Here's the problem with the handchecking argument though, there are guys who played with it, and without it, and we can look at their numbers. For example, Allen Iverson's best shooting season was with handchecking, he also won an MVP with it still around, not to say Rose is on his level but he was tiny and a bent arm did nothing with him because he's quick. The handchecking everyone is always referencing is when the NBA removed it completely before the start of the 04-05 season, that is the lightning rod everyone is always talking about, but we can just look at dudes numbers like Marbury, Iverson, B. Davis Francis pre-and post rule.
You can play Frye with Thompson because they're playing with LeBron, a player that commands just as much attention as Duncan, Shaq and Hakeem. Today, most of these PGs that are hard to defend play with a stretch 4, because it creates a situation where you have to choose the lesser of two evils. Do you go over and hard trap the PG and potentially leave the stretch 4 open for the three, do you switch on the pick and have your big guard some dude who is looking to dance all over him or have the stretch 4 roll to the rim. Do you go under the screen and risk the PG pulling up for a three? How many stretch bigs in the past were playing with drive and kick players? How many teams really tried to spread the floor like that other than Don Nelson experiments, everyone tried the same shyt. How much more effective do you think Gary Payton would have been if Kemp had been playing the 5, and he had someone like Ryan Anderson at the 4 instead the Kemp/Johnson Kemp/Perkins frontcourts he had? The Jazz probably would have a better shot against the Bulls with a floor spacer to give Karl more room rather than Ostertag, Carr and Foster.
Teams are being built with space in mind now because of the zone, it's a design philosophy and I bet teams like the Sixers, Nuggets and Wolves with young bigs will put floor spacers at the 4 next to their guys.
