So
@Living Proof, you were going to address that the 5 second rule, the zone defenses, and the intensified emphasis on defensive scheming in this era are all things that would severely impact Barkley’s game in a negative way, right? If he couldn’t take forever backing guys down, if zones loaded the paint against him while daring him to shoot, and if he would have screwed up scheming with his laziness on defense and refusal to practice, exactly how would he have dominated on offense enough to make up for being a huge liability on defense? And you’re going to deal with the fact that the immense increase in athleticism and training would have marginalized Barkley’s natural athletic ability because he was always far too lazy to have gone to the same lengths to improve himself, right?
In 1997, 33-year-old Charles Barkley had already degraded so much that Anthony Mason was picked over him for the All-NBA team.
Career role player Anthony Mason, an undersized guy who got boards and played hard on D, was considered to be the 2nd-best power forward in the entire NBA.
A big fish always looks great in a small pond. But bigger ponds grow bigger fish than small ponds. New York and California will always produce a greater crop of talent than Delaware and Oregon. The fact that basketball is ten times as popular as it was in the 1970s and recruits from a global pool that’s ten times bigger means that the talent that rises to the top is going to be that much better. It’s simple numbers, even before you take into account that today’s ballers start younger, learn difficult skills earlier, work harder, and are coached better than the 1970s ballers could ever have dreamed of.
Barkley looked great because his natural athletic talent was enough to overcome weak competition, even though he was short and fat and lazy and didn’t practice and never developed a shot and didn’t try on defense. In most of the league, being a power forward meant that you were a strong 6’9” stiff who was expected to be able to hold your ground on defense, get rebounds, and catch and dunk. Charles Oakley, Christian Laettner, Chris Gatling, Tom Gugliotta, Tyrone Hill, Otis Thorpe, Juwan Howard, and Horace Grant were freaking all-stars.
In 1992, Kevin Willis was supposedly a top-4 power forward in the game, making All-NBA 3rd team with Rodman behind only Malone and Barkley. The next year, Larry Johnson was 2nd-team All-NBA. The next year Derrick Coleman took that spot. Then Juwan Howard. And finally, Anthony Mason beating out Barkley in 1997. Those are top-3 or top-4 power forwards in Barkley's prime - a mix of talented but undersized lazy-ass players with attitude problems, tweeners who played hard, and tall stiffs.
Now it’s just expected that if you play the 4, you better have elite athleticism, be able to stretch the floor with a high percentage shot, put the ball on the ground, AND play defense on top of that. Anyone without all four of those skills is going to be marginalized into a role player off the bench or a situational guy whose deficits are masked by other players on his team.
U one some troll shyt if you're gonna use Giannis as a way to bring downplay barkley
I mentioned Giannis because Barkley
never, ever saw a player who looked anything like Giannis. At 21 years old, the 7’0” raw talent doesn’t just display a range of skills already that the 6’5” Barkley never developed in his entire career, he displays a range of skills light years beyond what any 7-footer with his athleticism could have even imagined in the 1990s. The closest I can think of is a young pre-injury Sabonis, and not only did the NBA never see pre-injury Sabonis (Detlef Schrempf played against him and said that Sabonis would have been the best player in the NBA), but you can watch film and see that as talented and smart and athletic as young Sabonis was, Giannis’s athleticism and ballhandling are on an entirely different level.
There is a PG out there in Boston putting up 27ppg at a 5'7 PG but a 6'6 player who was a lot better wouldnt adapt
I’m sure it made sense for you at the time that if an extremely highly skilled and hard-working undersized point guard could make it on a mediocre team in today’s NBA, then lazy undersized power forward with mediocre skills obviously could make it as well.
I’m not sure how you possibly drew that connection in your mind, but I’m sure it made sense at the time.
Barkley took a dump on Shawn Kemp when they went head to head and how many PFs in the league now are as athletic as 90's Kemp ? Hell, how many of them are better than Kemp for that matter
Picking out another lazy power forward with mediocre skills from the same era to prove that Barkley could score against his own competition of the age isn’t proving much. Not to mention that while Barkley averaged 22 and 14 on 46% shooting against Kemp along with 0.7 block a game, Kemp averaged 21 and 10 on 54% shooting with 2.4 blocks/game against Barkley. If by "took a dump on Shawn Kemp" means "averaged 1 more point on far worse shooting and got blocked a lot", then sure, Barkley took a dump all right. I'm sure Barkley takes huge dumps.
Not to mention that Kemp hadn’t even hit 30 or made his way out of the mid-90s before he was flabby sick status. Being a poor man’s Blake Griffin only gets you so far when you have no work ethic or basketball IQ.
at anyone taking this dude serious when he literally says the same exact shyt at least once a year.
NBA is dying
