A prevalent misconception: The NBA of today is so much better than it was in the 1980s and early 1990s, it is more athletic, etc.
You constantly hear it. Those who stand to gain financially from the general public believing that the NBA of today is superior to the NBA of yesterday are typically the ones who say it. I found Jemele Hill’s views on the current NBA to be especially naive, especially after she claimed in her terrible train wreck article from two years ago that Kobe Bryant was superior to Michael Jordan.
For those who haven’t read Hill’s piece, she essentially comes to the conclusion that Kobe Bryant is superior to Michael Jordan, rejects all objective or empirical evidence in favor of Jordan (winning, MVPs, and statistics), makes a number of absurd claims, and then backs all of them up.
She merely has no way of knowing whether Jordan would have found it difficult to live with Shaq, so her opinion is based solely on conjecture.
She blatantly claims in that article as well that the NBA of today is better than the one in which Jordan participated. This is an old and completely indefensible argument that is repulsive, and it should be resolved independently of any Kobe vs. Jordan discussion.
