New Orleans Pelicans: Has the NBA gotten too “soft?”

Old NBA heads love to talk about how the modern NBA is “soft,” but former New Orleans Pelicans’ guard JJ Redick isn’t having it.

The debate erupted on ESPN’s “Get Up” when host Stephen A. Smith was once again waxing nostalgic about the “good old days” of basketball and how the league has gotten soft.

This is an argument we’ve been hearing for years and I mostly agree with JJ Redick when he said:

"“This nostalgic standard that you’ve set for players to the 80s and 90s, and then comparing us to it all the time like we are a substandard to that, it gets annoying.”"

Redick is right, it does get annoying (and this is coming from one of those old heads), as it diminishes the modern players’ accomplishments and sets an impossible bar that no one could ever meet.

It’s also ridiculous when you consider how much talent there is in the NBA now.

I also agree with Redick that players back in the day whined to the refs just as much as they do now. I was there watching Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson et al. doing it, and it really hasn’t changed.

But some things have changed and I found myself reluctantly agreeing (in part) with Stephen A. Smith and the old heads.

The New NBA and the New Orleans Pelicans

The game has gotten less physical over the years and that is probably a good thing. The games in the past were certainly intense, but I don’t really want to go back to watching playoff games with scores in the 80’s.

The game is physical enough for me, and getting rid of things like hand-checking and ridiculously hard fouls has undoubtedly made things better.

If any change has made the modern game “soft” it is the way the refs call the game. There are far too many technical fouls given out for minor offenses, and they are so randomly applied that players never know what to expect.

This season Trey Murphy III of the New Orleans Pelicans got a technical for staring AT HIS OWN TEAMMATES after a big dunk. It was called “taunting,” yet we see other players do way worse nearly every game with no calls. It might have been the weakest technical in the history of the NBA, but unfortunately is becoming a much more regular occurrence.

A little taunting just ramps up the intensity of the game and is completely harmless in the grand scheme of things. We don’t need to see guys jawing at each other after every play, but can we cut out these technical fouls for things that wouldn’t even get a second glance on the playground?

There are also way too many flagrant fouls called in the NBA now. I get that they want to protect players from injuries, and no one is suggesting we bring back some of the clotheslines and dirty plays we saw in the 80’s and 90’s, but most of what used to be called “playoff fouls” are now flagrant in the NBA.

It has sucked some of the life out of the game when you can’t foul a guy to stop him from having an open lay-up in the playoffs or even make eye contact with your opponent without getting T’d up for taunting.

I don’t think it’s the players who are “soft,” as guys have always whined to the refs, flopped and tried to get calls, the difference is that now every minor infraction is a flagrant or technical foul, which has definitely hurt playoff intensity.