One of the problems with being a sports fan is that nostalgia rarely lines up with the facts. Time mists over everything, memories most of all, and the truth of the matter gets harder and harder to see.
Sure, if you’re a car nut, you might look back at a classic late-’60s Corvette and get warm and fuzzy about its swooping lines and the era it evokes. But only a nut would try and argue that any car from that era—or even a decade ago—would match up in performance or reliability with what is rolling off the assembly lines at the moment.
It’s human nature to both constantly improve things and—at least in weaker moments—believe things were better the way they were.
Sports are no different.
Babe Ruth remains a cultural icon 80 years after he swatted his last home run, but only a fool would believe he could step into the line-up for the Yankees against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre tonight and have a similar impact in an era where teams are trotting out players from all over the world, not to mention four straight relievers touching 95 miles an hour on the radar gun.
Wayne Gretzky is the Babe Ruth of hockey, but more than 30 years after his legendary 215-point season no one with any sense is suggesting he could replicate those totals playing against today’s goaltenders in a global league stuffed with the fittest, fastest and strongest athletes to ever have donned skates, with every detail of their games pored over on video and attended to by armies of coaches.
Joe Namath? Johnny Unitas? Stars of their era, but plop them into today’s NFL and they’d likely be confused and very quickly rendered unconscious by a blindside blitz from a linebacker as big as a lineman of their era and as fast as a wide receiver.
Which is why the debate going on in basketball circles right now regarding the relative merits of the 1995–96 Chicago Bulls and the 2015–16 Golden State Warriors is so fascinating.
They are the only teams in NBA history to have won 70 games and are for the moment tied at 72, with Golden State needing a win at home against the under-manned Memphis Grizzlies to break a mark many thought unassailable.
And while basketball has changed a lot in 20 years, no one need question how the ’95–96 edition of Michael Jordan would fit in today’s NBA. His athleticism, skill, basketball IQ and competitiveness will forever translate, it seems.
If anything Jordan is the player most responsible for shaping the modern game, with every team looking for that uber-athletic wing scorer.
This fact helps explain why that Bulls team has been the benchmark of dominance for modern sports The Bulls had won three straight titles before Jordan retired the first time. He came back and the Bulls blew away the previous NBA mark for team victories on their way to winning three more titles. When Tiger Woods was at his peak he was the Michael Jordan of golf. When anyone emerges as the best at anything, they quickly become the “Jordan of” whatever their field is. Everyone understands.
It also explains why—even if Steph Curry and Golden State break the Bulls’ record with their 73rd win on Wednesday night against Memphis—there isn’t exactly a tsunami of popular opinion arguing that Curry and the Dubs will be considered anyone’s new benchmark for near-perfection.
The ’95–96 Bulls boasted not only Jordan but also Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, Hall of Famers in their own right, and together they were arguably the three greatest individual defenders ever to play in the same line-up.
In comparison, the three-point heavy Warriors seem a bit gimmicky in the eyes of some, their over-reliance on the perimeter game a weakness. That’s because generations of basketball fans, coaches and players have grown up looking upon shooting from distance as something fickle and not be trusted, even though Golden State has proven it a lethally reliable difference maker.
“That Bulls team would kill this little team,” Charles Barkley—whose teams were routinely thrashed by Chicago—said of the then 25-1 Warriors back in December. “Come on, man. Who is going to guard Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan? What about Dennis Rodman?”
Even as the Warriors approached the Bulls’ record, Pippen and fellow Bulls teammate Ron Harper predicted their team would not only win a seven-game series against the Warriors, but sweep them, which is quite a boast given the Warriors won 67 games a year ago, went 16-5 en route to an NBA title, and haven’t lost consecutive games all season.
Those who don’t want to pick sides point to the rules changes that have taken root in the NBA in the last few years, preventing defenders from grabbing and holding cutters off the ball and strong-arming ball-handlers as a way to straddle the fence. Against the more physical Bulls in the rules of their era, the argument is the Warriors would struggle to get open while being bumped and grabbed.
But one rule change gets lost in the discussion.
The Bulls’ two greatest seasons corresponded with the NBA reducing the three-point line to a uniform 22 feet from 1994–95 to 1996–97 (as opposed to 22 feet in the corners and 23-feet-nine-inches around the arc).
The Bulls were always a great team with Jordan and Pippen in full flight, but they became legendary after Jordan returned from his first retirement. And—looking at the numbers—it appears that their 72-win and 69-win seasons were sparked by greater effectiveness from the more accessible three-point line.
Jordan shot just 30 percent from deep in the nine full seasons he played before the line moved in and just 23.9-percent in the three seasons he played after it moved back. But in 1995–96 he shot 42.7 percent, by far the best mark of his career, while also making a career-best 111 threes.
Scottie Pippen? He also set career bests with 37.4-percent shooting and 150 makes, more than he’d made in the five years combined before the line moved in.
Is it fair to assume that a rule change that turned two of the most versatile wing players in NBA history into near-elite three-point shooters overnight helped the Bulls?
Maybe. Chicago averaged 70.5 wins in the two full seasons Jordan and Pippen played together with the 22-foot three-point line. In their four other championship seasons they averaged 62 wins—still impressive but hardly legendary.
I mean, a lot of NBA teams have won 62 games.
A question worth asking: What would the current Warriors do if they could play an entire season with a 22-foot line?
Obviously it’s hard to quantify, but consider this: Over his career Steph Curry is a 52.4-percent shooter on corner threes, where the line bends into 22 feet, this compared to the 45.2-percent he shot on all threes this season.
And Splash Brother Klay Thompson is a 46.1-percent shooter from 22 feet, compared with the 42.5-percent he shot on all threes this year.
Apply their efficiency from 22 feet to all their threes this season and the Warriors would be even more lethal offensively, if that’s imaginable.
Curry would have made (theoretically) 454 triples this year, compared to the NBA-record 392 he’s got heading into Wednesday night’s game against Memphis.
Thompson would have 295 compared to his current 272. Combined the extra 87 threes would mean—obviously—just more than an extra point per game over the course of a season.
Would this help the Warriors be even more dominant and perhaps earn the respect of those who can’t see past the possibility that the Bulls were the best team of all time? Would they be playing for win 75 or 76 on Wednesday night?
Possibly. Although the rest of the league would also likely be shooting more threes with a higher success rate, which might carve into the Warriors’ advantage.
But what if you look at it the other way?
Would the Bulls win 72 games without Michael and Scottie turning into their own version of the Splash Brothers?
Their own history suggests they wouldn’t—that moving the three-point line in was a significant advantage to two good-but-not-great perimeter shooters, giving opposing defences one more headache they didn’t need.
Sure, the Warriors might struggle in the clutch-and-grab NBA the Bulls thrived in, but bombing away from 22 feet might offset those rule changes.
That’s why in the Bulls-vs.-Warriors debate I’ll take the present over the past in a rare win over the toughest foe of all: nostalgia.