Defense in the '80s and '90s was NOT better than Today

[OldSchoolBBall]

By this logic, defense in '09-'11 was worse than from '06-'08, so defense has been steadily getting worse.

[thelucifer69]

Look it's simple. If it made a big difference then offense efficiency would skyrocket, but it didn't, it stayed the same.

may be offence get worse

[necya]

By this logic, defense in '09-'11 was worse than from '06-'08, so defense has been steadily getting worse.

[Knoe Itawl]

The fact that it's always Kobetards who start these threads tells you everything you need to know about the validity of the argument.

[Owl]

My primary objection is the idea that two decades of basketball can be lumped together and assumed to be at an equal quality.

Leaving aside the lack of precision in terms of what exactly we are talking about (for example:how do we account for changes in pace) treating 1980 and 2000 as analagous is absurd.

If we are speaking in lazy generalisations I would say 80s was a weaker era for defense, particularly on the wings, which may account for the glut of scoring small forwards from that era (Bird, King, English, Dantley, Aguirre, Worthy, Wilkins, Tripucka, Vandeweghe, Purvis Short etc). But I'd have to research it properly to back that up and I don't have the time or will to do so.

But if this were to be used as an implicit Kobe versus Jordan thing, then fortunately advanced stats normalise to the era by comparing players with their peers (who face the same level of difficulty scoring, because they play against the same defences). Jordan is the greatest by such measures, wheras Kobe merely appears to be a very, very good indeed player (whose peak was inferior to others playing the same position in the same era such as T-Mac and D-Wade).

[OldSchoolBBall]

Team PPG and FG% allowed stats also assume constant offensive quality, when in fact teams have regressed offensively since the 80's for a variety of reasons (lesser concentration of talent, micromanagement by coaches, comparative lack of pass-first PG's, lack of fundamentals such as off ball movement, passing, and motion offenses and midrange shot/game etc.).

Fact is, if you place all teams from, say, 2007 back in the 1987-1989 NBA and have them play a full season, the '07 teams would NOT hold the '87-'89 teams to the league averages from '07. They might hold them to worse numbers than the '87-'89 NBA actually averaged, but nowhere near the league averages from '07. And that has to do with the stuff I mentioned above. Offenses were just flat-out more potent in the 80's and early 90's.

[Deuce Bigalow]

lol jordan jockers are getting mad. I'm not diminishing anything
The defense hasn't changed.

[Deuce Bigalow]

I dont know what this has to do with Kobe?

I hear from these Jordan fans all the time saying that it was harder to score in their tough era.
But it wasn't harder at all

[OldSchoolBBall]

lol jordan jockers are getting mad. I'm not diminishing anything
The defense hasn't changed.

The defense has changed with respect to individual players, namely perimeter players. Looking at league ppg/FG% introduces a ton of other factors (some of which I noted above) which are not strictly related to the question of whether it's easier for an INDIVIDUAL perimeter player to score big in the '06-'11 era as compared to, say, '86-'90 or '90-'95. All the evidence points to the fact that it became much easier for perimeter players to rack up big games from '06 onward. All of it.

[Knoe Itawl]

I dont know what this has to do with Kobe?
I hear from these Jordan fans all the time saying that it was harder to score in their tough era.
But it wasn't harder at all

It has to do with Kobe because only people like you and your merry band of Kobe worshipping idiots embrace this "argument". So it's one of two things:

A. Only Kobe worshippers have the insight to see what the majority of the knowledgeable basketball world doesn't

or

B. Kobe worshippers have to come up with some sort of nonsense to explain why Bryant doesn't measure up to Michael Jordan, which is an eternal source of frustration for them.

My money is on B.