Marco said:
@justanotherfan I agree with you on all points save for one. It is the defense or lack thereof (with this year being painfully obvious, especially in the NBA) and the pompous, entitled attitudes of the players that I believe is - and I am aware of the ratings - soon going to start biting them, that and the constant reconfiguring of teams. A league cannot long survive by giving away the kind of power that both leagues are now giving to players.
@Marco
Defense - The NBA defenses are FAR superior to college defenses. College players look like they are working hard on defense mostly because they aren’t athletically gifted enough to make the plays that NBA guys make look so routine. If you go to a college game one night, then an NBA game the next, the differences are stark. The amount of ground NBA guys can cover, the talent they have, is just amazing.
Now, you may argue that lots of points are being scored in the NBA. This also has a lot to do with pure talent. In college, good defenses are based not around stopping people, but rather around forcing the ball into the hands of the 1 or 2 players on the floor that cannot hurt you.
We have decried on this very board Coach Self insisting on playing different players (from Morningstar to Traylor to Lucas to Garrett) that were not offensive threats. A very good college defense forces the ball into those guys’ hands to make plays. A very good college defense doesn’t stop Zion Williamson because they don’t have the talent to do so. It doesn’t stop Udoka Azubuike because it doesn’t have the talent to do so. It forces the ball into the hands of a non-shooter like Jones (Duke) or Garrett (KU).
In the NBA, that’s not really an option. If you take the ball out of James Harden’s hands, its going to Chris Paul, or Eric Gordon, or one of the shooters or lob threats that Houston has surrounded them with. If you force the ball out of Steph Curry’s hands, it goes to Klay Thompson, or Kevin Durant, or someone else that can score. There are very few players in the NBA that flat out cannot hurt you if left open the way some guys in the college game can. As a result, even if you play good college defense, you’re probably still giving up points in the pro game.
On top of that, the best players in the world are the best for a reason and no amount of defense will stop them when they get rolling. Remember how we thought Lagerald Vick was burning down the gym for a couple of games this past season? Well, a guy like Klay Thompson gets that hot twice a month. Steph Curry has been shooting like that since 2013. James Harden was that hot for six weeks earlier this year. Damian Lillard was that hot in the series against OKC the last couple of weeks.
Speaking of Lillard, he dropped 50 points in the series clinching win, including the game winner. If you haven’t watched it yet then here you go.
What more is Paul George, an all world level defender, supposed to do to prevent Lillard from dropping a 30something foot step back? And although George said it was a fluke, Lillard shot 39% from 30+ feet this season (that’s 10 percent better than Marcus Garrett shoots from the college line) on 51 attempts. That’s not a fluke.
And Lillard is by no means even the best POINT GUARD in the NBA, let alone the best player.
As for entitlement, or player attitudes, that’s a personal opinion. From my perspective, people pay to see the players play, and the NBA is as valuable as it is right now because of that. The NBA has made basketball the second most popular sport in the world behind soccer, with millions of fans overseas in places like Africa and Asia. The players are what’s behind that. If you have ever seen video of NBA players touring other countries for camps and games, you can see what I mean.
The global market is what makes the NBA so profitable. It’s what will continue to separate the NBA from college hoops. And that is almost exclusively player driven, so it makes sense to give the players a healthy share of that pie they created. When the NBA was mostly a regional thing, the owners had to do a lot more to promote the game and the teams. Now, that has shifted to the players. The financial rewards of that have shifted as well. That makes sense to me, but as I said, this is more a matter of opinion as to whether you think the players have bad attitudes or are too entitled.
