| all about the CASH |
| ||
Riley was the coach of the knicks in the early to middle 90s. Riley's style was to put most of the emphasis on defense and to have long fast strong athletic guys. The problem was that these guys were terrible scorers. The games became grind it out low scoring affairs with tons of missed shots. I had never done this before but I pulled up the league stats here http://www.basketball-refe rence.com/leagues/stats.html You can see how the field goal % went down to the lowest in over 30 years by the 98-99 season. There was also a pretty dramatic drop in fouls called also which correlates with lower fg% and scoring. If you look at what has been happening the last few years, foul calls have been steadily decreasing turning games more into football contests. This year has been the worst by far with only 19.6 fouls called per game which is the lowest in the history of the NBA. It's no surprise the FG% is the lowest in the last 7 years getting close to the % it was when all the teams tried to copy the Knicks and get athletic guys who couldn't shoot the ball. If you have watched the NBA for years, you didn't need to see the stats to realize the officials are letting teams beat each other up resulting in poor scoring, poor shooting, and making teams jack up a bunch of 3s. It's pretty easy to figure out why this is happening. Less fouls means a FASTER game, but the overall time the game takes has gotten SLOWER because of COMMERCIALS (MONEY). Last week,on 2 occasions, a local nba team started their game at the same time as a national NBA game. One was on TBS and the other on Espn. Both nights, the local game was over when the national game had at least 10 minutes game time left to go which was about 30-35 minutes actual time. Lastly, if anybody doesn't believe the officials are calling the games so they don't have any blow outs, they are delusional about how fixed the league is. The nba does every possible thing to maximize the amount of money it can make, NOT to provide the best players in the world a legitimate and fair contest on a nightly basis. |
| all about the CASH |
| ||
|
Here is the link http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/stats.html |
| ewfadsfsd |
| ||
|
The increased tempo is mostly the result of rule changes, in my opinion. Also, Ewing got old at some point and it slowed down the Knicks a lot. I've always believed the Patrick Ewing Theory (how the Knicks always did better when he was gone) was partly because he was slowing down his talented teammates. Relevant video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSCdq1s5ekI |
| all about the CASH |
| ||
What do you mean by increased tempo? The "tempo" has been decreasing over the years with less shots, less scoring, and less possessions. The "pace" this year was 91.2. From 1973 until 1989 the pace was only under 100 one year. Possessions per team are down about 10% from the 80s. As for the video, I can still remember Starks in the final game trying to hide in the corner so they didn't throw him the ball but they did anyway. Then the Rockets would back off him and after a few agonizing seconds of deciding if he wanted to shoot the ball, he would clank up another miss going 2-18 from the field. |
| atownrunnin |
| ||
|
One thing I have seen change in the NBA over the years is the emphasis on transition defense. When you go back to the 80s and 90s teams were getting out on fast breaks and getting a lot of easier baskets (which also leads to higher FG percentages). Now teams do a much better job of getting back defensively and taking away the break. The Knicks were one of the first teams to start doing this. Of course, one thing that also has changed is a lot of bigs think they are point guards and bring the ball up themselves. All it takes is one dribble to completely kill a break. With the Showtime Lakers, for example, the rebounder would immediately turn and look for Magic and that was what got things going. If Kareem had ever decided he wanted to run the break himself (like a lot of guys think they can do unfortunately) it would have been a lot less Showtime. I'm a Bulls fan and Joakim Noah does that all the time! How can you have guys like Derrick Rose and Luol Deng on your team and think that you should be bringing the ball up yourself? Ugh. |