What ever happened to it being a mans game?

[redcedarrevenge]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

Hey hey HEY!

You watch it now....it matters to me dammit

Hahaha...yeah, I understand that. To be honest, on measurables, the Nets going to back to back NBA Finals is more than a decade of accomplishments that those Knicks/Heat teams had. And that's the point. They were a solid team. They didn't change the way the game was played, nor are they close to one of the best to ever play. However, you're also not sitting there acting like those two years of Kerry Kittles and Kenyon Martin and Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson was this amazing cultural touchstone, or that they accomplished transcendence on the basketball court. Apparently, every good team in the 90s transcended sport.

[BATMON]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

Sorry, Pat Riley's Knicks only won the East once.

And, BATMON's hilarious. I never knew back to back eastern conference crowns by the New Jersey Nets mattered as much as it did until now!

This thread is lame. Bunch of 90s honks trying to live on childhood construction rather than measurables or proof about how the game changed because they can't do it. Every single good team in that era deserves the credit reserved only for NBA Champions. 83 Sixers? Pfft. Couldn't even touch the likes of the Pat Riley New York Knicks because they bumped into guys. Can't even touch the Van Gundy Knicks because there's this GIF file of Chris Childs slap fighting with Kobe Bryant and it's so cool even though Childs throws glancing shots with a curved back as if he were a junk-in-the-trunk-loaded woman. They took the Bulls to six games guys! Nobody else can say that.

I was just watching a documentary on Michael Jordan and I forgot what season it was but they played the knicks and then the blazers in the finals. But the series with the Knicks went 7 games and was just brutal. There were fights every game, hard fouls and it just was exciting and showed players doing everything to win. And then in game 7 Jordan just came out and took that game away from the Knicks and won it.

Every single good team in that era deserves the credit reserved only for NBA Champions

Since were discussing the 90's, The Orlando Magic defeated The Chicago Bulls and went to the Finals to get toasted by The Houston Rockets.
Beating the Bulls in that era is an accomplishment.

To dwindle down any era/decade to only the Champions is silliness at its best.

Those Cleveland Teams that the Bulls beat werent garbage. Neither are The Seattle Supersonics, or The Portland Trailblazers.

Are u now going to add The Boston Celtics that Jordan scored 63 on, w/ them losing in the Finals to the Lakers?
They won the previous year, but by your "measurables", their East Coast Banner means absolutely nothing because they werent Champions.

[redcedarrevenge]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

Since were discussing the 90's, The Orlando Magic defeated The Chicago Bulls and went to the Finals to get toasted by The Houston Rockets.
Beating the Bulls in that era is an accomplishment.

To dwindle down any era/decade to only the Champions is silliness at its best.

Those Cleveland Teams that the Bulls beat werent garbage. Neither are The Seattle Supersonics, or The Portland Trailblazers.

Are u now going to add The Boston Celtics that Jordan scored 63 on, w/ them losing in the Finals to the Lakers?
They won the previous year, but by your "measurables", their East Coast Banner means absolutely nothing because they werent Champions.

Excuse me...DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT? I've tried to be condescending, tried to do all that, but you're obviously going to keep digging your head further into the sand as far as it goes with reality. You're now throwing around early 90 Cav teams as worth mentioning as something more than a bare footnote in the history of the NBA. You're saying that I exclude everyone but NBA Champions, which if you could read, isn't what I've said AT ALL.

But that doesn't matter, because you'll trudge back in here, say some more asinine trash, and keep piling on even though you have no basis in the factual or in the measurable. You want to explain how the Knicks changed NBA basketball? Prove it. You want to show how the game was tougher in the 90's than it is today? Prove it. Put some stats out there. Give the rule changes. And don't give me this hand checking is such a big deal crap. The three point arc was closer then that it is today and that's a much bigger deal for the point totals of players. But the fact is, you can't do any of that. You can just give Knicks/Pacers or Knicks/Bulls rivalries or Knicks/Heat rivalries as the proof. You can bump on the Supersonics all you want but history remembers them as the first number one seed to lose to an eighth seed in playoff history, and as an underachiever. You can bump on the Cavs all you want, but the best they have is an Eastern Conference Finals trip. What's funny? The original poster in here at least has some handle on reality; you don't. You throw Mitch Richmond on a list of ringless players to try to make the point of players who have no rings still being considered great (which wasn't the argument, but funny nonetheless). You then come back in here and try to put dents in the argument for the Knicks of the 90s being nothing more than a footnote not through statistical analysis or any of that; you try to do comparisons that shoot holes into my logic. You used the first round of the 86 playoffs between the Celtics and the Bulls as your logic. First of all? Outside one game, that series was a ditch raping. Second of all? You do realize that you can't get your facts straight, right? When you do this kind of argument, it's good to, you know, know what you're talking about. The 86 Celtics are considered one of the greatest teams in NBA history because they won an obscene amount of games (67), lost only a single game at home the entire season, and won the NBA Championship.

I mean, you got that, right?

Until you get a handle on NBA history, don't respond to this thread.

[BATMON]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

Wow.....................

Flash back to 1981. Magic Johnson is a young superstar in the NBA and he wants Coach Paul Westhead out. The Lakers owner Jerry Buss was on Magic’s side and decided to fire Westhead and promote the up and coming assistant Pat Riley as head coach. Riley let Magic thrive in a new run and gun system that would later be dubbed “Showtime”.* He would lead the Lakers to the Finals seemingly every year and the first change he made to the League was just that, “Showtime”. The success of the Lakers was perceived to be the fact that they ran, ran, and ran, so many other teams in the 80’s tried to run, run, and run. There was a spike in scoring by many teams in the league who tried to emulate the Lakers but nobody could because nobody had Magic, nor did they play the defense that the Lakers played. And defense was how Pat Riley changed the League at his second job.

When Pat Riley’s time was up in L.A. he just went and took the job in the only market bigger than L.A., New York. Obviously, the personnel for the Knicks wasn’t what Riley had in L.A. but he did what great coaches do, adapt. Riley turned the Knicks into a very tough, defensive minded team that bullied lesser opponents and weren’t afraid to knock guys out. Everyone hated the Knicks of the early 90’s and they gave Scottie and Michael’s Bulls a great run, especially in ’92 when they took the defending champs to a game 7 in possibly the most physical series of all-time. They made the Finals in ’94 but lost to the Rockets in a tough fought seven game series.

What he did in New York to change the game may not be as obvious as his Laker days. The Knicks defense was so annoying and so physical that it showed teams just how much you can get away with defensively. This allowed teams like San Antonio and Detroit to dominate with defense in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. The defense dominated so much that the NBA made rule changes to the hand checking fouls that were definitely getting out of hand at that time. The league has been opened up because of this and Riley was behind it.

[redcedarrevenge]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

That's really nice, considering the fact that the Detroit Pistons pre-date that time period. So make the argument that the Pistons changed the way the game was played. It wasn't the Knicks.

Again, no facts. No statistics to back up the assertion. Why? Because there is nothing. So, again, celebrate Chris Childs throwing bitch punches at Kobe and Charles Smith getting owned in the paint. And while you're at it, extoll us of the virtues of the 96 NBA Champion Houston Rockets.

Let's see if that gets caught.

[BATMON]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

The Bad Boys scored and didnt slow the pace down. Try again.

[wang_chi7]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

That's really nice, considering the fact that the Detroit Pistons pre-date that time period. So make the argument that the Pistons changed the way the game was played. It wasn't the Knicks.

Again, no facts. No statistics to back up the assertion. Why? Because there is nothing. So, again, celebrate Chris Childs throwing bitch punches at Kobe and Charles Smith getting owned in the paint. And while you're at it, extoll us of the virtues of the 96 NBA Champion Houston Rockets.

Let's see if that gets caught.

The Bad boys were a great defense, no doubt. But they scored points and didn't slow the games pace down like New York had. It was because of teams like Riley's Knicks (and like it or not they ARE the posterboys of those teams that were all defense) that the league changed its rules to increase points output. Yes the Pistons predated the Knicks, but the timing of the Knicks lines up with the time the league changed its focus. Lots of that is how NY built upon teams like Detroit as scoring was on the way down (where Detroit played in a time when things were more open), so both teams deserve credit. NY just took it to another level being a team of scrappy defenders who had success bullying teams around. They showed you could win by scoring 80. The NBA didn't like that so rules changed.

Want stats? Look up scoring averages (both for league wide and for New York itself.) But there is no convincing you anyways. Not everything can be proven with stats, some things are more intrinsic. BTW I haven't seen many stats in your wordy arguments. (I don't mean for personal attack, just saying)

No the Knicks didn't win a ring. That is part of their legacy, a great team that didn't get it done. Sports history is filled with teams that have that legacy. The Atlanta Braves for instance are known for being one of the greatest teams ever for their stretch in the 1990's. But they only won one ring in the strike shortened 1995 season. That's their legacy, winning by amazing pitching but choking in October. Sports history is also filled with teams that changed their sport with a new style of play (or an extreme style anyways), where they showed success but didn't quite get over the hump; but teams after them adopted a similar style and did win or their style caused the league to change rules. The Air Coryell offense comes to mind as an example along with the 3-4 defense in football. In basketball, New York is the posterboy for why the league started calling a game that allowed for more points and stricter whistles on defense.

[JBH3]

Re: What ever happened to it being a mans game?

There's not a thread in this forum that doesn't turn into a contentious mess.