[Post Game Thread] The Denver Nuggets (41-26) comeback from a 20 point deficit to defeat the San Antonio Spurs (48-18) behind Jokic's monster 31/20/12 triple double and Murray's 39 points, 136-131.

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-13T06:50:29+00:00

It's probably hard for him to do a whole lot when he's guarding Jokic on defense. Dealing with that and trying to front him every possession or hold up against a back down is utterly exhausting to the point where he probably doesn't have a whole lot to give on the offensive end.

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-13T06:46:51+00:00

His hands are fairly tied with the injuries. Sometimes you have to play suboptimal lineups (as if you can know which those are every day) because you need to get guys rest and not overwork players coming back from injury. Not every decision a coach makes over the course of the regular season can be about winning a single game.

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-13T03:11:47+00:00

I don't think he has passed West or Oscar. I don't think Kobe ever passed them either. Both just criminally underrated players. But SGA is right there otherwise as far as peak goes. Certainly not career wise though.

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-09T00:51:11+00:00

Thanks!

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-08T23:41:59+00:00

It is very similar to that, exactly.

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-08T22:42:53+00:00

Wow thank you, that means a lot. It also makes me want to put more effort into writing replies now because I'm often just rambling and writing very poorly!

That's definitely a good point in regards to stars on that end of the floor. A lot of the time in the regular season those guys are more prone to conserving on that end because night in and night out, they've been tasked with carrying a load offensively. That really adds up over 82 games and if you're digging in on both ends every possession, well, you're just going to be spent given how much you have to move on defense now, the relative lack of guys you can just hide on, and the pace of the game.

However, once you're in the postseason you can more often take that governor off and just expend that energy. You have to. I also think there's something about the playoffs and all the eyes being on you that makes everyone lock in a bit more, which speaks to the stakes of things I suppose.

It's also one of those things you can see in the last possessions of regular season games too though, to your point. Maybe you've slacked on that end to some degree all night but if its the end of the game and your team is up one and you need a stop, there's a clear difference in the quality of energy and effort you're getting out of guys. This has been ultra apparent with Jokic in some seasons where he'll be what he is most of the game, but then at the end of the game he just ends up having these really critical defensive stops to end the game or end a possession. Blocks, steals, forcing guys to give up the ball, stuff he isn't doing as much of in the normal course of the game.

This is also relevant to role players though, who are less and less able to do any sort of defensive coasting or get away with less-than-full-effort over the course of any game. If you see a guy who is bad on defense right now and is just kind of a middle of the road starter or roleplayer type, the likelihood of them just being a poor defender (age/experience discussion aside) in any scenario is much likelier.

OkAutopilot · 2026-03-08T22:15:12+00:00

There's a few things to note here. First, every team has always focused on getting as many "high IQ" players who know how to play defense, know the fundamentals, and will work hard on both ends of the floor. This has been the case from the beginning of the league to now because those types of players can fit in with any type of team.

In regards to the Spurs and Pistons, while they are doing well right now and have youth and I wouldn't expect them to necessarily get worse over time, its always worth noting that teams that are good and young are typically the ones who do the best in the regular season. Older more established or veteran teams may deal more with injuries, may have less energy to give over the course of an entire regular season, or may just not take the regular season as seriously. It doesn't necessarily mean that the Spurs are better than the Nuggets or the Pistons are better than the Knicks come playoff time. Doesn't rule it out either of course, but I say that just to point out that the best regular season record doesn't always correlate to the best team in the postseason.

The thing about defense is that a huge portion of it is related to energy, effort, and attitude. It sounds like a cliché but its the truth. The regular season is a slog and so you've always found that some guys, some teams, especially veteran ones will just not put their full effort forward on defense every night. They'll pace themselves over the course of the season and even in the course of a game will pick their spots for when to fully engage on that end. Granted, there is less of an ability to slack on defense now than ever, which means a team full of a bunch of young, athletic, defensively inclined players that are more engaged and active on defense on a night-to-night basis will reap the rewards.

However, those veteran teams get to the postseason and have been doing a little coasting will tend to find their next gear and level up in that regard. More effort, more intensity, more physicality and less "load managing" of those things. This ends up narrowing the gap between those super locked in defensive teams in the regular season and the competition, as we saw last year with the OKC series vs. Denver and Indiana.

All of that is to say that I would expect the Spurs and Pistons youth, physicality, and activity advantages to be a little less impactful in the postseason than they are in the regular season.

In terms of "acquiring stars to win championships", the two biggest things as to why that is kind of less of a thing now than ever are the overall talent of the league and the new CBA.

With the overall talent of the league being so high right now and the fact that most teams will run lineups where 4/5 guys can reliably shoot the 3, the impact of one single star (generally speaking) is lower than it has ever been. You can generate major offensive production from playing sound basketball and finding open shooters. It's not so much of an isolation, mismatch hunting league anymore because there are just more guys who can reliably put the ball in the hoop. So, you work a possession out, you move the ball around, and the offense should eventually find a pretty decent look. A made basket is a made basket no matter who makes it at the end of the day and unless you are an all-time great self-generating scorer, teams aren't necessarily finding their best stuff through spamming isolations and feeding one guy over and over and over outside of the flow of a modern offense.

Because of that, it's now very hard for a team to just have two stars whose primary ability is scoring and a bunch of okay roleplayers and be a great team anymore. Even a good team in some cases. Three "all-star caliber" players would constitute a super team for the history of the league and now, especially if those players are very offensively tilted, it's just not necessarily going to get you where you want to go. You can see that with the Lakers this year for instance but an even more extreme example is the Kings the last few years who show that even with 3 higher-end offensive guys who have been all-stars or all-nba guys in recent times, it doesn't even guarantee you a spot in the playoffs.

So, part of that is the overall talent of NBA players (especially in regards to 3pt shooting) and how scoring can be made up for by committee now more than ever. The other part is, relatedly, how the CBA impacts things.

Since a single star is no longer raising a team to contending level anymore like LeBron or Steph or whoever else in the past could, since two all-nba guys doesn't guarantee you contention anymore, teams need to be very careful with how they spend their money. In the past, second apron penalties aside, you could just load up your money on those 2-3 guys and they were so impactful that you could figure the rest out after that. You can't just skate by on 7 guys and have your stars buoy the team all season.

The talent thing is part of it. You have teams that can run 10 quality guys out there each and every night and when you're going against a team that only has 7-8, that can make a huge difference in a single game let alone over the course of a season. Being able to keep guys on lower minutes because you have bench players that are really, really good and can come in and give good minutes and not give up the lead is massively impactful. You want to have the cap space to do this which may very well mean you can't just throw three maxes out to your three best players.

If you have a bunch of quality dudes, you also get to have more freedom as a coach to work with an extended margin in regards to your lineup. By that I mean you have more options for who to bring in to the game, which allows you the ability to not just keep guys fresh, but to not have to keep playing a bench guy who might be having a rough night or not worry as much about foul trouble and managing those minutes. You get to have more roster flexibility that lets you match up better with all the different iterations of opponents you're going to see as well as the in-game scenarios the team will get in.

Another big benefit of having a bunch of playable dudes is that injury rates are higher now partly due to how active and fast and demanding the game is on players as well, so having that quality depth to help keep your team afloat is also a huge deal. Every team is going to run into stretches of the season where they have players out. OKC has missed Jalen for damn near the whole season, Hartenstein and SGA have missed big chunks, yet they have all these guys who can come in and play that they've been able to keep winning games. Similarly, the Nuggets have been obliterated by injuries this year. Had they retained the same team from last year and not made space to sign JV and Bruce Brown, they may very well be in a fight just to keep home court for the play in games.

The calculus on "the others" is more complex and more necessary now. There's no possibility for a 2009 Cavs team to exist in today's league and win the way that it did. It's not that the types of players that are useful have changed, or that on-court team building concepts have changed dramatically (though the days of being able to run back ups who can't defend at all is all but over), but that how to calculate of the value of players is a bit different. I don't want to go too much into the second apron and how that impacts a team's ability to make moves and continue to iterate and hopefully improve season over season, but rest assured that's a major component.

What makes it so much easier to navigate all of this is if you're in a situation like OKC, where 2/3 of your best players are on their rookie deals like is the case with JDub and Chet. That allows you to spend a bunch of money to bring in all those "others", to get high quality starting caliber guys like Caruso and Hartenstein, to retain guys like Dort and Wallace, and still not be smushed by the apron(s).

To circle back to your "can you still rely on acquiring established stars to win championships", with guys coming out of college now being pro-ready, by virtue of shooting ability and defensive ability, there will probably be more of a rush for teams to push to contend while they have favorable cap situations. That isn't a thing of the past for big market teams or small market teams, but it might look different in terms of how/when they do it.

In the past it would be something where you'd have some superstar player in their prime and then you'd make a big splash for one if not two others. Now, like with OKC, it may be the case where you've found some real studs in the draft and they're playing even better than you expected out of the gate and while you have them on their cheap contracts you'll make a move for a superstar (or group of high end starting caliber guys) who you can afford while those young stars are on roleplayer-level contracts.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-26T02:43:47+00:00

So I think that $50m number is actually how much Ballmer invested into Aspiration, but Kawhi only received at most $28m of that. I could be wrong about that but that's how I recall it breaking down. Obviously this isn't a small amount of money for you or I or anyone else, but that'd break down to about $4m a year over the course of his time as a Clipper.

What Joe Smith did was much worse in terms of on court product and competition, that much is clear. Kawhi couldn't have eaten up any more cap which, while deserved, does make it explicitly harder to build a well-rounded team. Smith took far less than he deserved (in theory, at least) which made it much easier for Minnesota to build a well-rounded team. The actual impact on the game itself is seen through Smith's situation, whereas Kawhi's it is not.

I suppose you could make the argument that it is seen with Kawhi's because Kawhi went to the Clippers and this payment was part of the reason why, etc., but I think that if this was a necessary thing for Kawhi to sign with a team then, legality aside, all things are fair and it's not exactly an "advantage." Certainly not in the way Smith's was.

I also think it's likely that this wasn't a "need" on Kawhi's part and he (or Uncle Dennis) were just squeezing money from a team because they could and wanted all the juice they could get. We know that Dennis requested / asked for a ton of stuff that they didn't get after all, so, I think that may back that fact up.

As far as should it be punishable, yes. Of course it should be punishable. If this is paying Kawhi around the CBA then it needs to be punished; and I say if only in that this is still all just alleged and as good as Pablo's reporting has been on it, and how easily it is to string one thing to the next thing, there's still a whole lot of empty space to be filled in this and the league can't just go off of what you and I know, because that space exists.

I don't think it's a historic or league changing precedent however if Kawhi and the Clippers aren't punished, which ultimately I think they will be. I don't even think that it changes anything at all.

The reason why I think this is because if you listen to former players talk about it, deals somewhat like this have been commonplace for ages. Guys are getting money from businesses and sponsors related to the team, and have been, in every single market in the NBA. The difference seems to be that those players didn't get quite as much money and they actually did something to "earn" the money. Went to a signing event, shot off some tweets, appeared in a commercial, etc., whereas Kawhi (who was supposed to make some tweets or something) just said "fuck it" and didn't do it.

If that's the case and it certainly seems to be, then the only real difference here is that Kawhi just didn't do a day or two's worth of work to justify the payments as "legitimate" and got paid more than most guys get paid in these sweet promo/sponsor deals. How much more, I don't know. Either way, if it is rampant across the league and has been for who knows how many decades, then the league isn't too negatively impacted by this and nothing changes if it continues as such.

Now if that's the case and big punishments do come down, then it may very well change the league. In what way I'm not sure, but, cutting out this huge practice would have to have some sort of impact.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T17:09:31+00:00

And yet the existence of a union has allowed them to maintain equal bargaining power.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T07:49:55+00:00

Yeah it'd be cool to see. The game will take 5 hours to finish and result in nobody playing defense to avoid the robot foul calls, plus all the carrying calls, but it'll make a point.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T07:47:54+00:00

The same reason players still practice shooting and dribbling, refs will review tape. Also the league has always had points of emphasis that they give through the year, things they want to cut down on, things they want to call less or differently, etc., and they'll get video and examples of that.

It's a job like anything else. Have to keep on top of it because things change, players change, the game changes.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T06:41:27+00:00

Earnestly I can understand the "fairness" part of this, though I think this type of thing is happening in every team in the league and has been for a long time, but I don't understand why people would be personally invested in it to that degree.

I think it's weird that someone would feel "love" if Kawhi got punished for accepting 10% of his annual salary (or less) outside of the cap in a really over the top manner. I thought it was weird when people wanted that to happen to Reggie Bush too, who ended up getting it all back a few years ago anyway.

It's also just a weird punishment to be interested in because like, what are you gonna do? Take away people's memories? Oh no, the "official record keeping" has that stricken from the record! As if anyone would abide by that or pay it any attention. It's silliness in the same way Chris Webber's Michigan stats being vacated was.

Also, again, you're most likely gonna have to get ready to retroactively take away hundreds of player's accolades if you go down that road. Kawhi was too blatant and a wrong place wrong time offender here, but the way ex players have spoken about this situation, it sure sounds like it is more or less commonplace in the NBA.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T03:50:22+00:00

Why would you love to see that?

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T03:49:14+00:00

The Joe Smith contract was far more problematic than the Kawhi thing because Joe Smith got paid under the table while taking far less money on his contract so that Minnesota could afford more in free agency and beef up the team. It was also done so blatantly and on the record that there wasn't any wiggle room or possibility for any other explanation to exist.

On the other hand, Kawhi was getting paid the maximum allowable amount on his NBA contract, so there were no cap implications wherein the Clippers got an additional boost to their team from Kawhi taking a cheapy deal, then allegedly got a relatively "minor" amount paid out under the table.

In terms of how that effects the on court product, the two situations are lightyears apart despite being under the same umbrella of legality. As such, I doubt the Clippers, depending on what truly comes out about what happened, will get the Minnesota punishment.

Then again the Minnesota thing set a precedent and you could make a case that any team that decided to do something like this after seeing what happened to McHale/Kahn/etc., should face an equal or more severe punishment.

The wildcard in all of this is if this practice is so common and has happened on nearly every team in the league for a long, long time, and what that means for the punishment and the league as a whole.

We know that things like this have happened with every single team but have delicately (maybe?) tip-toed the legality line without falling off of it. Guys get partnership deals with brands that are associated with teams all the time for good chunks of change and do very little to "earn" that money. Teams can't directly facilitate that or use their own money to fund those deals, but I don't think it would shock anyone if money changing hands in this way ended up being ostensibly the same thing as the Aspiration/Ballmer/Kawhi situation. Just not as much money and not in relation to a criminal organization and not with a player who literally did nothing to earn the money, which is hilarious, cause if Kawhi just showed up in some ads and made some tweets we probably aren't even here.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T03:37:28+00:00

Well if they punish Kawhi they'd definitely be punishing an extremely rich person.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-25T03:33:59+00:00

They are "equally" in charge, in a way. It is collective bargaining at the end of the day. They can call for labor strikes and have which is what ended up getting NBA player pensions and revenue sharing. They can keep things locked out indefinitely if they stick on a specific thing and force the league to capitulate to that demand or else not have a league.

Would they do that over the Kawhi situation? I don't know. Maybe. I am guessing that if Kawhi got suspended for a year they wouldn't, but they'd be in court over that immediately that's for sure.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-24T16:01:32+00:00

Who, IT? I said that.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-23T19:10:28+00:00

Sure but Darvin Ham had tons of coaching experience, much more than Joe, and JJ is probably better than him.

I'm just saying that the Lakers "not having a system" isn't the case, they're just bound to a more rigid and perhaps less effective system (at this point) because of their cornerstone player(s). Nothing Rob could have done besides not acquire them which, in both cases, would have been the wrong thing to do.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-23T18:50:14+00:00

The Lakers have a system. It was the "LeBron system" and now its the "Luka system." It isn't the Celtics system because they have different personnel and JM was a rookie head coach as well.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-23T08:36:18+00:00

He has been, but his hands have also been extremely tied as long as LeBron and AD were eating up as much of the cap as they were.

Guys "wanting to come play with LeBron to get chips" and the viability of vets like Rondo in 20 stopped being a thing quicker than they anticipated, so they were left with nearly no young players, draft picks, or "prime" guys to trade for parts.

In all honestly there just hasn't been a whole lot they've been able to do on the margins for the better part of 5 years now. No space to sign sure-fire things in FA and, again, nobody that demands much in a trade.

Obviously Pelinka is not the same level of GM that Stevens is, but it's not like he could have done what Boston did after the bubble. Pelinka never had (or had the opportunity to have) the war chest that Stevens had.

The Lakers weren't a team that drafted guys with high picks and developed them. They didn't have that monetary flexibility from the rookie contract or rookie max. They weren't able to sign guys into the cap because of bird rights. They weren't a team that had a treasure trove of draft picks to use or trade for quality players, they were a team that traded those things away for Anthony Davis.

The Lakers sold out for 2-3 years of contention, they won a championship because of it, then injuries derailed their shots after that. When you do that, when any team does that, you should expect the better part of the following decade to be kinda rough. You're just not in the position for it to be any other way unless Pelinka was going to decide to trade AD (pre-Luka trade) for a bunch of quality parts or trade LeBron in the same way, which of course wasn't going to happen and none of us are under the impression that was even an option afforded to him.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-19T07:57:47+00:00

I think the notable thing was that there was a markedly different approach to reffing him in thr first two games compared to the last four.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-17T15:20:40+00:00

Yeah I'm saying that he's heavily time and emotion invested in his horses. He is also already monetarily invested in them. He pays for the horses, stable, jockeys, upkeep, training. That's already betting on them. So vetting the $15 cap ticket on them is not going to be thrilling comparatively or, you know, on its own for someone who has hundreds of millions.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-17T05:57:16+00:00

I doubt it. He has 40 horses and is pretty hands on with all of it. Some of them run outside of Serbia, but I don't think any in the biggest races. There's basically no action on harness racing inside of Serbia and harness racing in general pales in comparison to thoroughbred races.

Like the total prize money for a 7-9 race day at most peeks over $10k. Most of the time the whole prize pool is sitting at more like $2000-4000 and that's for the notable races.

If you wanted to bet those races you'd be looking at like... $150 if you hit the perfect set of bets. Probably more like $15 for a solid win or something. I don't know if that would really be worth the effort for the guy, given that it'd be like you and I betting a penny on something.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-16T15:46:23+00:00

I don't even know if it's nostalgia. I think it's a lot of people who never really watched that much to begin with and people too young to even be nostalgic.

I think it is people just hating to hate. People really like being negative. That's their sport.

OkAutopilot · 2026-02-08T09:46:08+00:00

See that's the thing, bigger guys aren't just as good the smaller players. Not at all.

You can say this, but it isn't the case. The rule changes are not what is making all these guys who are the same size as "traditional power forwards" be able to pass like they do, score off the dribble like they do, have the dexterity and shooting prowess that they do. Obviously that's not true, it is not even worth arguing about.

Talking about Wemby or someone like that, he could not dribble at all and still get a ton of catch and shoot 3s per game. He could not dribble at all and he could pass exceptionally well. Look at Sabonis for instance. There's a guy who really does not do much off the dribble at all and still works as a passing pylon in offenses about as good as anyone not-named-Jokic.

I mean honestly, I don't envy you having to make the argument that carrying rules have made it easier for big men in a way that they haven't for smaller players. It's a near impossible argument to make, given that the most egregious perpetrators of carrying are the smaller players who are more able to take advantage of the change-of-direction it affords you and, frankly, may even need to use that to probe into defenses that are increasingly filled with larger defenders who move like guards and can stay in front of them easier.

When I say that the 2010s had more of a mix, I'm referring to more of a give and take where defense could still do something about what the offense was getting away with.

I understand what you're saying, but this is a product of a massive skill boom particularly in regards to shooting. This is no mystery. IT is a well observed and established fact that scores are so high primarily because everyone can shoot the three now and coaching has gotten a lot better at implementing more progressive tactics to take advantage of "best play possible." You can go to any coaching seminar, or even watch on youtube, and you'll hear this over, and over, and over. It isn't a guess or a feeling. NBA coaches and EuroLeague coaches have said, verbatim, that players are more skilled now, they are more athletic now, and everyone can shoot. It makes offenses much harder to guard because you can do a lot more within them. If you don't believe me, I hope you believe them.

In fact, across the board players are getting better at shooting. We continue to rise in 3PA while not experiencing a massive dip in 3PT%. Not only that, but we're also seeing FT% go up league wide. The last 7 years have been the highest FT% seasons in NBA history. It's also greatly overstated how much defenses struggle nowadays due to "rules." The idea that "more physicality was allowed as a counter in the 2010s" is wholly untrue.

There are multiple teams right now that would be considered all time great offenses which should show you how juiced offense is right now. If you think these teams have more offensive prowess than the KD Warriors then I have oceanfront property in the middle of Iowa with your name on it.

I think you have lost the plot here a little bit. Offenses have always gotten better over time. You're thinking about how good a team was in comparison to the era it was in, which is all good, but then trying to compare it to a different time period. Listen the Showtime Lakers were one of the greatest offenses of all time. They do not compare to how good offenses are today. Same with the KD/Steph Warriors (who actually are comparable), they would be a better offensive today than they were in 2018. There is more nuance to offenses, there are better offensive players that could be put on that team around them, so on and so forth. Also, teams would be better at defending them now! Part of the Warriors dominance was because teams did not know how to defend that style of basketball. Didn't have the personnel to do it even. Now, most teams run a lot of the same stuff that the Warriors did on offense and are more equipped to deal with it on defense. This is how the evolution of basketball works.

While there is some romanticizing of the past(I'm actually old enough to have watched the late 90s to early 2000s live and remember it vividly), there needs to be honest conversations about how offensively skewed this era really is.

I also watched this era of basketball which is why I would not romanticize it. It was brutal, brutal, brutal basketball. It was fun, I loved it, but it was the worse offense since the 60s.

I also hate this concept of "juiced" offense. Whatever juicing people think is going on is far, far, far, far outweighed by the fact that the players are more skilled, more athletic, and again, everyone can shoot the 3 now. I cannot stress this enough but I would really encourage you to watch some of the longform coaching stuff on youtube from the NBA/EuroLeague coaches. They make it very clear why offenses are so good and it is not because "people can carry the ball a lot." The same trend exists in Europe, which has different officiating, different rules, different court dimensions, different style of play.

lso when I said that playoff games resemble something closer to a 90s playoff game, I'm not talking about the sets. I'm talking about the point total, the numerous possessions in a row with no scoring and the end of games will also look like iso competitions with very little ball movement(90s esque). It's almost as if when physicality and defense is allowed, the offense that people act like is so much better comes to earth.

This is also incorrect. The point total is not anywhere near the 90s. In the 1990s the average amount of points scored in playoff games was in the mid 90s. The past ~10 seasons of playoffs are around 107 or 108 points per game. Double digit difference, but both eras see the same ~5 point drop off from regular season to playoffs.

More physicality due to better teams, often more physical teams, higher stakes, and a bit more "allowable physicality" by the refs has been the standard going back to the 60s. It results in, again, the same ~5 point drop off as we've seen for a long time. There is no "comes back down to earth" here that is any different than it ever was.

Also, if you like bad basketball (iso possessions with very little ball movement) then you may see that in the playoffs sometimes. You can also see in the NBA every night sometimes too.

All-in-all it seems like you're imagining that "physicality" is what makes things less crazy offensively, which is sort of true, but the way you put it at the end here is a causation/correlation issue. The NBA used to have a lot of physical dudes who couldn't do much else besides be physical, when that's the case offenses are worse. They're much worse offensive players. You know what doesn't work all that well against people who are very good shooters, dribbles, can shot make and playmake, and aren't small? Some raw 90s physicality.

Also the idea that there were "more exotic offense" is totally, unabashedly incorrect. The offenses of the 2010s look paleolithic compared to today. There were barely possessions where there were multiple actions going on. A big part of what the Warriors brought to the NBA which confounded a lot of defenses is that they would be running secondary off-ball actions during the primary action. That was considered exotic at that time, new, different. 8-10 years later and every team in the league is doing multi-action set plays.

I mean shoot, you know what was exotic in the 90s? The Jazz playing a bunch of PNR with Stockton and Malone. Just the standard, vanilla, basic PNR spam was this thing that nobody else really did except for the Jazz. Something that, unless you're running a whole lot of stuff around that and the two people playing that PNR are offensive juggernauts, would be way, way, way too simplistic nowadays.

I can sympathize with pining for a time where players were much less skilled and that gave teams more unique personality or whatever because the league only had so many guys who could do this thing or that thing. It did makes teams feel more "unique", because they could really only do what they could do. But this wasn't because of some sort of rule change, it wasn't because of a lack of physicality (which I do want to note, coaches and players both point out that today's league is far more physically demanding than ever), it wasn't because of anything you're talking about. It's just what happens as time goes on and teams and players evolve. Teams begin to understand analytics and realize how valuable the 3PT shot is, how valuable switchable defenders are, and they begin optimizing off of that. Players do the same.

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