Players like Metta World Peace, who is 35 years old and currently working to make a roster spot on the Lakers, have lived to experience different eras of NBA basketball. Watch footage of games from the late 90’s and early 2000’s and you’ll see how the complexion of the game is entirely different from what we see now. That is the result of many things that happen to the league over time, but it’s also just the natural evolution of the game.
For World Peace, as he described in a talk with Eric Pincus from the Los Angeles Times, it’s real simple, the league has just gone softer.
“I remember I came into the NBA in 1999, the game was a little bit more rough. The game now is more for kids. It’s not really a man’s game anymore,” World Peace said. “The parents are really protective of their children. They cry to their AAU coaches. They cry to the refs, ‘That’s a foul. That’s a foul.’
“Sometimes I wish those parents would just stay home, don’t come to the game, and now translated, these same AAU kids whose parents came to the game, ‘That’s a foul.’ These kids are in the NBA. So now we have a problem. You’ve got a bunch of babies professionally around the world.”
World Peace wasn’t quite done.
“It’s no longer a man’s game,” he said. “It’s a baby’s game. There’s softies everywhere. Everybody’s soft. Nobody’s hard no more. So, you just deal with it, you adjust and that’s it.”
Kids are always going to cry about fouls. That’s always going to be the case.
As far as the NBA, tne thing you absolutely do notice when watching games from World Peace’s era is the level of physicality has changed. That’s something the NBA targeted when they took away hand-checking in 2004-05. The game has loosened up — we’re seeing fast tempo basketball with high volume scoring, three-point shooting, and position versatility.
This version of the NBA may not suit World Peace’s liking, or for that matter his skill set, as he tries to earn himself a guaranteed spot with the Lakers, but the game will continue to evolve with or without his approval.
