U make a good point, but I think u are completely disreguarding zone defense. Of course there is a lot more space cause of having a lot more shooters, however; back then u had to stay with your man no matter what. Iso players dominated cause help D could not just shade and cheat off their assignment. The paint back then was congested no where near as much as today, cause the rules did not allow that shyt back then. The 1-4 island that the Bulls ran for years gave MJ A whole side of the court to work with, so rotations would be late as hell due to the fact that unless a hard double, if their man was on the other side of the court then the defender had to stay with him. The paint was wide fukkin open during iso's vs good shooting teams like ORL, UTA, PHX, etc.
The new rules was suppose to hurt isolation players, and at first, it REALLY did. Numbers were down across the board. Jerry fukkin Stackhouse got a scoring title around that time if I'm not mistaken. Once the league was loaded again, players and teams adjusted to the game. As soon as 07 U had 10 nikkas over 25ppg. Mid range game picked up, 3pters off the dribble picked up, and scoring in the paint took a while, but eventually picked up.
Y'all can talk all that 90's shyt (and I'm not no early 20's kid who is unfamiliar, ill be 30 this year

) but its crazy how u nikkas completely disreguard how a zone is harder than being able to put a damn hand on a nikka, and how back then teams got like 7 more possessions per game and scored much more points.
I can't see how nikkas continue to shyt on current defense l, when their is more talent in the player pool, but yet they still ain't scoring as much as they were back then. nikka, the bottom 5 teams in the L still averaged over 100ppg with no problem. Let's be real fam.