What kind of argument is this? Where are you from where you think weak shyt like this passes for an argument?

I call you a stat boy geek because you're one of these basketball nerds that have an agenda to promote this era and style of play. That's why nerds like you go hard at anybody who dares say something about how shytty the quality of play is. You not only go hard with anyone who talks about the low quality of play you go hard at other eras on some hate shot just to defend this one That's where all the "it's always been this way y'all just nostalgic" shyt comes in. The game is completely different from the players, to the rules, to the style of play, but somehow "it's always been this way". Cats are clowns for no reason

 

[Professor Emeritus]

So what happened to all the 6'2" White Americans? Did they catch some disease? Are they gone? All started playing baseball?




Or....just maybe...they can't cut it in today's league and a 35-year-old unathletic 6'2" White American could only dominate the 1990s and earlier?




Talking about their great stats doesn't help your argument.....because if a 6'2" White guy is racking up stats like that, it tells you what the competition is like.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

the whole idea of backing your man down 5+ seconds was to draw an illegal defense. its not that he relied on it and would be powerless to score without it. ....do you realize how silly you sound saying lebron couldnt do it vs this team so barkley couldnt? they absolutely arent the same players true, but they arent playing the same positions either. do you think the mavs in 2010 would have rather faced lebron who couldnt post up anyone, or barkley? do you now see the flaw in that argument? youre going on a diatribe as if i said barkley was a better all around player when that has no bearing on how barkley being guarded against different players than lebron would fare.

Zone defenses plague post-up games just like they plague drivers. It's a major reason why the post-up game has declined in today's NBA - because it's way easier to run 2nd defenders at a guy when there's no illegal defense. Think about what you said - if Barkley backed guys into the post to draw illegal defense...then doesn't that mean that teams felt that being able to play illegal defense would make defending Barkley easier?

You're trying to simultaneously claim that the 1990s had better post games AND better post defenders, so someone with a post game could kill in 2017. Think of how stupid that logic is. It's not like there's been a 20-year worldwide ban on developing a post game...there are 500,000,000 young men trying to do anything they can to make the NBA. It's just way easier to score in the post when you're playing man-on-man, the other team can't zone, coaches know nothing about defensive scheming or showing help effectively, and half the guys on the court are stiffs. It is HARDER to score in the post than it's ever been, otherwise more players would do it and it would become the dominant go-to development, rather than everyone working on shooting and passing and multi-player offensive plays like they do now.

Not to mention that it's hard as hell to post up guys 6 inches taller than you who actually know what they're doing. Barkley had a good, not great post game, and the league was full of absolute stiffs at the power forward position.

And you're still not telling me what he would do. You claim, "Barkley being guarded against different players", but why? Since he's a shorter, fatter, slower, less athletic Lebron, they could guard him with any forward they thought was best. Anyone who could guard Lebron could also guard Barkley, because Barkley offers NO advantage on Lebron.

So what would he do?

and youre bringing up these names of players that he wouldnt necessarily be guarding. why would barkley be guarding cousins when theres a kosta koufus around? you seem fixated on anthony mason making all nba, but youre ignoring that vin baker made that same all nba team. chris webber, shawn kemp, antonio mcdyess, rasheed wallace, christian laettner, the great tom gugliotta and derrick coleman were also capable scorers where barkley would have a severe height disadvantage. the difference would be yes he'd face more 3 point shooters, but i dont think that would make him this sieve that would have to be benched.

funny you mention, love, randolph, and aldridge, they've been able to thrive in this era despite not being particularly good defenders, but barkley would struggle. the raptors started luis scola at pf last year and won 56 games, but barkley would struggle.

So you went from "Barkley will dominate the league!" to "At least he's better than Luis Scola!"



So Barkley is suposedly going to dominate the league....yet you're burying him on the worst frontcourt player on the opposing.

And when you have a 6'5" frontcourt player who doesn't play D, you better have a lot to surround him with. If you hide Barkley on a defensive center, then who the hell is your center guarding? Are you going to hide him on a three-point shooting who has 5 inches on him instead and who forces him to chase him around the court from line to line?

Who you hiding him on when he goes up against Golden State? Or San Antonio? Or Cleveland? Or the Clippers? And what the hell is he doing on switches?



Vin Baker isn't helping your case...a soft skinny guy who couldn't shoot any better than Barkley...exactly who would he be in today's league? Now he'd be labeled "Quick first step with some potential but no work ethic. Needs to gain weight, be willing to use his body, and develop a more consistent outside shot". In Barkley's era he was "instant all-star when he stepped into the league".

Other than Kemp (another athletic lazy guy), the good players you mentioned didn't overlap with Barkley's prime at all...Webber and Sheed had barely entered the league when he was good - and by 1995 a young Webber was destroying Barkley. McDyess/Laettner/Gugliotta weren't very good (well, they looked good compared to their shyt competition of the era, but they weren't very skilled at all compared to today's players), and Derrick Coleman was a talented headcase who rarely tried. And hell, Coleman was Barkley's equal when they matched up against each other, and you NEVER hear, "If only we had Derrick Coleman...he would dominate in today's league".

I listed a dozen players who are good NOW, in THIS year, and you could only put up 7 players whose primes differed by more than a decade and whose quality wasn't even half of the quality that I posted anyway.

Who did you name who has talent that can even be compared to Anthony Davis or Giannis or Porzingis or Durant or Camelo or Lebron?

Blake >>>>>>>>>>Gugliotta
Aldridge >>>>>>>> McDyess
Love >>>>>>>>>>> Laettner
Cousins >>>>>>>>> Coleman
Green >>>>>>>>> Mason


And the idea that Barkley faced better defenders than he would today is bullshyt. What magic era dust made them better at defense, when the talent pool is 10 times bigger today and players work 10 times harder on defense than they did back then?

Buck Williams was 1st-team All-Defense multiple years. I'm a huge Blazer fan, but if Buck Williams is the greatest defender at the power forward position in any year, then you're not facing great defenders. Kevin McHale, then a couple years of Charles Oakley, then a couple years of Karl Malone...THESE are the best defenders in the NBA at the PF position during Sir Charles's career? The only guy I'm respecting is Rodman, and he was a headcase half the time. On the 2nd team you have Horace Grant, Anthony Mason, Rick Mahorn....

After Barkley's era, we're talking Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Serge Ibaka, Anthony Davis, Draymond Green....the jump up in athleticism and defensive technique and skill is night and day. Not to mention, of course, that the zone makes isolation players without a good jump shot (like Barkley) far easier for a PF to defend.

You're right that Randolph and Aldridge aren't incredible defenders. And they're still light years better than Barkley was. Randolph is basically a taller Barkley who works harder on the defensive end (and still has to have a DPOY to clean up inside for him). Hell, even Love shows more effort and smarter defensive decisions than Barkley ever did...and he's not limited by being short either.

 

[Dark is the night]

Like Deron Williams and MCW? Take out Lebron and Wade then add in Rose and Oladipo. Your still fukking stupid

MCW is like 3 seasons in fool, do you actually watch basketball?

 

[jwinfield]

MCW is like 3 seasons in fool, do you actually watch basketball?

He isn't a 3 pt shooter though, can't shoot at all

 

[Dark is the night]

He isn't a 3 pt shooter though, can't shoot at all

Last season was his best season in 3 ball shooting though

 

[Malta]

Last season was his best season in 3 ball shooting though

He shot 27%, that is almost 10% below league average.

 

[Dark is the night]

He shot 27%, that is almost 10% below league average.

Doesnt change my point though, hell we could even bring up that little light bright from phoenix, devin booker

 

[Malta]

Doesnt change my point though, hell we could even bring up that little light bright from phoenix, devin booker

Booker is shooting 32%, which is less than Andrew Wiggins

 

[Dark is the night]

Booker is shooting 32%, which is less than Andrew Wiggins

Still a 3 point shooting light bright, right or wrong?

 

[Gravity]

Son said that Zbo was a taller Barkely

 

[jwinfield]

Last season was his best season in 3 ball shooting though

 

[CoCKy GeNiuS]

As far as competition its true, u know before the season starts whos coming out the east and the west is like 1 team that might be upset by one or two teams...

It's always been like the bolded. You always knew the Celtics, Lakers, Pistons, Bulls, Rockets, Blazers, etc. were coming out of each conference.