Late 80s/Early 90s Detroit would beg to differ. Id love to see "King Lebron" face some of those teams.
![[roll]](http://l.yimg.com/j/assets/img/emoticons/classic/roll.r191677.gif "roll [roll]")
The 1989 Pistons had a DRtg of 105.5 and DRtg/A of 104.54. 1990 Pistons were 104.02 and 103.89, respectively. That would be about the equivalent of 2016 Clippers, Heat, Jazz, or Warriors. Of course, defenses now are much, much more sophisticated due to all but removing illegal defenses. And the NBA is, on a whole, almost certainly more athletic than it was almost 30 years ago.
Ok. That doesn't mean defense is better in today's game. Yea, you have your freak athletes who are pretty good defenders. But the majority of the millionaire players take multiple possessions off on the defensive end in today's game also.
1) not a majority, and 2) offensive creators have always, always expended less energy on defense.
No thanks, I've watched both and am pretty sure defense was much more aggressive and tough back then on EVERY possession. Just because there were a couple rules that would benefit Lebron doesn't mean anything at all...
Oh, okay, your anecdotal, not at all biased or faulty in any way memories have clearly solved this.
Once again aggressive defense doesn't equal good defense. Today's defense is about scheming and game planning too. Zone defense was illegal, packing the paint was illegal, Thib's famous ICE defense was illegal, and so forth. MJs era also birthed Iso ball
Yup.
Bird is remembered as a great player, something Lebron will never be remembered as.
You should make this your signature. Please.
What is corny is cherry picking.
Fact is that Bron has played with almost 20 all-stars. He has not been on island, no matter how it is spun. That is not debatable.
Next
This is what is called a poorly supported argument.
"Larry was a debate. He still is. People ask me all the time who my top 5 players are, and when I start saying Larry, they interrupt me. They say, 'you've got to be kidding me. He can't play with Lebron James.' I tell them, 'you guys don't get it. Larry is far better than any small forward who has played the game.'" -- Michael Jordan
Well, if we've learned anything, it's that former players are objective, rational observers.
Bird would probably be sitting at #1 in career points had it not been for injury.
He came into the league at, what, 23? And he was never a scorer on the level of, say, Michael Jordan or Karl Malone. But really, by the time he was taking Indiana State to the NCAA title game he had 0% chance at setting the #1 career points record. He scored 21,791 points, and Kareem scored 38,387 points. In Bird's best season he scored 2295 points. So he would have needed 7.23 best ever seasons to tie the record. He was healthy in his prime (injured at 32), so he needs to find those points 1) before he even entered the NBA, or 2) on the back end of his prime and twilight of his career. Given that #1 is out, that leaves only #2. I'm no scientist, but the odds of Larry Bird making up 16,500 points from age 32 on have to be less than 1%. Record for points scored after 30 is 19,941 (Malone), and only one other person scored more than 14,800 besides him (Kareem with 19,749). 16,500 (points short of record) + 4500 (2 peak Bird seasons to adjust for 32 v. 30 age comparisons) = 21,000 points. That's 9.15 peak scoring seasons at age 30 or over. So Bird would have had to have been the greatest post-30 scorer in league history by a country mile to break the points scored record.
Edit: forgot to mention that those post-30 seasons for Bird would have had to have come in an era with less scoring and a slower pace (basically, the 1990s). So 2295 total points/season would be even harder to achieve. So 9.15 best ever Bird seasons post 30 in a slower/lower scoring era.
