Gary Payton: Hates today's NBA, only likes 3 current point guards

So, Gary Payton, what don’t you like about the modern NBA? Payton: ‘Basically everything’

By Kelly Dwyer

5 hours ago
Ball Don't Lie



It’s not uncommon for older gentleman to fondly recall their youth, and the hallmarks of their youth – whether they be personal anecdotes, worldwide social mores, or the entertainment of the day. It’s also not uncommon, along the way, to tend to overrate the sort of things that made one so happy during their youth; oftentimes sloughing the bygone era off as nothing but good times, when in fact it was just as full of toil and trouble.

This appears to be the case with former Seattle SuperSonic and Basketball Hall of Famer Gary Payton, who gave the media a fantastic recent “kids these days”-speech at a media availability session prior to his honoring at an Oregon State basketball game on Saturday night. Via NBA.com, here’s his talk:



And via The Score, here are the quotes:

"Basically everything. It's no defense, it's just run and gun. To me, there's only three point guards in the NBA that impress me; I got Chris Paul, Rondo, and another kid that I like a lot and I forgot his name right now. Oh, and Tony Parker. That's only three NBA players in there.

There's too much touch fouls. Every time you touch and they stay on the free throw line. That's no way to watch basketball. When we were playing, it was rough and tough. Even superstars like me fouled out a lot. That's because they let people play, and if you do something then you call it. But nowadays it's not like that and this is the era.

This is what kids want to see. You see these Playstations, they scoring 50 and 60 with one player, that's what they want to see on TV and I don't go with that. My era, give me one-on-one with somebody and stop him and right now you can't do that with a player because if you touch him he's going to the foul line and you're fouling out. Let him be rough. If he got an opportunity to go at you in the offensive end, let me go at him on the defensive end and rough him up. So that's the way I like basketball and I don't think it's like that.

And via my ability to not overrate Payton’s era, here’s my take.

I don’t doubt for a second that Gary Payton misses hand checking. That he misses games that routinely finished with an 87-85 score, and that he misses a time when teams were allowed to back down defenders from the three-point arc all the way to the rim, attempting to either earn a whistle, or another endless illegal defense call and subsequent free throw. I don’t doubt that Gary Payton misses the sort of two-man offense that made spectators out of three members of the five man lineup, left to sit on the weak side and wait for some crumb following yet another screen and roll.

That sort of game was Payton’s bread and butter, and while we don’t want to underestimate his Hall of Fame brilliance, those sorts of basketball stylings were one of a few low points in the decades-long up and down run of the National Basketball Association.

Yes, Michael Jordan once ruled the landscape, two different incarnations of the New York Knicks were fun, the Utah Jazz were to be revered, the Rockets ruled and Shaq was relatively svelte at one point. But for a goodly chunk of Payton’s prime between 1993 and 2003, NBA basketball could be a chore to watch. Especially in the years following Jordan’s retirement after the 1997-98 season, and until the NBA decided to pay increased attention paid to hand check laws in 2004-05.

That year brought us the ‘Seven Seconds or Less’ Phoenix Suns, and to a far less famous degree, Nate McMillan’s surprising Seattle SuperSonics squad. Though McMillan’s team rarely ran – it was the fourth-slowest team in the NBA that year – the squad moved the ball expertly in its half court sets, and it obsessed over the corner three-pointer. The lineup, featuring Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis in their primes, helped spearhead the league’s second most efficient offense, and the team won 52 games in spite of rolling out the league’s fourth-worst defense.

That group, along with a 2004-05 San Antonio Spurs squad that obsessed just as much with forcing teams into taking low percentage long range two-point jumpers while avoiding fouls, set the standard for the modern NBA. Not so much in terms of execution and play calling, though we’re not far from that nearly a decade later, but in terms of study, willingness to challenge NBA orthodoxy, and the ability to think on one’s feet collectively.

I grew up in Payton’s era, and it inspired me to write about the NBA for a living. And grinding out the post-MJ, pre-hand check years as a struggling writer was no fun, but I hung in there. And I think I’m one of few my age that is uniquely qualified to tell you that a lot of basketball during that time was bloody awful to watch.

Everyone could hand check. Spacing was poor, and though some teams took heaps of three-point shots, it wasn’t quite the weapon it was today. Coaches called out endless plays, even after offensive rebounds, they’d drag out the shot clock, they’d talk up midrange shots, and then they’d wonder why every other game seemed to be finishing with scores in the 80s. National TV contests featuring Allen Iverson’s 76ers, Latrell Sprewell’s Knicks, Jason Kidd’s Suns or Vince Carter’s Toronto Raptors shooting in the low 40s were terrible to watch. It was an ugly, brutal league.

Which suited GP just fine, because that was his game. And he’s right that, at times, there can be too many fouls in the modern NBA – but those games are few and far between as players learn to adapt and, y’know, not stick two arms into a guard while they’re driving to the hoop.

This adaptation has led to another wonderful element, as NBA coaches have gotten smarter and developed fantastic, fluid defenses with the knowledge that they can’t rely on hand checks to keep the top scorers in line. This is part of the reason why you don’t see nearly as many 45 and 50-point games any more, as teams evolve and the game grows. Offense has improved, but so has defense – and in a way that nearly prevents the sort of “50 and 60”-point games that Payton swears he’s seeing all the time.

It’s a better, more interesting, improved game on both sides of the ball. Anyone in a comment section that tells you that defense is a thing of the past simply doesn’t watch NBA basketball. And anyone that tells you that the game has gotten wimpier simply doesn’t watch NBA basketball – especially live NBA basketball.

There’s more movement, there’s more passing, there’s more running, and there’s less standing around. And because coaches, players and teams have to adapt or be left behind, the game has gotten so, so much more intelligent. Even the Knicks are figuring things out.

Sign up for League Pass, and actually give it a good watch, Gary. I’ll trade you tonight’s games for my NBA game DVDs from 2001 anytime you want.

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For starters, I don't like Kelly Dwyer. He's an idiot, in my opinion.

Now that THAT's out of the way, I can understand how GP feels. The game has been softened a lot and almost all of the rules benefit offensive players. People want to compare LeBron and other stars to the NBA greats of the past, well, they played during a much more difficult era where dishing out hard fouls wasn't an automatic flagrant foul/ejection and the game wasn't tailored to facilitate only offensive play.

I also find it interesting that Rondo is one of the guys he named as PGs he likes.



KJ

Mebbe I'm too old, but didn't Payton diss rondo shortly after being a Celtic himself?

Yes, it's possible that, "It’s not uncommon for older gentleman to fondly recall their youth, and the hallmarks of their youth – whether they be personal anecdotes, worldwide social mores, or the entertainment of the day. It’s also not uncommon, along the way, to tend to overrate the sort of things that made one so happy during their youth; oftentimes sloughing the bygone era off as nothing but good times, when in fact it was just as full of toil and trouble."

But it's also possible that "older gentlemen" (I assume the writer intended the plural as well as excluding gentlewomen) actually did witness things that were superior than today's equivalents.

Older gentlemen also witness things today that they can freely admit greatly outstrip the past.  I'm grateful every time I arrive in Paris after only an 8-hour trip.  I'm probably alive today because of dietary beverages and modern medical miracles.  I only wish I'd had a computer and a copy machine in the days when I was touch-typing 100-page reports in triplicate.  (I could have quadrupled my income.)

It's also true that "younger gentlemen" don't like to admit that they missed anything and want to believe that the best times occurred during their life spans.  Nonetheless, it actually is possible that people who have lived longer really have witnessed some phenomena that were superior to today's counterparts.  And, although I'd be the last one to label Gary Payton as a greybeard, and I'm not about to become a Gary Payton groupie, I definitely agree with what I think he's mightily struggling to convey when he says, "There's too much touch fouls.  Every time you touch and they stay on the free throw line."

I can't think of one single way in which the touch foul rule improve the game.  Players are not in physical danger if they're touched on occasion.  Touch fouls don't speed up the game, they slow it down.  In addition, the possibility of touch fouls encourages flopping.

Perhaps the league feels that, because touch fouls obviously aid the offense, they produce more entertainment value than good defense.  That wouldn't shock me because I sometimes feel league executives don't really care about sound basketball as long as the turnstyles are whirring faster than the Wright Brothers' propeller that I saw at Kitty Hawk.

There's absolutely no question that today's defensive schemes have evolved very positively from the past for a variety of reasons.  But, if this yahoo tries to justify the touch rule by claiming it forced coaches to invent more potent defenses, I feel he's giving the rule vastly too much credit.  In fact, the single thing that probably bothers me (among many candidates) more than anything else about today's game is to watch my team play 23 seconds our outstanding defense only to have some yahoo descendent of Reggie Miller shoot a last-second jumper, kick out his foot so that one lacing touches a defensive player, and be awarded two (or even three) free throws.

Sam