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I could list reasons all day but for one the talent pool in the NBA is much larger now.
The talent pool is literally larger, meaning that the pool of young people today is fatter than it was 40 years ago.
Quote:
Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates have tripled in the U.S., and today, the country has some of the highest obesity rates in the world: one out of six children is obese, and one out of three children is overweight or obese.
Military leaders have been warning about the impact of obesity on the U.S. military for more than a decade, but the lingering pandemic effects highlight the need for urgent action, said retired Marine Corps Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, who co-authored a recent report on the problem.
“The numbers have not gotten better,” Cheney said in a November webinar held by the American Security Project, a nonprofit think tank. “They are just getting worse and worse and worse.”
In fiscal year 2022, the Army failed to make its recruiting goal for the first time, falling short by 15,000 recruits, or a quarter of the requirement. That’s largely because three-quarters of Americans aged 17 to 24 are not eligible for military service for several reasons, including extra weight. Being overweight is the biggest individual disqualifier, affecting more than 1 in 10 potential recruits, according to the report.
“It is devastating. We have a dramatic national security problem,” Cheney said.
IMHO, Warriors are close but those Lakers of the 80's had a heck of a run. It pains me to say that the Celtics had a good run as well in the 80's. The Celts of the 80's, those Warriors teams in the mid 2010's, Bulls in the 90's are a close second to that Lakers team of the 80's in terms of dynasty. Again, I will get a headache but those Celtics in the 60's pretty much owned that decade. Now that's a dynasty.
Painful for me as a Lakers and Warriors fan since the 60s who had a dad who was a die hard Celtics fan.
Little did I know when the Lakers won the 1972 Championship, that that was the start of a 50 year period when my 6 teams (the 5 Bay Area teams plus the Lakers) would win 32 championships in 50 years.....17 NBA Titles, 8 Super Bowls, and 7 World Series.
I'll offer something I heard the other day that I think is true.
Our 17 year old grandfathers would beat the snot out of just about any 17 year old kid today in a fist fight
but
Our 17 year old grandfather's high school football team would lose 70-0 to a team of 17 year olds today.
We live in a world of stars and scrubs. The top end athletes are bigger, faster, and stronger than ever. Your average person is fatter, slower, and weaker.....most likely playing video game sports not out there on the playground or blacktop doing physical things with their friends for fun.
All we hear about is how the talent pool has increased since so many more people play basketball today. But the reality is that there are 70,000 fewer boys playing HS hoops today than there were in 1971.
When people say that today's players are more "skilled," they mean they are better at 3-point shooting. This is true, but it's not saying much considering there was no 3-point line in the NBA until the 1979 season. College basketball didn't adopt it until 1987. So it's kinda like saying that the average teenager today is much better with computers than Einstein ever was.
At the same time, we've seen players regress in some aspects of the game, with solid footwork and low post craftiness going virtually extinct. 99% of players want to face up to the basket and dribble the ball between their legs 7-8 times, even when matched up against smaller defenders. We saw this in the 2011 Finals when Lebron completely lacked the skillset to take advantage of a 5'10 J.J. Barea in the post.
If the game was officiated the way it was in the 70s-early 90s, we would see a lot of these perimeter players get locked up much more frequently. Today's NBA is a Little Man's League because the officiating stacks everything in their favor. You can't even camp a big in the lane anymore.
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