This article was written by someone who has very little knowledge or appreciation of the history of the game. The NBA has always been a league of specialists revolving around a few superstars with a couple of “glue guys” thrown into the mix.
Superstars not only impact the makeup of their teams roster, they impact the composition of rosters across the league. When Shaq was in his prime teams used to carry extra big men to have more fouls to give.
The most recent iteration of the league was teams going for small ball with three point shooting wings to compete with the Warriors. Right now you see serious contenders in the western conference going for size to make it past Jokic. The next iteration will be the Wemby stoppers.
Before Wilt and Dr J you had Oscar Robertson, Pistol Pete Maravich, Jerry West, Rick Barry, George Milan, etc. The league has always revolved around stars.
It'll be fun to see what Wemby stoppers could possibly look like.
> but guarded defense, caught rebounds and played the role of playmakers.
nobody who has watched basketball would say "guarded defense" or "caught rebounds". I saw "throw 3 pointers" elsewhere in this thread, which is similar, though I'm not sure if that's said by the article author.
Imagine if someone commented on the state of tech today and said that programmers "type code programs".