Dutch Courage

New video: Why do 70s/80s/90s players look "unskilled"? I spent hours on this. Rulebooks, archives, player testimonials. What I found: it's not about skill. It's about rules that were fundamentally different. The evidence: 📌 In the 1980-81 rulebook, your hand had to stay on TOP of the ball. Side = violation. Underneath = violation. The "pocket dribble" that's standard today? Instant turnover. 📌 Allen Iverson's crossover was technically illegal. Bob Ryan (Boston Globe, 1996): "The NBA has instructed referees to monitor Allen Iverson's natural dribble, which is a palming violation." Steve Kerr later admitted: "The league literally looked at it and said, 'What do we do with this?' He was popular and exciting to watch. I think the league sort of realized we don't want to call a carry." 📌 Magic Johnson had coast-to-coast dunks waved off as offensive fouls. Why? In the early 80s, initiating contact going to the rim = offensive foul 90% of the time. You had to go AROUND defenders, not through them. Every Giannis drive you've seen for 10 years? Offensive foul in 1983. 📌 Hand-checking was LEGAL until 2004. Gary Payton: "In my era, all we do is rush up on them, hand check them, knock them off to the side and take the ball away." After the ban: scoring jumped from 93.4 PPG (2003-04) to 97.2 PPG (2004-05). Personal fouls dropped from 25+ per game (1980s) to under 19 today. 📌 The "gather step" didn't exist until 2009. The old rule was "two-count rhythm" – much stricter than today's Step 0 + Step 1 + Step 2 system. 📌 Proof these violations still exist: November 2022, NBA cracked down on carries. Result? 44 violations called in ONE MONTH. The entire 2021-22 season had 43 total. Isiah Thomas said it plainly: "If I dominated then, I would dominate now. Because the rules now favor me. They favor the small guy. Ain't nobody in the lane." The game didn't just evolve. It was ENGINEERED to favor offense through deliberate rule changes. Full breakdown with all sources, statistics, and archived footage: youtu.be/-askiA2kYoE (RT if this changed how you think about basketball history)