re: NBA teams run over 200 more miles during a season than they did during the '80s and '90s

Ok, I'll grant you that.

Soccer and basketball are the top-2 and the rest aren't close IMK.

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You laugh, but find me a collective group of athletes in better shape.

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Water Polo.

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Why are we blaming the players when it’s the teams and coaches that want them to load manage? The players want to play all 82 but it’s just not smart. It never was

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First, players dont want to play every game particularly stars. If so they would. They can get a coach fired but can't push back against load management? bullshite

Second, it's their job. If you can't handle your job, get another one. Does a coal miner get to manage his load? How about a steel worker? A roustabout? All work 12 months a year, 48-52 weeks a year, 40-80 hours a week and perform physical labor these "world class athletes" can't fathom for penjies on the dollar in earnings comparatively. So are you saying it's unsmart for those workers to work the amount they do, and it always has been? Reread the quote I posted.

1528 / 82 is about 18.6 miles per game. There are five people on the court at any given time, so that's 3.7 miles per player per game if only 5 players play. We know some guys get a breather, so for the stars with a lot of minutes it's probably somewhere between 3-3.5 miles per game. This is not very impressive. Even if we round it up to 4 miles per game, this is not impressive at all in the world of professional sports.

When I go look up highest VO2max by sport, basketball is not close to the top.

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This is not very impressive.

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If we ignore the explosiveness of the actions while running those miles.

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Impressive that Zion stays fat.

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Zion getting back on defense usually doesn't involve running.

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You laugh, but find me a collective group of athletes in better shape.

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Tennis, soccer, rugby, water polo, hockey

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the NBA intentionally changed things to amp up scoring and punish playing defense by altering the way fouls are called. their bet was that higher scoring was supposed to be more exciting and thus more viewership. that decision was really the start of the sport's decline as the complete opposite has happened. its not exciting seeing teams race up the court back and forth with nobody guarding and jacking up 3s all night. post play is dead. mid range is dead.

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It’s this. We are 10 years into “positionless” basketball and it’s become very stale very quickly over the last 5-6 years as coaches and GMs have caught up with roster building towards it.

Restoring the old defensive rules would go a long way, especially bringing back illegal defense (that means no zone D). That alone would bring back mid range and post play as viable styles almost immediately.

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THEY DON'T PLAY DEFENSE ANYMORE

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They allow zone defense now. That makes it much harder to score close to the basket. Solution? More movement, shoot 3s, run the fast break, generate more possessions, which generates more points.

If you go back to having illegal defense rules you allow more approaches to winning basketball instead of only having one dominant strategy. We are 10 years into positionless basketball so now every roster in the league is built and coached to basically do the same thing with slight variations here and there. It’s getting boring to watch on top of the load management stuff.

I’d like to go back to the days of having several good teams that have different styles personally. Watching two teams try to win a race to see who can generate more possessions using the same strategy is boring to me.