To be considered great, players need dat ESPN hype-train. It's like everyone has a short term memory. If a player doesn't have a 30-for-30 story on ESPN, they're suddenly a joke? This BS that the youngins like to spread about the 90s being weak, is a serious farse. The 90s was packed and stacked. It was so stacked, that great players were over-shadowed by even better players.
Exactly. 11 of the NBA's Top 50 players all-time were active during the 90's (Jordan, Barkley, Malone, Stockton, Olajuwon, Pippen, Ewing, Robinson, O'Neal, & Parish, granted in the bench warmer part of his career). Every one of those players is in the HOF, with exception of Shaq, who should be eligible I believe after next season. All of these guys played in an era without the hand check rule (when you could actually GUARD players on the perimeter), the 2-hands on the back rule, the clear path rule, and the list goes on and on and on.
Today's NBA is a bastardization of the truly great heyday of the 90's. Everything is geared toward increasing the scoring. In game interruptions that disrupt game rhythm are constant. The majority of players now are soft and pampered, complaining about playing too MANY minutes, crying at every little contact, and flopping around like dead fish to sell calls. In the 90's, flopping was considered a bush league tactic that most players rarely attempted. Sure there were a few guys who did it often & well (Stockton, Miller, Horry, & Divac) but it's was never so egregious that an entire RULE had to be created to stop it's rampant occurrences. A lot of these rule changes have made it difficult for me to watch games over the past 5 years or so. Refs make and break so many games now. You can tell by seeing who the crew is before a game whether it will be a whistle fest or not.
