In the first episode of Jordan Ain’t No Joke (a Last Dance podcast) I mentioned sports writer Roland Lazenby who tweeted the following this morning:

Someday maybe, when it’s not busy counting all its cash from the ginned up game, the NBA will realize there will eventually be a cost to eliminating the freedom of style of play for the tyranny of analytics from men who could never beat Tex Winter’s system with fair rules.

— Roland Lazenby (@lazenby) May 2, 2020

Oh man. THAT is what I’ve been trying to say or express I just didn’t know how to do it.

Dude went off today on Twitter…all kinds of rich and insightful NBA gems. Here’s another one:

My overwhelming takeaway from The Last Dance? NBA suits used rules changes to eliminate the triangle offense. Now we have a game turned upside down that makes lots and lots of money. Just don’t pretend that the game “evolved” past the triangle.

— Roland Lazenby (@lazenby) May 2, 2020

We do this for movies: we adjust Star Wars’ box office from 1970s dollars to today’s money factoring in inflation etc.

And it’s not fair to just say Jordan would score 40 points per game in today’s era; it’s cheap like talk. Like we were alive when the NBA introduced the 3 point shot (1979…Larry Bird’s NBA debut actually.). From 1979 to 2020 we’ve seen how that shot has evolved because the NBA game has evolved.

It’s interesting. That’s something we haven’t discussed on the Jordan Ain’t No Joke podcast (yet…) how the game has “evolved” since Jordan and because of Jordan. And again with The Last Dance there’s a lack of context.

The game is not the same..the rules are not the same, the way it’s reffed is not the same. This is an NBA documentary but the NBA is not a static entity. Different NBA eras are not defined solely by players but how the game is played and the rules of the game.

If you’ve a chance read him on Twitter today. His coffee is strong.

This is another one I dug:

Today’s basketball has been concocted by men who were nice guys but inferior, lazy coaches, men filled with ideas but possessed of little discipline. Now the rules enforce that type of game.

— Roland Lazenby (@lazenby) May 2, 2020

Oh Yes. He’s right. These aren’t tweets they’re grenades. It’s the baseball bat scene from Untouchables.

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Photo provided by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution