I dont know what this means in regards to what I posted. My statements still stand.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

JORR, would you disagree that you are also ageist, favoring old over new? You, I, and FavreFan have had some NBA discussions about this stuff before.

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Kid Cairo's Boers & Bernstein YouTube Channel

Kid Cairo: 2013 March Madness Tournament Winner!

"Cowabunga? Cowa fucking piece of dog shit! This game is diarrhea coming out of my dick!"

A lot of what's being said in this thread sounds like one belief is that widespread athletic talent in a sport cannot evolve over time.

I don't believe that to be the case. I never attempt to diminish the great players of today. It seems to me that it's usually some younger guy attempting to diminish the greats of the past.

To RFDC's question, yes, the style of play in the NBA has changed, but it certainly isn't more athletic, as illustrated by the lower scores and lower shooting percentages.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

And I'm always flabbergasted at how people can go through years of school without understanding evolution.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

Shut up. Golf isn't even a sport.

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I also hate Catholics.

The shooting percentages are much higher today actually.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Seems you have a little angst today Spanky, everything ok?

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2018
#ExtendLafleur

I'm cool.

That other thread taught me that it was ok to hate Ugie.

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No, they aren't. Last season the league shot .448. In '76-'77 the league shot .465.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

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I guess I was thinking of the 1960's. Still, I dont know that there is a correlation between athleticism and FG% as a collective. There certainly is none with individuals.

Besides, we have had this discussion before, as Kid pointed out. I think you are misframing it by saying people dont understand evolution. It's not an evolution issue. Besides the diet/drugs/training advantage that today's athletes have, there's also a much larger talent pool to draw from. Of course a guy like Sam Jones could hang with Dwyane Wade. There's just a lot more Wades today than there were Sams back then.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I'm wondering how many dunks there were in 76-77 versus the past year.

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Pfffttt....old news

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2018
#ExtendLafleur

The problem is the people who think Babe Ruth wouldn't be a star today, Walter Johnson didn't throw 97mph, and Dick Butkus was too slow to play in today's games. Those arguments are just silly. Outliers back then would still be outliers today.

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

That's a given.

Seriously though; it seems like there are two trains of thought constantly contradicting one another in this thread.

You either have the notion that athletes are uniformly better now than they were in the past, thus suggesting that today's individual players are better than superstars from yesteryear, or the notion that superstars in the past were better than superstars in modern day. You can't have both.

I see most people giving credit to both generations of players.

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I agree with that. But I think the mean is higher today than it was back then, for reasons I explained. When it comes to sports, I've noticed people tend to have sillier opinions on the generational gap of athletes than in just about any other area or subject.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

That Shakespeare couldnt hold Sorkin's jock.

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Obama isn't even a spoke on FDR's wheelchair

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Proud member of the white guy grievance committee

It aint the six minutes. Its what happens in those six minutes.

Yeah but that's only because Sorkin actually writes his own stuff. Sorkin writes a ton of stuff.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I admit to being ageist when it comes to the NBA. My NBA heyday is the 90s, so I prefer that decade over anything that came before it and almost anything after.

Last night I watched the Seattle Sonics vs. Golden State Warriors from 1992 thinking, "Shawn Kemp is the greatest athlete I've ever seen." I stand by that.

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Kid Cairo's Boers & Bernstein YouTube Channel

Kid Cairo: 2013 March Madness Tournament Winner!

"Cowabunga? Cowa fucking piece of dog shit! This game is diarrhea coming out of my dick!"

Issac Newton was a bum. Guy couldnt even pick apples himself, had to wait for gravity to bring them to him. Stephen Hawking is a dude, even in his wheelchair. Newton was white, tiny and slow. Hawking drives around in a motorized chair!! He rolls a 4.2 40!!

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Someone sort of said it I think but it seems to me you cannot compare across eras as every seems to want to do so easy. There must be some sort of weighting as in statistics. Do you really think that Butkus or any of the other examples wouldn't have used all of the new tools available to the new guys? He likely would have been just as "cut", juiced or whatever else these new guys are. I would guess Karl Malone would also look a little different playing these days even though that wasn't so long ago. Until someone can figure out the cross-era weight its just mental masturbation.

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He sure was, to be able to play that many games and have that much sex. I will tip my cap to him.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur

And then recycles it.

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Butkus discussions = fallacies on parade.

1. The "Fuck You, Chicago!" Fallacy: [athlete/coach/team/tradition] that Chicago fans enjoy is stupid, pointless, and overrated and must be attacked at every turn for the good of the city.

Ex. LeBron James is better at every aspect of playing basketball than Michael Jordan ever was, and if you disagree, you're basketball stupid.

2. The Sports Evolution Fallacy: sports are better now thanks to various rule changes (such as the shot clock, or tighter illegal-contact penalties) that make old players obsolete; however, modern players would flourish under the old rules.

Ex. If Dick Butkus traveled forward in time and was forced to cover tight ends over the middle, he would go undrafted. If Ray Lewis traveled backward in time and played by the old rules, his dominance would be so complete that the NFL would have been forced to shut down.

3. The Player Evolution Fallacy: all players who play now are better than all players who used to play, thanks primarily to improvements in nutrition and training; however, said improvements would have no impact on past players.

Ex. If Sam Jones could travel forward in time and experience the benefits of personal trainers and hyperbaric chambers, he wouldn't even be drafted, but if Dwyane Wade played his entire career in Chuck Taylors and subsisted on a diet of cheeseburgers and Lucky Strikes, he would still be a magnificent athletic specimen.

4. The Homoerotic Fallacy: self-explanatory.

Ex. Have you seen tapes of George Mikan? He's just a big slow white dork. Then you watch last year's Finals, and LeBron is stomping around the court with this comic book superhero body. He's got muscles on top of muscles. He's just...so...big.

5. The Fun With Racial Coding Fallacy: black guys are better than white guys at everything, because we say so.

Ex. Dick Butkus was a hulking, freakishly athletic white guy. Ray Lewis is a hulking, freakishly athletic black guy. Ergo, Ray Lewis is better.

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The Bulls haven't done anything wrong, and they're not going to do anything wrong.

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You make me hot with your B&B stuff. You run a ton of it.