What ISH taught me about current era defense

[swagga]

michael jordan is the GOAT.

[3ball]

today's defenses are more sophisticated

Jordan would be a worse shooting JR Smith in today's league

That's a shallow understanding of the changes on offense and defense over the years.. Today's defensive "sophistication" is nothing more than defenses being forced to make extra rotations, as required to cover additional ground created by spacing, while also abiding by the new defensive 3 seconds rule.

But in previous eras, without spacing or the new defensive 3 seconds rule, the extra rotations weren't necessary, so the difficulty of scoring was the same.. [COLOR="green"]This is proven by the stats[/COLOR], since we have a stat that measures how hard it is to score.. It's called league-wide offensive rating, or ORtg, and it's been stable for 30 years, ranging between 105 and 108 - this excludes a brief downswing from 1999-2004.. ORtg reached an all-time high of 108.3 in 2009.. (the minor shifts within that 105-108 range are due to style of play differences between the eras that affect inputs to the ORtg calculation, such as offensive rebounding rate and FT rate)

Cliffs: 30 years of stable ORtg proves the difficulty of scoring hasn't changed, and the changes in strategy on offense (spacing) and defense (extra rotations) are offsetting - you either have extra rotations required by spacing and defensive 3 seconds (today's game), or the rotations aren't necessary because there is no spacing or defensive 3 seconds (previous eras).

[swagga]

That's a shallow understanding of the changes on offense and defense over the years.. Today's defensive "sophistication" is nothing more than defenses being forced to make extra rotations, as required to cover additional ground created by spacing, while also abiding by the new defensive 3 seconds rule.

But in previous eras, without spacing or the new defensive 3 seconds rule, the extra rotations weren't necessary, so the difficulty of scoring was the same.. [COLOR="green"]This is proven by the stats[/COLOR], since we have a stat that measures how hard it is to score.. It's called league-wide offensive rating, or ORtg, and it's been stable for 30 years, ranging between 105 and 108 - this excludes a brief downswing from 1999-2004.. ORtg reached an all-time high of 108.3 in 2009.. (fyi - the shifts within that 105-108 range are due to style of play differences between the eras that affect inputs to the ORtg calculation, such as offensive rebounding rate and FT rate)

30 years of stable ORtg proves the difficulty of scoring hasn't changed, and the changes in strategy on offense (spacing) and defense (extra rotations) are offsetting - you either have extra rotations required by spacing and defensive 3 seconds (today's game), or the rotations aren't necessary because there is no spacing or defensive 3 seconds (previous eras).

imo the 90s defenses looked primitive because jordan just destroyed them so many times, and it made the coaches just give up tbh.

[feyki]

League points per possesions explain this. Players are compact elements of their teams , individual talents only calculate with the era's dynamics (efg,pace,poss rating and adjust the other numbers ) .