Old School

Bill Simmons laments the fading memories of sports greatness:

This piece was published in 1988, when Bird and Magic were at the height of their powers and Jordan was nearing the same tipping point LeBron reached in Detroit. Already saddened that we'd be poking holes in them some day, Goldman predicted, "Bird and Magic's time is coming. It's easy being fans of theirs now. Just wait. Give it a decade." Then he wrote an entire mock paragraph of fans picking apart their games in the year 2000, complaining that Magic couldn't guard anyone and Bird was too slow. He ended with this mock quote: "Sure (Bird) was good, and so was Magic -- but they couldn't play today." I remember reading that piece in college and thinking, Come on, that's ludicrous. Nobody will ever forget Bird and Magic! Those guys saved the NBA!

Okay. Now as it happens, I just finished watching game four of the 1987 NBA Finals and , I mean, it actually is true that if you're immersed in the contemporary NBA the relative lack of athleticism on display is striking. Which, of course, is precisely what you'd expect. Bird and Magic not only saved the NBA, but ushered in an era of radically higher player salaries. That, in turn, led to substantial increases in amount of time and money invested in locating the best possible prospects from all around the world and into making the players the best they can be.

That's not to take anything away from the greats of past era -- it's just the way the world works, but it would be silly to make appropriate appreciation of the greatness of of older players dependent on denying the obvious fact that today's players are stronger, quicker, and can jump higher than those of yesteryear.

Comments

Not to change the topic, but I've often thought exactly this about hockey in recent years. I recently watched some of the hockey games in Gretzky's heyday with the Oilers' dynasty, and it was amazing how slow some of the players were, and really how much space players had on the ice to skate between guys. I think the major change in that dynamic is that now the players are so much bigger and even the big guys are incredibly fast, and thus when a player gets the puck the defensive players are on them so much faster.

Which raises my basketball-related question in response to MY's point: how much if this is solely a change in the quality of players, and how much is a change in the coaching strategies within the games? Is the general intensity level higher because of the new strategies being used to pressure the ballhandlers, etc.?

Posted by msmackle | June 9, 2007 2:11 PM

"it would be silly to make appropriate appreciation of the greatness of of older players dependent on denying the obvious fact that today's players are stronger, quicker, and can jump higher than those of yesteryear."

Apples and oranges. You live in your own time.

If Socrates visited today, he'd fare poorly in a philosophical debate.

If Bird and Magic played today, they'd train as modern players train.

And if Steve Nash had played in the 70's, you'd watch his replayed games, be struck by his relative lack of athleticism, and conclude he couldn't play today.

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 2:14 PM

I understand what you are saying about scouting. However, I have to say that your opinion is a part with some very, very lazy thinking about athleticism and the nature of human progress. An awful lot of sports writers talk as though the athleticism of the players of a given sport is just going to continue to climb and climb. But that's nonsense. What is the mechanism through which they suppose that's going to happen? I think theres some notion that evolution is driving this. But to believe that you really, really don't understand evolution or the amount of time it takes.

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 2:16 PM

I reject the whole premise. I watch old film of Magic and Bird and still think "these guys could absolutely play at the top of the game today."

Posted by Antid Oto | June 9, 2007 2:18 PM

Players today may be more athletic, but that doesn't neccesarily mean that they are better; skills such as shooting, dribbling, passing, etc. matter too. I was watching Game 4 of the 1984 NBA Finals the other day, and was surprised not so much by the lack of athleticism as mostly by the apparent lack of defense; there seemed to be much more space out there that I was used to. Of course, I was also impressed by the shooting ability; every mid-range jumper seemed to went in. So I'm of two minds on the "today's players are better" thing. Sure, that's what you would normally expect (athletic records fall all the time, right?) but old guys seem to do reasonably well today (20 players 35 years old or more in the league last year), so maybe the improvement isn't so large.

Posted by Carlos | June 9, 2007 2:24 PM

So today's players are perhaps more athletic than those 20 years ago--that does not mean today's players are actually better at playing basketball. In Bird's day, probably 80% of NBA players were stronger, quicker, and could jump higher than him, but he still dominated. Now, that percentage might be 90%, but I have no doubt he'd still be dominant. Same for Magic.

Posted by SR | June 9, 2007 2:24 PM

"However, I have to say that your opinion is a part with some very, very lazy thinking about athleticism and the nature of human progress. An awful lot of sports writers talk as though the athleticism of the players of a given sport is just going to continue to climb and climb. But that's nonsense. What is the mechanism through which they suppose that's going to happen?"

Better reading comprehension, por favor.

Matt clearly identified the two mechanisms at play: better scouting and better training, which both occur to due the increased resources flowing into the association.

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 2:26 PM

This is just wrong.

Bird and Magic would be superstars today, dominant in the league, just as they were then.

The same is true for Kareem, Wilt, Oscar, Elgin, etc.

It so happens that Bird and Magic could not defend very well in that era either.

My gawd Matt, this is not George Mikan we are talking about.

I think the talent level AS A WHOLE in the league is better, because of the worldwide search for talent as you say, but some players transcend. Magic, Bird, Kareem, Jordan are among those.

The two thoughts are not mutually exclusive.

Same is true for Jim Thorpe, Babe Ruth, ted Williams, Gale Sayers, Jim Brown, etc.

Posted by Armando | June 9, 2007 2:31 PM

Agree with what appears to be the general consensus: a fairly silly post that mostly betrays the author's youth. People who remember watching the NBA in '87 also probably remember that Bird and Magic--as the quoted bits suggest--weren't considered athletic at the time. I'm not sure who today is supposed to be more athletic than Jordan, 'Nique, Hakeem, Andrew Toney, Bobby Jones, or Big Game James.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 9, 2007 2:31 PM

"Agree with what appears to be the general consensus: a fairly silly post that mostly betrays the author's youth."

I think folks are reading the post obtusely.

Matthew's actual words on the topic seem unimpeachable to me. Folks seem to be reacting to other things than his words.

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 2:35 PM

There was some work about this on the Apbrmetrics forum, trying to measure year to year improvement in the quality of each generation of players. The trick was to compare players minutes year to year and see how minutes changed for guys of a certain age. So, if in a given period, guys of a certain age experienced a bigger decline in minutes than normal, you could assume that those minutes were being taken by younger, better players. I can't locate the work now, but from what I remember, the biggest improvement seemed to be in the 60s.

Posted by Carlos | June 9, 2007 2:36 PM

Better reading comprehension, por favor.

Irony.

I wasn't talking about MY, as is very clear. Read, again. Carefully.

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 2:37 PM

that today's players are stronger, quicker, and can jump higher than those of yesteryear.

Petey, if you've got the combine stats to back that up, link. Stronger is almost certainly true; the rest is unclear.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 9, 2007 2:38 PM

A 6'9" point guard with crazy dribbling and passing skills will be dominant in any era.

I wouldn't worry too much about Bird either.

These are guys with serious basketball IQ's - never the most athletically gifted in their era - but still managed to be the best players in the game.

It's not like Tim Duncan can jump out of the gym, in comparison to say, Kevin Garnett or Sean Marion.

But who's the better player?

Posted by SoCalJustice | June 9, 2007 2:41 PM

"I wasn't talking about MY, as is very clear. Read, again. Carefully."

I re-read carefully, and nothing changed. I'd guess here is what makes me think you were talking about MY:

I have to say that your opinion is a part with some very, very lazy thinking about...

If the antecedent of "your" goes somewhere else, that could explain my confusion.

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 2:41 PM

BTW, I love Bill Simmons, great writer.

But because he overreacted to Lebron's 48 is no reason to tar everyone else with that. Simmons wrote:

"monumental had happened: Not only did Marv Albert bless the performance as one of the greatest in playoff history, but it felt like a tipping point for LeBron's career, the night he fully tapped into his considerable gifts and lifted to another level. When talking heads, columnists, bloggers and fans raced to put the night into perspective, for once all the hyperbole seemed justified. More than a few people played the "MJ was great, but he never had a game like that!" card, as if Jordan's remarkable career needed to be demeaned for everyone to fully respect what LeBron had accomplished. I even wrote online that Jordan never physically overpowered an opponent the way LeBron ramshackled the Pistons and compared him to Bo Jackson and the way he wreaked havoc in his prime.

By Saturday, after everyone had calmed down, I found myself recalling some of Jordan's killer moments -- how he coldly destroyed Clyde Drexler in the 1992 Finals, how he prevailed against the rugby tactics of Pat Riley's Knicks, how he stole Game 7 against the 1998 Pacers by repeatedly getting to the line (like a running back moving the chains), how he ended his Chicago career with the incredible layup-steal-jumper sequence in Utah -- and regretting that, like nearly everyone else, I had fallen into the "Let's degrade the old guy to coronate the new guy!" trap."

Good that he recalled all that, but, most of us never forgot.

Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. Lebron James has the promise to be one of the best ever to play. Maybe. We'll see.

Posted by Armando | June 9, 2007 2:44 PM

You're right, poorly articulated on my part. Allow me to rephrase:

Your opinion on this, Matt, is similar to many sports writers. However, while you have cited a mechanism through which this could rationally be occurring-- better scouting and training-- others with similar arguments suggest that natural, genetic athleticism is ever-increasing. This seems to me to be at odds with a basic understanding of evolution or genetics.

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 3:13 PM

Speaking of games for boys, I just caught the next to last episode of Entourage, (lousy show that it may be), and thought the Eastern European chick looked oddly familiar.

She turns out to be the lead from Black Cat, White Cat. I think this conclusively proves that if you've got game in one era, you can also have game in another era.

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 3:18 PM

It should be noted that both Magic Johnson and Larry Bird regularly were criticized during their days in the league as singularly UN-athletic, particularly Bird. Most of the time, this was criticism from people who defined athleticism as running and jumping -- which not even trach-and-field does. From the elbow to the fingertips, Larry Bird was one of the greatest athletes who ever lived, and anyone who doubted it never shook his hand. To a lesser extent, Magic was criticized, particularly in the slam-dunk contest heyday of Dominique Wilkins and early MJ.

Posted by charles pierce | June 9, 2007 3:18 PM

Yeah - Bird couldn't carry Stromile Swift's sneakers.
I guess I agree with Petey but only up until a point. There's just not a lot of Lebrons in this league - those whith his athleticism/size don't have his skill and those with his skill don't have his athleticism/size. I don't think anyone watches Carmelo Anthony play and is just blown away by his athleticism - nor Steve Nash for that matter. They are better athletes but I think this all seems a little overblown.
No one says that Michael would unathletic by today's standards, so why say Bird would be as they played in overlapping eras?
Also, nobody ever thought that Bird dominated a game with his athleticism - he's much closer to Duncan than Lebron in that sense. (I would compare Lebron with Wilt, except with more skills.)

Posted by berger | June 9, 2007 3:21 PM

You really can't compare eras. Back in the day of Wilt and Russell, or in baseball Mays and Mantle, the lesser lights had to get jobs in the off season. They can train all year round today. Even rookies in any sport make more than enough money so they can spend all off season improving their game. I have no doubts that guys like Jim Brown or Wilt would have been great today. They were top notch athletes in their time. They didn't have the adavances, medical and training wise, that we do today.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 9, 2007 3:27 PM

"Larry Bird was one of the greatest athletes who ever lived"

I think this is dead wrong. Bird wasn't one of the greatest athletes ever. He was one of the greatest basketball players ever. There's a world of difference between the two.

I will refer you to the great story about John Kruk:

A fan caught Kruk smoking a cigarette in the dugout during a game and scolded him, saying, "You should be ashamed of yourself, young man, a professional athlete smoking a cigarette."

Kruk replied, "I ain't an athlete, lady, I'm a baseball player."

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 3:29 PM

The major difference in players today is not natural, genetic athleticism, per se, rather mass. Back in the day weightlifting was generally frowned upon by the high priests of the game. Right now the 1988 NBA Finals are on TV and I'm watching LA vs. the Pistons. I can remember Johnny Most screaming bloody murder about Bill Laimbeer and what a brute he was. You look at him today, and he's small compared to Ben Wallace. Ben Wallace probably lifts more weights in 6 months than Laimbeer did in his entire pro career. Now, if Laimbeer was coming up through the ranks today, he'd be developed as a player for today's game. And if he played against Ben Wallace he'd probably know that Wallace benches 470 pounds, and he'd prepare for that.

Anyway, it's not really about relative athleticism per se, rather flow of the game that's different. It's the conceptual advances that individual players make, that generally translate into the appearance of increased athleticism in a next generation. Dr. J drew on Elgin Baylor's innovations, refined, honed them, and infused it with a style that was only possible outside of the repressive ideology of the dominant narrative (i.e., Dr. J came of age in the ABA, not the NBA).

John Havlicek apparently had an amazingly low pulse rate - markedly lower than other athlete's even in moments of extreme extertion. Athleticism (again, if that concept even really exists), is enhanced by these kinds of physical attributes. But what we're mostly watching when we watch a basketball game is a style of play, and individuals adapted to that style. Athleticism is merely the ability of an individual to adapt to changing demands for speed, strength, leaping ability, etc. There were players in the NBA 20 years ago who had 48" vertical leaps. But the game was not necessarily played in a style that highlighted their particular "athleticism".

And it's a bit specious to attribute the internationalization of the NBA to $$. It wasn't that the pro league of the 70s and 80s wouldn't take international players. It was that they generally sucked relative to US players. Precisely because outside of the U.S., the style of play was relatively archaic, so no one could develop the individual skill sets for the NBA.

Posted by chocolate thunder | June 9, 2007 3:31 PM

"I don't think anyone watches Carmelo Anthony play and is just blown away by his athleticism"

You crazy.

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 3:32 PM

others with similar arguments suggest that natural, genetic athleticism is ever-increasing. This seems to me to be at odds with a basic understanding of evolution or genetics.

I don't know if I've ever heard people make it as a specifically genetic point. Certainly, if they do, that's kind of silly.

But scouting and training makes sense. I also wonder if there's a nutrition-related story here. If poor kids who grew up in the 1970s are eating better than poor kids who grew up in the 1950s, that would explain some of this.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | June 9, 2007 3:56 PM

I want to point out that, first, if you say it's "athleticism"-- doesn't that imply a genetic basis? I mean I imagine that the average person thinks of athleticism in terms of natural athleticism, not an aggregate of genetics, training, nutrition, etc. I think you guys are correct in not making that assumption, but I would think that the casual use of the term implies a genetic basis.

The other thing is, I wonder if this sort of thing has a saturation point. I don't see a great many new doors to be opened worldwide for scouts to discover fresh pools of talent. There aren't that many forbidden societies anymore. (North Korea?) I wonder about the remaining improvements to be made in training and supplements. I seem to remember reading an article about track and field where big gains are harder and harder to come by. Those things may have limits too.

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 4:13 PM

This post is like a Howard troll...

Anyway, I think basketball players are more atheletic today. Big deal. Athleticism is only so important. Other aspects of the game are worse today - notably shooting. Bird would be a great player today in part because he'd be such a better shooter than everyone else. McHale would be great, even though he isn't that strong or athletic, because guys these days don't have the post moves he had. To the extent people are putting in time improving their athleticism and strength, they aren't putting in time working on shooting. Which is why we'll always have room for a guy like, say, Peja, even in today's NBA.

Posted by Al | June 9, 2007 4:23 PM

The one thing we can compare quantitatively is height, which hasn't increased in two decades - the average height in the 2005-2006 season of NBA players was 6'-7.18", down from 6'-7.36" 20 years before. For each of the last 20 years, players have averaged more than 6'-7" and less than 6'-8". (Average weight, however, has gone up from 214.4 to 223.1 pounds, with the largest increase taking place in the early 1990s.) This stability in height is rather surprising, however, considering how much more globalized is the pool of athletes from which the NBA is now drawn. Although Americans aren't getting much taller, lots of foreign populations are.

Perhaps the NBA has gotten more rigorous about measuring athletes' heights (e.g., Charles Barkley, drafted in 1984, was usually listed at 6'-6" but was really about 6'-4"). Or perhaps there has been a trend toward more agile and coordinated -- and thus, all else being equal, shorter -- players that has balanced out the trend toward taller players that drawing from a larger pool would normally induce.

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/04/nba-players-not-getting-taller.html

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2007 4:31 PM

Kevin durant's bench press.

Posted by berger | June 9, 2007 5:19 PM

Today's league is more athletic, for sure. But pure athleticism doesn't win titles any more today than it did in past eras. Just look at the Spurs.

Modern weight training and nutrition programs have made players far stronger and fitter than they were in the past. Video scouting and a shift in coaching emphasis - combined with the added strength - have made defenses much tougher. But here's the thing: if you transported Larry Bird or Magic Johnson into today's NBA, they would take advantage of the same training programs and video scouting. They'd easily add the strength needed to compete. Their teams would figure out ways to hide them on defense, just as they did in the 80's. They would still dominate because a 6'9" PG with Magic's skills will always dominate. Just as a 6'10" small forward who is the best shooter and passing forward in the league will always dominate.

The strength is the easy part. It's the skills combined with size that are hard to find.

Look at a player like Dennis Rodman. He started out in the 80's just as skinny as everyone else. He averaged 9.0 rpg in '87-88. He averaged 15.0 rpg in '97-98. Clearly, the league became far more atheletic between 1988 and 1998, but Rodman didn't get left behind. He took advantage of the same training resources everyone else had and transformed his body accordingly. His skills were what mattered - the strength/fitness were just a matter of hard work.

I'm not saying every star from the past would be great today. Slower, smaller shooting guards like Jerry West (6'2") would probably be forced into specialist roles. Guys who combined unique skills with size - like Larry and Magic - would do fine, however. As Tim Duncan shows every night, you don't need to be overwhelmingly athletic to dominate when you have the skill/size combination.

Posted by owenz | June 9, 2007 5:31 PM

Now that I think about it in more detail, Magic is probably the most interesting case. He's huge for a point guard, obviously, and also somewhat less athletic than ideal even by 1987 standards. Flashing forward to 2007, I bet that (like most people his size) he genuinely wouldn't have the quickness to play the point.

Instead, he'd be forward with remarkable ballhandling and court vision for a frontcourt player -- maybe a better version of Lamar Odom. I dunno.

Obviously, though, this is irrelevant. If you transported Bird or Magic into today's NBA they'd train up to today's standards.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | June 9, 2007 5:33 PM

What I have a hard time understanding is how quickness and leaping ability could have grown as much as everyone says, when those are two attributes that are notoriously resistant to improvement through training.

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 5:35 PM

Is the pool of talented tall guys that the NBA draws from really expanding all that much? Or has it been expanding in Europe but contracting in America? Would Larry Bird even be a basketball player today, or would his parents have directed him into, say, being a soccer goalie or quarterback or pitcher?

I doubt if Willie Mays would grow up to be a baseball player today -- he'd probably wind up an NFL cornerback. And I think something similar but opposite is going on with white Americans. As former NBA player Paul Shirley pointed out in Slate recently: "A recent study reported that the NBA is 75 percent black and 19 percent foreign. They left out the remaining percentage. Six percent of the NBA is white Americans." There are about four times as many young white Americans as black Americans, so this would significantly impact the talent pool (unless you believe that blacks are _so_ genetically superior at basketball.)

If NBA players were really getting better, you'd think that they'd be improving on the one objective measure: free throw shooting. The equivalent in the NFL, field goal kicking percentage, has gone through the roof as white American boys took up soccer, creating a bigger talent pool for NFL kickers to be drawn from. But free throw shooting doesn't seem to be getting better in the NBA -- in fact, it dropped in the 1990s, then recovered somewhat.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2007 5:40 PM

Steve Sailer -

I don't understand your surprise at the stability in height; couldn't you just as easily say that the influx of foreign players has happened *as a result of* foreign countries producing more and more players who are physically capable (athletic at extreme heights) of competing in the NBA? My understanding is that of late scientists jave concluded that while there is a genetic component to group height, much of what what we consider to be between-group height differences is due to nutrition? And as more and more countries achieve the level of nutrition that even disadvantaged American youth received, their height accordingly rise? (I read somewhere that the height differential between South and North Koreans is pretty astounding for just this reason, but don't recall the source or its credibility.) And of course there's an upper limit - my generation appears to be taller than our parents (or I just went to high school with an unusual number of six-footers) but nobody seems to think that in a hundred years the average American man will be 6'7" or something. There are relatively few "true" seven footers in the NBA (most NBA heights are in shoes, everyone else gives their height barefoot, most NBA "seven footers" are like 6'10" or so); you can only get so big.

OTOH, whatever's in the water in the Netherlands, I want it. It's too late for me, but if I only wound up average height for the Dutch, imagine what children with my genes could achieve, after the benefit of all the special Dutch height medicine.

Posted by Quarterican | June 9, 2007 5:40 PM

Thanks for raising this issue, Matt, so that we can educate you. Regardless of whether Bird is one of the greatest athletes of all time or just one of the greatest basketball players, Pierce is right on the subject. People who define athleticism as running and jumping are myopic, and people who equate athleticism with basketball skill don't understand the game. Athleticism is a just a tool, necessary but not sufficient. Intelligence and competitive spirit are much more important in basketball.

In the modern pro game, where they allow traveling on the drive, and where good team defense is rare, offense is often reduced to one-on-one or one-on-two, where athleticism counts for more than it should.

But when you play with a team concept, and you have players who are highly intelligent (at basketball) and who love to drive the dagger into an opponent's heart when it most counts (as Bird did), and who have that zen-like ability to make plays when the game is on the line (as Bird, Magic and Michael did), then athleticism is less important.

That is why basketball is such a great game, and why it's current pro state is dismal. We've got athleticism up the wazoo because any idiot can BUY it. It's much harder to buy smarts, team orientation, and the instinct for the jugular.

Posted by Walter Crockett | June 9, 2007 5:42 PM

"In the modern pro game ... where good team defense is rare"

Well, you certainly have a perfectly cromulent grip on the topic...

Posted by Petey | June 9, 2007 5:47 PM

Quarterican:

No, reread what I wrote and think about it again. Matt's assumption is that the pool from which NBA players are selected has grown hugely in recent decades as Europe and other parts of the world take up basketball seriously. All else being equal, that should drive up the average height of NBA players since there are more people four standard deviations (or whatever) taller than the world mean in the global pool of 2007 than in the American pool of 1987. Apparently, though, not everything else is equal, so one question is: why hasn't the NBA gotten taller as it has globalized?

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2007 5:56 PM

I don't agree that 1987-era NBA was less athletic in any real sense. The pace of those games was much faster, the shooting was better. I think you have to be a pretty damn exceptional athlete to play 40 mins of 110-point-pace basketball.

Duncan/Horry/Bowen/Ginobli/Parker
Kareem/Green/Worthy/Scott/Johnson

I don't see any big gap there in athleticism. And that's without even mentioning Coop v. Finley.

Of course, if the definition of athletic is simply "which era had more short guards that could dunk", or "beat you off the dribble and miss a mid-range jumper", I guess it could be true.

Posted by Andruw | June 9, 2007 6:00 PM

he genuinely wouldn't have the quickness to play the point.

And this is based on what, exactly? Nash isn't that quick. The guards Magic played against--Isiah Thomas, for example--were as quick as anyone today. And, as I recall, Odom has played some PG in his career.

This reminds me of the "women vote left" thing; it's not clear that the underlying assumptions are correct, but that makes the speculation much easier.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 9, 2007 6:30 PM

Is the pool of talented tall guys that the NBA draws from really expanding all that much? Or has it been expanding in Europe but contracting in America? Would Larry Bird even be a basketball player today, or would his parents have directed him into, say, being a soccer goalie or quarterback or pitcher?

This is an interesting thought, although I would argue that basketball is still the most obvious and attractive sport for your average American male who is taller than oh, say, 6'6".

Posted by owenz | June 9, 2007 6:53 PM

If you transported Bird or Magic into today's NBA they'd train up to today's standards.

This recent picture of a shirtless Magic confirms that he has no problem packing on muscle:

http://yourphotos.boston.com/pages/photo_page.php?mm=2723&gallery=67

As for him being quick enough to play PG today...I think he'd be fine on the offensive end (and you could always stick him on a SF on defense). Magic's game was never really about blowing by people...it was about taking advantage of his size and creating mismatches. And in terms of pure footspeed, he could certainly run a fast break with the best of them.

Very few teams have pure PG's these days. With that in mind, I suspect Magic's ability to competently run an offense would outweigh his quickness deficit. You say a better version of Lamar Odom...I say he'd be closer to Jason Kidd.

Posted by owenz | June 9, 2007 7:06 PM

"I would argue that basketball is still the most obvious and attractive sport for your average American male who is taller than oh, say, 6'6"."

Sure. If you knew your little boy was going to grow up to be 7 feet tall, you'd push him into concentrating on basketball when he was eight. But, it's hard to tell how tall your son will grow up to be. And if he winds up topping out at, say, 6-3", well, then, basketball was probably a bad choice compared to baseball or swimming or other sports where height was a modest rather than an overwhelming advantage.

This is especially true now that African-Americans concentrate so overwhelmingly on just basketball and football. A generation ago a lot of blacks concentrated on baseball and track. Heck, five blacks won PGA tournaments between 1962 and 1986 and only the quarter-black Tiger Woods has won a PGA tournament since. So, a generation ago, a white kid who topped out at 6'-3" had a decent shot at a college basketball scholarship, in part because moderately tall blacks weren't all flooding into basketball. But now there is so much do or die competition among blacks to succeed in just basketball or football that the risk-reward calculus for white parents of tall little boys isn't the same anymore.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2007 7:07 PM

"In the modern pro game ... where good team defense is rare"

Well, you certainly have a perfectly cromulent grip on the topic...

Cromulent! Good one Petey, you got that right. Had to go to dictionary.com to find out it meant "fine, acceptable," but it's so true.

Just nine more synonyms and you can go out and shoot some hoops.

Posted by Walter Crockett | June 9, 2007 7:36 PM

In the late 80's I played center at a D1 school
at 6'6". I was not very athletic but I was a "wide body" who could shoot with both hands. I got blocked a fair amount but otherwise wasn't dominated unless playing outside our conference (A10).

Today, when I play with the younger guys I stand around at the arc and shoot a lot of 3's. If I was in high school today I would be a small forward or slow shooting guard. The new version of me is now 6'10", 30 lbs heavier, stronger and can actually jump. The tradeoff is his footwork isn't nearly as good, he is one handed, and probably shoots about 65% from the line.

Posted by old 5 | June 9, 2007 7:40 PM

What I have a hard time understanding is how quickness and leaping ability could have grown as much as everyone says, when those are two attributes that are notoriously resistant to improvement through training.

So nobody has any ideas?

Posted by Freddie | June 9, 2007 8:02 PM

Petey (re Socrates):

You're making the mistake that everyone makes, starting with Plato: that Socrates was engaged in philosophic debate in the first place.

A modern-day Socrates would be a decorated war vet, probably from Afghanistan, now doing odd jobs around the place and moonlighting as a troll in political chatrooms. Sometimes he'd win these arguments; sometimes not. In the latter cases he'd spin that as proving his overall point, whatever that was (and no-one can agree on that).

Socrates's fans and detractors would post on their websites about him based on their memories of what he might have said. Some of these posts might rise to the level of philosophy. Those posts would be the ones which reflected Socrates's thought the least.

Posted by David Ross | June 9, 2007 8:11 PM

As to why basketball players haven't boosted the mean above 6' 7-and-change": I am not a sports nerd, at all at all, but maybe 6'7ish" is the optimal height for the human physique? Much more than that and you get ungainly. Maybe you'd be such a great player that you could correct for that; but in the arena, people are going to get in your way, and that can lead to injury. Take, e.g., Houston's Yao Ming.

Posted by David Ross | June 9, 2007 8:29 PM

Mr Sailer:

Larry Bird has these days commented that there need to be more white people in the game, so I can't speak for him personally.

If there was some 18 year old white kid with Bird's mad skillz and general build today, I could only presume that he would play basketball because he was good at it and learnt to love the game. His mostly-black teammates would respect him as long as he could be relied upon to boot the ass of the other team. His agent(s) would encourage him to go pro because, in commercials, he'd sell a lot of product to the Eminem Demographic.

I suppose, like Socrates, you've lost this argument but made your overall point ...

... still think yer a troll, tho'

Posted by David Ross | June 9, 2007 8:39 PM

Steve Sailer -

David Ross wound up sort of making my point better than I could. There's no *reason* for basketball players to keep getting taller, because there's potentially just an optimal balance between height and the other things you need to excel at the sport. Just because there are more 6'10"ers in the world doesn't mean more 6'10"ers are going to invade the NBA, because there's a limited number of slots for 6'10"ers; if you've got a lot of them on your team you need to play a bunch of them at once, and your opponent is gonna introduce you to the meaning of the phrase "speed kills". *Fast* 6'10"ers, a la Durant or Rashard Lewis or even Peja, are probably always going to be rare commodities. People are only going to get so big, and with that comes people only getting so athletic relative to their height.

I guess my position is: had I stayed in the shape I was when I was 18 (and will be again someday, I swear), and you transplanted me back to 1955, I would've been on a physical level able to compete. My skillset wouldn't have been there, but I'm 6'1" and fairly confident that my 18 year old self could've run, jumped, and muscled with the average guards of that day. OTOH, no amount of training would ever make me fast enough to compete at my height in *today's* NBA (as Cousy has admitted that he couldn't play in the modern league, purely because of speed). HOWEVER, I don't think there will ever come a time when guys in the 6' - 6'3" range don't have a place in pro ball because they can't compete athletically with all those 6'7" point guards. There'll never be enough 6'7" guys who can outquick all the 6' guys in the world, whereas there are enough 6' guys who can outquick all the Earl Boykins'.

I have no clue whether you're right about white parents pushing their kids into one sport v. another (I shudder at the idea of parents pushing their kids into a particular sport because they're more likely to have professional success at it), but I've long suspected that you're right going the other way; the racial makeup of the NBA is largely due to the disproportionate numbers of black kids who - most doomed for failure - focus on nothing but making the League.

(Ross - for the record, Bird said that the NBA would benefit from having more white stars, in a marketing sense, and he's right. He also said in the same interview that basketball is an African American sport, long has been, and he assumes it always will be. I don't think Bird was commenting on the health of the NBA qua NBA, but rather making a Cubanesque observation about how the NBA is perceived by its potential fanbase.)

Posted by Quarterican | June 9, 2007 8:56 PM

Steve Sailer:

You implied something on your site that you've left out of this thread so far -- something I have opined here before -- Few Americans care about the NBA anymore. I have 150 satellite channels and I couldn't tell you offhand which one is broadcasting the NBA playoffs. No one I know is watching or talking about it either.

Posted by Fred | June 9, 2007 8:57 PM

Why has the free-throw percentage not gotten better? Why hasn't the NBA gotten a lot taller?

Simple. The object of the game is not to win. Winning is unimportant.

What is important, and gets rewards, is making the ESPN Sportscenter highlights with massive dunks. Impressive acrobat displays.

Which would imply that unimportant skills: free throw shooting, team play, defense, ball handling, dribbling, passing, all that other stuff is for grinders who can't make the big bucks in highlight films and endorsements.

This would also cap height since the acrobatics would impose very likely a physiological limit on size (bigger bodies have a harder time coordinating the gymnastic displays on the way to the basket).

Defense wins games but hardly anyone plays it. Why?

Because winning is not important. Only individual play. Look at Kobe Bryant. He'd rather win MVP or the Scoring Title than a championship. He's hardly unique.

As for white players, a lost cause. A few will play, but mostly the network effect of ethnic nepotism will keep them out. The way white corners, and wide receivers are excluded in the NFL. That's not unusual, different groups tend to dominate positions and sports for a variety of economic reasons. The implications for the NBA though are probably serious. Given the lack of team play, strategy, and defense, games will likely resemble gymnastics with really big guys dunking balls than any kind of strategy-based sport attractive to mainstream American audiences.

So, look for NBA TV contracts to diminish in terms of absolute dollar amounts, also endorsements and salaries. And out of desperation, an eventual return to team play.

Posted by Jim Rockford | June 9, 2007 9:25 PM

well, all the important points have been made already (two minor corrections: someone said that bird was a poor defender, which was true on a man basis, but he was an exceptional team defender, one of the great lane pass deflectors; and jerry west, who was both a great shooter, a great taker of the ball to the hole, and a great passer, would be a great player today too, not just a specialist).

so what i'm left to say is that i actually was at Game 4 of the '87 playoffs. i'll guarantee you: a.) every celtic fan at the garden that night thought that bird would make that final 3-pointer; b.) that celtic team was actually my alltime favorite celtic team, in that that was the year that parish played on two sprained ankles, mchale played on a broken bone in his foot, dj was diagnosed with exhaustion, and bird had all kinds of physical woes, and yet, had they won that night, they probably would have gone on to win the title; c.) if you had said to the fans departing the garden that night "enjoy game 5 because at least 20 years will elapse until you're in another final," they'd have all (100%) thought you were crazy; d.) game 5 featured a site i have never forgotten: greg kite dominated kareem abdul-jabbar (pierce will back me up on that one)!

and, oh yes: they all looked plenty atheltic to me. that said, personally, i'm among those who think that modern basketball began with that NCAA semifinal between Phi Slamma Jamma and the doctors of dunk Louisville team that took place almost entirely above the rim (iirc, it was 1983 or 1984), the first glimpse for many of us of how the emerging game would feature a bigger role for athleticism and a lesser role for fundamentals.

PS. Al, tough luck on real and barcelona's outcomes today....

Posted by howard | June 9, 2007 9:37 PM

I think Carlos had it correct, if the league is really improving then fewer players should have long careers. There are only 2-3 player generations between the late 80s and today, I think this implies a small bound on the amount the NBA could have improved.

Secondly, I think the most obvious way the league has changed is the officiating, if they called defensive contact and traveling like they did in the 80's, then today's games would look a lot more similar (except for the short shorts).

Posted by ben | June 9, 2007 9:47 PM

ben, you remind me of a point i've made before. as a knicks fan, i missed the willis reed game in order to attend a protest of nixon's cambodia invasion.

i finally saw the game a few years back on espn classic, and my conclusion was: if they called the game today the way they called it in 1970, every single player on both teams would foul out in the first half (until they adjusted).

someone up above talked about the space they saw on defense in recently viewing a 1984 finals game, and that's what i'm talking about. changing reffing standards (and associated rules changes) are quite significant (just as, in baseball, the home run upsurge, while partly rooted in steroids, thinner pitching, and strength training, is also rooted in how the strike zone is defined nowadays).

Posted by howard | June 9, 2007 9:51 PM

With the caveat that trolls should not be fed...

Fred: Then why are you here commenting? I live in Boston, and this terrible team still fills the building most of the time. The NBA was never the NFL or MLB. It is still quite popular. Revenue-wise, more than ever. And I'm truly sorry you're too stupid to memorize three (3) channel numbers.

Rockford: Well, you're so g-d dumb I'm not gonna waste the space...oh well I will. The observation that the NBA hasn't gotten taller, because, "winning is unimportant" (thanks Darwin), yet, AT THE SAME TIME "massive dunks" are the prime motivation of the league and its players...OK, no more wasted space.

Posted by Andruw | June 9, 2007 10:03 PM

Come on, has no one mentioned drugs yet? The NBA doesn't have a very strong steroid testing program, does it?

Also surprising it took so long for people to mention officiating. The modern NBA is comprehensively rigged to produce a particular type of game. The old NBA emphasized strength less because less contact was permitted. But shooting was more important because you actually had space to do it.

Posted by mq | June 9, 2007 10:11 PM

"The NBA was never the NFL or MLB."

No, but there was a time when it was on broadcast television all the time (NBC). Now you're more likely to see NCAA basketball on broadcast TV than pro basketball. I can't think of another pro sport where the college version is on a major network and the pro version is stock on USA or whatever cable/satellite channel the NBA has been consigned to.

Posted by Fred | June 9, 2007 10:24 PM

Fred,

Actually the NBA on broadcast TV has been a very brief era. As recently as the 80s the NBA finals were shown tape delayed at 11:30 pm. That isn't a typo, the frikkin finals weren't shown live. I remember as a kid being sick and getting to stay up late to watch the Celtics-Rockets finals for example, otherwise on a school night no way I'd have been able to watch them.

The NBA was always a lower tier sport than baseball or football. Only the Bird-Magic-Jordan era changed that.

Posted by Eric | June 9, 2007 10:34 PM

I've watched some of the old basketball games on TV, and the thing I was struck by was how much more skilled the players were back then. Granted, the players weren't as bulked up back then as they are today, and that might have been a problem but if you watch those games, just about every player on those teams could shoot and pass the ball well. Perhaps one reason why teams back then didn't appear to play as much defense was because there weren't guys like say Gooden or Bowen out there who were offensive zeros or near zeros.

Lest you think that today's teams would mop the floor with the 1980's teams, the European teams at least in the Olympics and world championships I've watched play in a style much more similar to the 1980's games I've watched on ESPN Classics, and we've seen what they can do against our more athletically gifted all star teams.

I am not one of those people who always think that things were better in the past. For example, I believe movies and TV shows are much, much better than they were in the 1980's and the same is also true overall for pop music. But the NBA, alas, has not gotten better which can be seen both in the ratings and in our performances in international games.

Posted by Stuart | June 9, 2007 10:41 PM

Would Larry Bird even be a basketball player today, or would his parents have directed him into, say, being a soccer goalie or quarterback or pitcher? I doubt if Willie Mays would grow up to be a baseball player today -- he'd probably wind up an NFL cornerback. And I think something similar but opposite is going on with white Americans.

Competition from football may be one of the reasons why heavyweight boxing is so heavily dominated by foreigners. A big, strong, aggressive American teenager who might have considered going into boxing a generation or two ago is now more likely to dream of making it in the NFL. In contrast, a big, strong, aggressive teenager in Russia or Eastern Europe won't even know of the NFL, so boxing seems like more of a natural fit for him.

Posted by Peter | June 9, 2007 10:45 PM

Just to pile on... Jordan, in a basically "modern" game, wasn't really that athletic (in terms of running and jumping) in his last championship run. He was still the best player in the game. And yes, Magic and Bird were said to not be all that athletic in their day. Magic couldn't guard the quicker point guards of today, but then he couldn't guard most point guards then, and didn't -- Michael Cooper or Norm Nixon/Byron Scott did.

Arguably, LeBron is basically playing the Magic role on the Cavs. We're calling him a forward but he's bringing the ball up the court and running the offense.

Posted by Mac | June 9, 2007 10:54 PM

Indeed, NBA games are far more available on your teevee than ever before. Who knows how many "Law and Order" viewers accidently come upon the "association". (h/t petey)

But again, Fred hates the NBA, so you shouldn't take his longing for the "NBC" era too seriously.

Posted by Andruw | June 9, 2007 10:54 PM

Put me down as thinking Bird and Magic would do fine today. The level of play has risen somewhat since 1987 but not that much.

I don't care for the Great Man approach to history, generally, but it works better in sports than in most fields. I tend to think that Bill Russell or Oscar Robertson would excel in today's game because they were so competitive, they would have done what it took.

It's mildly amusing amusing to hear speculation about what sport Larry Bird's parents would push him into if he came along today. Bird was hardly the product of AAU or summer camps. What I know about Bird's bio is he had a difficult childhood (I seem to recall that one of his parents committed suicide) in a small town, and he just latched onto basketball and played obsessively. He's as good an example of a self-made success as you could want.

Systems like training and scouting have standardized the game and raised the lowest common denominator, I suppose. But it's innovation and competitive pressure that really improve the highest level of play of any sport. Bird and Magic arrived the same year as the 3-point shot, and they were innovators, and they motivated each other to reach new heights.

Posted by Dix Hill | June 9, 2007 11:49 PM

I second mq's point. Can you really compare any group of professional athletes today with players of three decades ago without taking steroids into account.

Better training methods? That's what the bodybuilders used to say. And the cyclists. And the baseball players... wait, I'm startin' to see a pattern here.

Freddy commented:
What I have a hard time understanding is how quickness and leaping ability could have grown as much as everyone says, when those are two attributes that are notoriously resistant to improvement through training.

Juice, man, the juice.

Posted by Eric | June 10, 2007 12:00 AM

You should throw out the most recent U.S. basketball results in International competition. They aren't dream teams stocked with the absolute best players in our country. Shaq, Kobe, Garnett, et. al. skip the games and I don't blame them. As for free throw shooting I have a theory: having coached high school basketball, gym time is incredibly limited. Most schools have atleast 2 teams for both boys and girls, and in my playing days in CA (4 teams for both), so practices couldn't be "wasted" on static drills like foul shooting. If the player doesn't shoot on their own, it isn't happening. Add in the greater emphasis on weight-training and conditioning in the off-seasons, AAU, summer tourneys, players don't have much opportunity to work on simple fundamentals. Would Pete Maravich become Pistol Pete if he were in HS today?

Posted by Erik | June 10, 2007 12:50 AM

Erik, i think that pistol pete would be pistol pete today: a lot of his skills resulted from his own practicing, not HS drills.

but i'm posting because this is an opportunity to point people to the "red on roundball" episode with pistol pete, which you can find here:

http://www.nba.com/roundball/index.html

there's all kinds of other great stuff as well: russell on shot-blocking, red on running a fast break, erving on finishing a dunk, and lots more.

Posted by howard | June 10, 2007 1:51 AM

my friend and I have a joke about all those "he couldn't play today" arguments. Just picturing the sci-fi future, when basketball players will be these genetically-engineered superhumans.
"Look, Lebron was great, but there's No Way he could beat Xizor. He's 8 feet tall! He runs a 3 minute mile!"

Posted by Mark | June 10, 2007 9:29 AM

"But again, Fred hates the NBA..."

"Hate" is too strong a word here. More accurately, I am indifferent to the NBA now. The difference is, when it was on NBC, I used to watch the playoffs. Now I don't care.

Consider me one data point in a larger trend.

Posted by Fred | June 10, 2007 11:50 AM

I was thinking about Matt's comment that Magic Johnson would not be quick enough to play PG in today's NBA...that Magic would be, according to Matt: "maybe a better version of Lamar Odom. I dunno." It struck me that I didn't rip him nearly hard enough for the incredible silliness of this statement. It's the sort of thing Charles Krauthammer would say if he were an NBA fan.

Magic Johnson didn't retire that long ago. He is considered the greatest PG in NBA history by just about everyone. He won five rings, played in nine Finals, and won three MVPs. He dominated at every level because of his size, not in spite of it. He averaged an outrageous 11.2 assists per game for his career. In 1981-1982, he came within 0.4 rebounds and .05 assists of averaging a triple double for a season. He was a career 52% shooter and an 85% free throw shooter. His contemporaries included Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwan, Clyde Drexler and many other players whose careers continued into Matt's "modern era" of basketball. Magic beat them all, until his Lakers teams finally got old.

Had he not contracted HIV, Magic would have kept playing until the mid-90's. Indeed, it's easy to forget that Magic came back in '95-96 after four years a retirement. He was a shell of his former self, but still managed to average 14.6 ppg, 6.9 apg, and 5.7 rpg. A better version of Lamar Odom? Um, sure...in 1996.

Posted by owenz | June 10, 2007 12:33 PM

"denying the obvious fact that today's players are stronger, quicker, and can jump higher than those of yesteryear."

Huge parts of today's game would have been illegal back then. It is not just that they legalized the dunk, but there is zero enforcement of rules on travelling, palming, and the five second rule and limited enforcement on charging. Put any one of these 'stronger' 'quicker' jumpers in against Bradley using 60 eras rules and lets see who comes out on top. I suspect most would be fouled out by the end of the first period

The game changed. And the fans seem to like it. Well alrighty then. I don't watch the NBA, to me it looks like a lot of it got converted to Rugby. Then again I am not the demographic the league is looking to. But comparing the players from different generations while ignoring that the fundamentals of the game are entirely different is not really fair to the players of the 60's and 70's. Because there was a time when you couldn't start from half-court and jam the ball in the basket without, you know dribbling the ball somewhere along the way.

Posted by Bruce Webb | June 10, 2007 1:15 PM

Simmons' whole premise is bizarre. I would love for him to point to just ONE PERSON who thinks Bird and Magic wouldn't be great players today. I happen to agree that overall, the players are more athletic today, but everybody agrees that Bird and Magic are untouchable, super-awesome, saved-the-NBA greats. No one's forgotten them. Simmons just needs to sound like a cranky old man in order to diminish LeBron.

Posted by too many steves | June 10, 2007 3:36 PM

Also, whoever said the biggest strides were made during the 60s has a great point. It's really hard to compare players before the mid-60s. Bob Cousy was awesome and all, but look closer at that old film -- he was looking at the ball while he was dribbling! He's doing "flashy" stuff any backup pg could do today. Also, the game didn't really go above the rim until the '60s.

Posted by too many steves | June 10, 2007 3:38 PM

Yeah the players are much more "athletic" today;one reason is because they are jamming their black assess full of steroids! Heres the estimable Rick Telander:"...someone like,say,Michael Jordan,could have used Dianabol,Winstrol,Deca,whatever he wanted,while winning 3 champeenships..." O'course he was speaking hypothetically! :D

Posted by joshrandall | June 10, 2007 4:03 PM

I'd find the steroid speculation more credible if there were more evidence that NBA athletes have improved along measures that are amenable to steroid treatment.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 10, 2007 4:29 PM

Almost nobody uses steroids without weightlifting as well. I don't believe Jordan took up weightlifting until the 1990s, so he was certainly clean at least in the 1980s when he was scoring as much as 37 ppg. I don't have any evidence that he did steroids in the 1990s, either, but this is positive evidence he at least didn't do them in the 1980s.

Similarly, Ken Griffey Jr. wasn't weightlifting during some of his great seasons in the 1990s, so he was likely clean then when he was hitting 56 homers per season.

We also know from inside sources that Barry Bonds, while weightlifting, wasn't doing steroids until 1999.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 10, 2007 5:18 PM

I suspect that Josh Randall is probably correct in his assertion that steriods and other performance enhancing drugs have played a large role in the apparent increase in athleticism (as they probably have in most professional sports). Watch an NBA game on ESPN classic from the 1980s or early 90s and look at the players today. Their physiques are two completely different things. Perhaps better training plays a part in this, but it is my understanding that professional basketball players were lifting weights back in the 1980s and 90s (and earlier). It's quite simple: add 10 to 30 pounds of muscle to the frame and increase the power to weight ratio which translates into greater speed and jumping ability. (Also, I suspect that the reason why some NBA players choose not to compete for the US in international competition has to do with fear of the much more stringent international drug testing regimes).

However, I don't think that this necessarily means that players like Bird and Johnson wouldn't be effective today even sans drugs. Thay may not have had hops and explosiveness like some of the stars today, but they had in abundance what I think is often the most important (and forgotten) physiological talent for basketball (and many other sports): great psychomotor skills (i.e., body and hand-eye cordination which translate into great shooting, passing and dribbling skills, plus also that form of "slippery elusiveness and grace" that is so important when taking a ball to the hoop (which, more than his absolute jumping ability, also made Jordan great)). There is also situational awareness and a mastery of basic team basketball skills and positioning (as opposed to one on one skills) which seems to be sorely lacking in the NBA these days (as attested by the disgraceful drubbings that the American NBA players are now suffering at the hands of comparatively slow, skinny white boys from Europe with better psychomotor skills and much better training in the concepts of proper team basketball). I think a lot of this results from the fact that many talented American basketball players are not learning to play proper team basketball in college because they are only hanging around for a year or two or forgoing it completely and receive such deference and salaries in the NBA that they have become prima donas and coaches in the NBA have difficulty controlling and molding them for the team game.

Also, I think the NBA, in a mistaken attempt to make the game more spectacular (which in my opinion has made the game look more like a carnival show than basketball), has basically decided not to enforce the rules on traveling, double dribble, and offensive fouls. No matter how explosively athletic these guys are, if they weren't allowed to take four steps to the hoop, they couldn't elevate like they do. Basically, by not enforcing the rules as written, they have made NBA basketball into a game that favors more heavily muscled, more explosive players at the expense of those who are relatively stronger in psychomotor ability than in raw athleticism (which, as Steve would probably like to expound on, also has the effect of deemphasizing the things that whites are comparatively good at and emphasizing the things that blacks are comparatively good out, thereby reducing white representation, which, one would think would be a bad business strategy given that it is mostly white guys that buy the tickets to the games and one would think that it would be less appealing to many fathers to take their sons to a game where there are no athletes that look like said son and that said son can identify with). (BTW, I am familiar with Steve's musings on his Website about "black creativeness" on the basketball court and in sports in general. Personally, I think this theory is a load of bunk (as perceptive as I think Steve is in many other areas). Part of the explanation of their success is cultural (I'd wager that a lot higher percentage of African Americans (and Serbs and Croats) spend 8 hours a day playing basketball as children than Euro Americans) and the other part probably has to do with muscle-tendon physiology and the associated differences in explosive athleticism. I have seem many white players at the high school and college level who have great passing and shooting skills and situational awareness (better than many NBA players), but who simply lack the minimum threshold of "athleticism" to make use of their "psychomotor" gifts at the next level.)

Posted by Phillyguy | June 11, 2007 12:47 AM

"Bird and Magic would be superstars today, dominant in the league, just as they were then.

The same is true for Kareem, Wilt, Oscar, Elgin, etc."

I agree, but Oscar Robertson would be considered to be very athletic even now, and Chamberlain would probably be considered the best athlete in the NBA even today.

Posted by Njorl | June 11, 2007 10:17 AM