Today's NBA is a different breed of basketball compared to the '80s and '90s when an elbow to the face was nothing more than a common foul, if that. If fists were thrown nobody really batted an eyelash and you basically had to commit murder in order to be ejected from a game.
That's a far cry from 2019, where hand-checking has been outlawed and any contact above the shoulders will run you the risk of an early exit, or worse. In comparing how basketball has evolved over the decades, it's obvious that today's style of play is far more beneficial for the pure scorers and crafty offensive minds that can get to the basket at will.
In regards to the league's new rules, and the recent comments made by Rockets GM Daryl Morey, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban believes that Michael Jordan would have been able to average 40 a game in today's game.
Here's what Cuban had to say during a recent call-in to the Dan Patrick Show.
“Michael Jordan in today’s NBA will kill it,” says Cuban. “His body’s going to be fresher every night not having Charles Oakley or Rick Mahorn knocking him on his ass every time he went into the lane. His challenge would have been how to shoot the three better and he would have done that just like how most guys in today’s game have improved their three. He would be averaging 40 in today’s game.”
Check out the conversation in the video embedded below, the MJ talk starts at about the 6:20 mark.