Quote:
Originally Posted by thehef
Again, I think you're missing my point. I'm not advocating specifically for a mid-range shot at the end of the game. Rather, I'm advocating working for a higher percentage shot - like teams typically do throughout the rest of the game - rather than settling for a long, contested, low-percentage launch. IOW, time-permitting, teams should run through their own version of your Bulls progression example.
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Yes, and I'm saying that the scenarios you're describing are *extremely* rare in the modern NBA. Look, there are plenty of criticisms to be had - if, for instance, you enjoy post play, there's very little of it anymore and even post players like Joel Embiid and Giannis have to have range out beyond 3 land - but these are just plain not it. Practically the only guy in the league who consistently puts up long, contested midrange shots at any point in the game, early or late, is DeMar, and that's very, very specifically because he modeled his game after Kobe Bryant, who was an absolute assassin at still managing to hit those supposedly low-percentage shots.
If anything, there's a criticism out there that guys don't shoot from the midrange *enough* - it's a spot on the court like any other spot, and while it may be true that the tradeoff between the extra few percentage points you have to make a shot from 16 feet aren't worth the extra point you get if you shoot from 23, right now you're probably more likely to be left wide open from midrange than from 3. But - and again, I'm saying this as a person who watches a pretty decent amount of the last great midrange shooter left in the NBA - it's a dying art.
The other criticisms I see and which have some validity is that you just plain can't be physical the way you could in the 90s and early 2000s, like, for whatever reason that part of the game is pretty much gone now. Personally I think I prefer the finesse-based play but a *lot* of people who I think misremember the 90s in particular will complain about this (and I think in fairness to that, too, prior to last season there was this whole thing where guys like James Harden would kick out a leg when putting up a shot and draw a contact foul; however, the league did legislate that away). There are no longer bigs who sit in the post on offense or defense. The average height has actually gone down in the past 10 years by I think 3 inches because of this. There's no Shaq, obviously, but also no 7 foot stiff whose entire reason for being in the league was muscling up against Shaq, and on top of that there are no more intimidation shot blockers like Dikembe Mutombo or Theo Ratliff or Ben Wallace (or to go a little further back, Mark Eaton). If you enjoyed that style of play (admittedly I didn't and always kind of hated/sneered at those players) (OK that's not true... I liked the Rattler and Dikbo just fine; the guys I couldn't stand were those tall guys whose value in the league was pretty much entirely that they were very tall, guys like Jim McIlvaine and young Shawn Bradley (who did TBF round out his game as he got older) and Calvin Booth (who's now an executive)), you pretty much have to pull up old tape. Even bigs who have a solid offensive game like Bol Bol have to prove they can run up and down the court and many of those types (Tacko Fall is another example) are either barely in the league or in the G Leagues.
It's a very interesting and fun game to watch IMO. There are for sure issues with the way the game is played today. But those issues are categorically not the ones you're describing, which were the big issues in like 2005.