It’s no real secret that former players love to talk about how much better the game was when they played or how much better they were than current players. It’s a blight, but it’s basically what we’re used to. Shaq, Charles Barkley, Gilbert Arenas, and so on. More likely than not, if a former player is going to be speaking on the state of today’s game, the conversation will drift back to when they played.
And how it was good or something.
I don’t know. It’s tiresome. In my estimation, basketball has never been more fluid, more rational, and more complex. I think that’s fascinating. But some people don’t, former players included.
Steve Nash and LeBron James decided to push back on that narrative in their podcast Mind the Game. (If you’re not listening to it, I can’t recommend it more. Sure they have their personalities, but you get to hear about basketball from two of the best to ever do it.)
To transcribe the quotes here, LeBron James said, “And then [that] generation, they talk so much s*** about the game today, and it makes you go back and watch the game back then, and it make you not want to appreciate it anymore like I did as a kid.”
Steve Nash replies, “It’s a great point. If you go back and watch now it doesn’t feel as good as it did at the time.”
LeBron, “It does not.”
Nash continued, “But it was great. It was the best on the planet.”
So, are LeBron and Steve Nash wrong? Does basketball suck now or not?
Well, it’s different. Anyone can like whatever they want. Personally, I’m more interested in how the game is played now than I ever have been. And watching LeBron evolve as a player as the game evolved around him has left him with a greater perspective on this than even many of his peers. LeBron is not the same player now that he was in Miami. LeBron was not the same player in his two stints in Cleveland. He had an actual arc with multiple pivot points. Many NBA stars are just themselves until they retire.
So yeah, I feel like someone closer to the game as it’s being played now has a better grip on what the lived experience of a current NBA player is like. I will have all the respect in the world for former players, but things have just advanced so much.
Basketball is good. Basketball was good. I just want it to keep being good.