“It is a necessity because the players weren’t as good as we” – Walt Frazier brave courageous that the hand test was canceled because today’s players are worse protected

There was a time when the hardwood of the NBA was a war zone of elbows, sweat and proud. The defense ruled and the guards learned to survive under the pressure of a palm, which was pressed into their ribs on the floor.

Off-ball cutter had to steal her way through the contact and the afterlorders welcomed the bruises that went with the fight for the position. This was the style of that time.

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It demanded survival.

Take off the hand test

This basketball of the old school is gone many decades later. But Walt “Clyde” Frazier, a two-time NBA champion and a defender of the 1970s, does not buy into the story that today’s game has developed due to speed and space. According to him, it developed when she took hand tests away.

“It was a necessity because the players weren’t as good as we” Said Frazier. “You had to get a continuity with offensive … so you open the game. Take your hands from you.”

The hand test was once an important tool in the arsenal of a defender. It was removed in 2004 as part of a wider effort of the league to increase the evaluation. For Frazier, however, the logic was not about opening the room, but to cover up a defect.

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If shooters could not deliver with the efficiency or consistency of earlier eras, the reaction of the NBA was to eliminate the defense resistance, to create movement and to compensate for the lack of precision with more options.

In the 1970s, troops such as the Milwaukee Bucks, the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics, which built the reputation of the half -dish and stubborn defense, were to be seen. The players had to earn every centimeter they had won on the ground. The hand test with its subtle but suffocating pressure was just as much a psychological weapon as a physical one. Removing a layer of accountability from the game.

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The evaluation change

The assumption that changes to the defense rule was necessary to increase the offensive ignores the reality of the one of the league.

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In the 1971/72 season, the NBA teams scored an average league of 112.4 points per game. There was no 3-point shot. No transition -centered crimes. No five-out distance. Only execution, mid-range dominance and defense that could crush egos so closely.

“When I played, each team achieved an average of 110 points per game”, “ The Hall of Fame Guard said. “While you are looking back three or four years ago and are not an average of over 100 points. But now they start because they start moving freedom, and boys cannot be checked.”

In contrast, in the early 2000s, hand monitoring was still legally immersed in the high 90s. In the 2003/04 season, the teams only achieved an average of 93.4 points per game. This year the Detroit Pistons won the NBA title behind a choking defense, the opponents suffocated and cracked hardly three -digit numbers in their victories.

The league recorded it. The hand test had disappeared within one year. Freedom of movement became a mantra and rules were rewritten to prefer the crime of the benefits. The entertainment value of the NBA was related to space and spectacle, not with struggle and resistance.

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But what is often overlooked is how the players reacted. Protections were slowly discontinued. The 3-point era exploded. Between 2010 and 2020, the teams went to over 34 from an average of 18 3-point attempts per game.

But the accuracy did not follow immediately. It took years for the shootout for percentage increase, also increased as the volume. The league mainly bought itself by giving goal shooters more, hoping that their skills would catch up at some point.

For Frazier, the crime was not reborn, but saved. Today’s NBA sees the rules that slow towards the gate at all price. Flagrante fouls are called under minor contacts. The players shoot double -digit free throws from phantom brushes. Instead of physical chess games, many possessions turn into high pick-and-rolls that are supposed to take advantage of mismatrons with surgical simplicity.

The efficiency may have expired, but the texture, as many see, is below.

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