Jalen Rose compared today’s NBA with the league from more than 20 years ago after Mark Jackson’s comments that players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant had a different mindset. The former NBA player made a comparison between LeBron James and Karl Malone, who are both of the same height and weight but are playing entirely different positions.
“Two players embodied that for me that I played against to show the difference in the eras. They’re both similar if you look at their height and their weight. The two players are Karl Malone and LeBron James. They’re listed the same. Karl Malone had skills for a big man. LeBron James has skills for a guard.
Jalen Rose
“And what ends up happening in today’s game is you use terms like freedom of movement, pace and space. So instead of players driving basketball to the hoop and there’s more grappling involved, now people are round the three-point line. You have the Houston Rockets, Greeny, taking more threes than twos. And the league’s leading scorer James Harden plays on a team that starts PJ Tucker, who can play physical in any era, at 6’5″ starting as center in today’s game.”
Rose also said that today’s elite players have that same killer instinct and mind state of great players from the past. But things are different when the players earn less play not so important roles. Sometimes it can feel that players play because they have a skill, not because they have a love for the game, he concluded.
