Golden State Warriors: Overrated or No?

Your claim of the initial premise being objectively wrong is also nothing more than conjecture. It's a subjective argument on both sides. The problem is that you and others on your side of the fence won't accept any argument as compelling. Even if someone were to "list up the names", it would still result in nothing more than a subjective opinion-based argument of "I think this player is better than that player because..." with no real objective basis for a definitive answer.

A response to the "names" evidence has been provided (that those "names" are players who've already completed their careers, so it's unreasonable to expect current players' careers to appear comparable since they're presently incomplete), but that response was dismissed. I could point out significant advancements in training, nutrition, and analytics as counters to the early-entry influx, but you'll likely simply dismiss that as deflection as well. The role-player disparity is put forth as a possible explanation for yesteryear's stars numbers looking better--oh, that's just conjecture.

You demand a compelling argument that the players of today are as good as the players in the 80s, but it's not as though you've provided any real evidence that the players of the 80s are as good as the players of today. It goes both ways.

 

So are you claiming that the best players in the 80s are better than the best players today, or that because of the current CBA environment, the best teams from the 80s are better than the best teams from today?

 

There are multiple reasons why the caliber of play in the league has declined. Several have been mentioned already.

Guys don't finish college
CBA
Hand check rule
Focus on skills (3pt shooting) at the expense of all around fundamentals
Zone defense (hides poor defenders)
Influx of international players
Dilution of talent through expansion

 

Guys get better instruction/training/nutrition from an early age.
CBA doesn't make the overall play less--just limits "super teams"; actually would allow for more parity.
Removing the hand check forces defensive players to actually move their feet on defense, improving actual defensive fundamentals
Focus on skills/specialization increases the overall level of execution of those skills
More defensive options result in improved/increased offensive scheming.
Increased talent pool (including INTL players) offsets dilution.

What a shock--every argument on one side has a counter-argument on the other side. It's as though it's a subjective discussion with no clear answer. Nah, couldn't be...

 

Bring in the girls. It will offset dilution, too.

A lot of those counterarguments aren't arguments at all.

For example, Focus on skills - it can only mean the rest of the skills are not polished. There are more than one skill to the game.

 

Yep, you're right. My car would function a lot better if my brakes also steered the car and provided air conditioning.

 

An analogy? Not particularly a good rhetorical tool, but...

Your car would function a lot better if it started, stopped, and you can steer it, versus one of those working super well and the others not so much.

 

I think you are making my case for me.

Guys who should be 6th and 7th men are starting.

Every team in the East back then had to play that stacked Celtics team (and Philly, and Detroit and Chicago...), 4 times. Every team in the West today gets to play against NOP with a 6th or 7th caliber player in the starting lineup, ~4 times.

As an aside: https://www.netflix.com/title/80097532

 

Yao Ming was a hugely valuable NBA property and modern player management didn't extend his career.

Derrick Rose's career crippled by knee injury.
&c

Most of the superstars back then played well over 40 MPG and had long and mostly healthy careers. See Jordan and Kareem.

 

You named Sabonis and Walton. Isn't that your own cherry picking?

From what I've seen, injuries are injuries. Some guys play massive minutes and don't get hurt. Especially the superstars. There are guys, like Walton and Ming and Ilgauskas, who are big men who suffer from foot problems, and there are guys who are just prone to injury and suffer repeated ones.

What modern medicine does is provide less invasive and destructive treatments of the injuries. But some are so bad that not even modern medicine helps. See Oden.

Guys like Joakim Noah might not have had a continued career after their injuries. But guys like Raef LaFrentz weren't helped at all by any sort of modern handling of player health.

 

How?

Since the players of two eras didn't play against the same teams and other players, comparing their stats is meaningless.