It’s no secret that there’s some kind of “beef” between the older and younger NBA generations.
Except it’s not beef but more so some disdain between the two. The most recent example comes from Dominique Wilkins and JJ Redick.
While on First Take, JJ argued with Chris Russo over the better shooter between Steph Curry and Larry Bird, which turned into a “which generation was more physical” argument.
After seeing the comments, Dominique called JJ’s comments idiotic and said he doesn’t need to crap on his generation to make his point.
“Redick doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” Wilkins ranted. “What basketball were you watching? To say something as idiotic as that is ridiculous. When you can put your hand on a guy’s hip and make him go a certain way, you can put the elbow in his chest to slow him which we called slowing the guy up when he was coming down the lane. How many guys can deal with that type of pressure? And for JJ Redick who’s played this game, I am very disappointed that he said something so stupid.”
Can’t we all get along?
Here are two reasons people think the 90s and early 2000s were tougher.
Somewhat objective: the NBA changed the ‘handcheck rule’ in 2004. After that, no longer could you legally touch a player on the perimeter. I think more arm contact on post players was allowed back then too.
More subjective: refs just allowed more contact back then. Why the change? Maybe the league became more concerned about the welfare of their players (particularly the stars). Or they thought fans would find less-physical games more enjoyable to watch. Or they realised that players simply played better with less contact. I don’t think there’s much in the rulebook that explains the change (although punishments may be officially harsher now).
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