When it comes to the back-in-my-day glorification we so often get from former athletes, Charles Barkley is in a league of his own. To listen to Barkley, as charismatic as he is, ramble on about the rough-and-tumble 80s and 90s, you would think NBA games used to be played in an Octagon, and that even the best players of today's game would have no chance of surviving the utterly barbaric Bill Laimbeer.
It's a ludicrous assertion, but one that Barkley proudly and endlessly trumpets nonetheless. He did it again during a recent appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast, when Barkley stated that Stephen Curry, who is conservatively one of the 15 greatest players in history and indisputably the greatest shooter to ever walk the earth, would have been broken into baby particles by the Bad Boy Pistons (who in this context qualify as a symbol of Barkley's era as a whole).
"Can you imagine if the Bad Boys were beating the hell out of him?" Barkley said if Curry. "Bill, can you imagine that? As much as I love Steph Curry, if you think that he could take those blows that John Salley, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, those body checks that they were putting on Michael [Jordan] and Scottie [Pippen] and myself and guys like that, you really think Steph Curry wouldn't break?"
Charles Barkley says Bad Boy Pistons would “break” Steph Curry 🥱😴
— TheWarriorsTalk (@TheWarriorsTalk) August 25, 2023
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I love how physicality continues to the preferred old-guy ax when it comes to chopping down the merits of modern players. It's funny how they never acknowledge the reverse, that in fact there are loads of players from the 80s and 90s who would have absolutely no chance of satisfying the skill requirements of today's game.
Nope, they always make it about the brawling, as if they were really out there turning basketball courts into crime scenes. It's just not true. Go to YouTube and watch some 1980s NBA film. Tell me if you see human heads rolling around.
The laziest among you will point to the infamous Kevin McHale clothesline on Kurt Rambis or one of the many blows the MJ suffered at the hands of the aforementioned Pistons, but that wasn't happening every game and certainly not to every player.
Generally speaking, was there a greater, or rougher, degree of contact back then? Of course. But mostly this was happening in the form of hand checking, holding, a body check here or there as a shooter like Curry cut through the paint.
Now, is it fair to say those handsy tactics would've made it more difficult for a guy like Curry, who has no doubt thrived in the freedom-of-movement era, to unleash his full repertoire of shotmaking? Yes. It would not erase his otherworldly skill, but it would certainly make it harder to deploy. I don't think anyone would question that.
But to suggest that Curry would actually break, even hyperbolically, in a more physical game goes beyond being false; it's just plain disrespectful. The guy isn't a child. In fact, pound for pound, he's been called the strongest player the Warriors have.
It begs the question, if it was so impossible during Barkley's day for a 6-foot-2, 185-pound point guard (this is Curry's listed measurement on Basketball-Reference but he's actually probably 6-foot-3 and north of 190 pounds at this point) to keep his skeleton intact, how did, say, John Stockton (6-1, 170) manage to not just make it out alive, but actually put together a Hall of Fame career?
What about Mark Price (6-0, 170), or Isiah Thomas 6-1, 180), or Barkley's teammate with the Suns, Kevin Johnson (6-1, 180), or Barkley's teammate with the Sixers, Mo Cheeks (6-1, 180), or Rod Strickland (6-3, 185), or Barkley's TNT brethren Kenny Smith (6-3, 170), or Kenny Anderson (6-0, 168), or Tim Hardaway (6-0, 175) ... what about any of these guys? What about Reggie Miller, who was a straight up stick figure? Or John Starks (6-3, 180)? How in the world did all these Curry-sized guys -- many of them actually smaller -- manage to stay in one piece through such a bonebreaking era of basketball?
Honestly, enough with the Gladiator romance. 1980s and 90s basketball was a lot of things; an era where Stephen Curry, or any other great player from today's game, would go to die was not one of them. Curry would be a superstar in any era, just as Charles Barkley would be. To suggest otherwise only announces that you've either stopped paying attention to the NBA or you've lost touch entirely with basketball reality.
