What Did I Just Witness...

a few days ago during the Pacers Knicks matchup I saw something that I have never seen before and it completely blew my mind nice bounce pass Jackson fouled and we've got a pigeon as the ball is stuck by oh toping oh come I don't know if we get a replay top him just incredible hops that loud left I mean come on now did y'all just see that it happened quick and if you weren't paying close attention during this broadcast you could have easily missed it but Obi toppen just casually dislodged the ball at the top

of the backboard after the game I had to go and find this clip and rewatch it a few times to make sure I wasn't tripping and sure enough I was not Obie toppen just touched the top of the backboard not that long ago a feat like this was stuff of Legend we used to hear stories about crazy athletic players from the past being able to pull this off but there was never any video evidence or proof so we just had to take their word for it regardless of how unbelievable it sounded and it always sounded

unbelievable something that used to be claimed as a feat of superhuman athleticism and Obi toppen just jogged up and did it like it was nothing and almost as crazy as the jump itself is the fact that no one even batted an eye it didn't really get much of a reaction no one talked about it after hardly anyone even made note of it it kind of just came and went I guess this is just normal now which got me thinking are NBA players today better athletes now than ever before it's obvious by now that the skill

level around the league is at an all-time high there's no debate there but are NBA players more athletic than players of the past can they actually jump higher and run faster than players that came before them that seems to be the General consensus right now and it's definitely what my eyes are seeing but according to the data this may not be the case today's video is sponsored by DraftKings football season is here and my partners at DraftKings are ready to make your Sundays even better right now all new customers who bet just $5 will instantly

get $200 in bonus bets that's right receive $2 $100 in bonus bets for placing any $5 wager and you can stay in on the action and use your $200 in bonus bets to bet anytime touchdowns on DraftKings and if sports betting is not yet available in your state you can still join in on the action with draft King's daily fantasy and have a shot to win cash prizes download the draftking Sportsbook app now new customers use my promo code Jimmy highroller and get $200 in bonus bets for placing any $5 wager that's promo Cod Jimmy

High Roller only at draftking Sportsbook with time inevitably comes Evolution you see it everywhere you look however the one area in life where this has been up for debate is the NBA fans of past erors claiming the league has regressed and is somehow now in a worse State than it was decades ago but after some light-hearted and completely rational and levelheaded discussions it seems most fans generally agree that the league is in fact better now than it was in the past shooting is better scoring is more efficient players are more skilled but does this same

logic apply to the actual physical abilities of players are today's NBA players better athletes than their predecessors well according to the comment section of any past players highlight real they sure are claims that today's players are not just more skilled but they are far superior athletes and as bias and nearsighted as this may sound when watching these games today it's becoming hard to deny while watching this year's pre season it felt like what was once a jaw-dropping feet of athleticism has now become a fairly regular occurrence like what is this Christian Brown a player who

is not even regarded as a high flyer taking off in traffic head at The Rim gets stuffed by hartenstein and they're Back Off to the Races like nothing even happened here's a play by Brandon Miller a skill guy why is he catching a body like Prime Blake Griffin Zack Edy is 74 300 lb and the man is catching lobs like he's an athletic stretch four this is the same guy who coming into the draft was described as a plotter slow unathletic this guy whose strengths were noted as everything but his athleticism who's catching the ball

from the stratosphere 75 alien leaning into a double pump what am I watching this block by Malik monk this is insane somewhere there's a career defensive mixtape of Michael Jordan doing the same exact block nowadays this is just another Tuesday in the NBA none of these plays from a week's worth of preseason games will make anyone's career highlight tape they're not really noteworthy in today's game in fact despite their incredible physical tools some of these players aren't even on an NBA team at the moment so are NBA players today athletically Superior to players of the

past according to years worth of data across not just basketball but many sports the answer time and time again is No oh anatomical and physical Evolution takes far longer than just a few decades most measurable metrics suggest that there's little to no improvement on athleticism of athletes today versus athletes 20 or 30 years ago and most of what little Improvement has been made can usually be attributed to better training better nutrition and better equipment but when it comes to the NBA specifically what exactly does the data say and how much athletic progression has there been

over the last 20 or 30 years if any at all here is a graph of the average vertical leap of every NBA drafty since 2000 unfortunately there isn't any publicly available data on draft classes before 2000 but still this is a quarter Century worth of data and throughout the last 25 years and nearly 1,500 players there has been a slight increase in leaping ability of players around the league in 25 years the average vertical leap in the NBA has increased by about 3 in or about 8% higher than was 25 years ago which isn't much

but it is notable considering the sample size however 3 in of Leaping ability does not explain the elevation in gameplay and acrobatics that we see in the NBA today compared to where it was nearly three decades ago in fact an 8% increase around the league could be attributed to Simply the optimization of Athletics rather than the athletes themselves as previously mentioned equipment training and nutrition what is interesting though is that 25 years ago there was a distinct separation in explosiveness from position to position different skill sets for different roles on the court but in recent

years the test results across all positions have converged perimeter players on average indistinguishable from one another and big men just slightly behind one side effect of a positionist league is the merging of skills regardless of size but inadvertently this has also caused the merging of actual physical abilities regardless of size and alleged position the the NBA Combine also conducts an agility drill where players are tested on their lateral quickness and Mobility how fast can you cover space while cutting and changing direction and in this metric players have also gotten slightly more athletic over the last

25 years and when I say slightly I mean by just 3% or 3 seconds better since 2000 an average that has gotten consistently better over the years but by a negligible amount not nearly enough of a discrepancy to make any conclusions about better athletes in the NBA today than even 25 years ago the combine's Sprint drill is as simple as it sounds Sprint 3ars of the Court as fast as you can and in this test NBA players have again not really changed at all since 2000 no measurable progress and Flatout speed across the NBA over

the last 25 years which means across three different tests of athletic ability conducted by over a th000 NBA players over the course of nearly three decades the NBA is somewhere between 3 to 8% more athletic than it previously was which is a long shot from the claims of superior athleticism but possibly the most definitive answer to this question comes from a company that specializes in this exact field in 2023 Ross Anderson of the Atlantic wrote a piece exploring the idea of athleticism in the NBA and if the data backs up what our eyes are seeing

that players today are better athletes than players of the past and within his investigation he got in touch with P3 a company that specializes in optimizing the performance of athletes at P3 they use state-of-the-art technology to gather real-time data on athletes and then conduct an analysis to find areas in which they can improve athletically and in the process they have amassed some of the most comprehensive data sets on these athletes and their physical capabilities such as raw Force production power and overall movement and speed now according to P3 2/3 of NBA players who suited up

last season have worked out at their facility which gives P3 incredibly detailed data on the majority of players around the league and according to the data today's average NBA athlete is 4 to 7% better than the average NBA athlete from more than 10 years ago which lines up with the data that we gathered from the NBA Combine and it gives us great evidence that NBA players today even if it isn't much are better athletes than the players of the past but Marcus Elliot founder and director of P3 says this progress is a matter of performance

optimization not necessarily an evolution of the athletes themselves stating that when he began evaluating players about 15 years ago many were operating at only 75 to 80% of their potential athleticism whereas today players are operating at closer to 90% of their potential but the extra 5 to 10% boost in athleticism over the course of a couple decades decades doesn't explain what we're actually seeing on the court and how it appears like players of today are far superior athletes than players of yesterday so if NBA players have statistically only gotten marginally more explosive and agile over

the last few decades and all of the data says there isn't much evidence to prove otherwise how do we explain the leap in physical abilities from today's players that we are actually seeing well in order to answer this question we need to redefine how we perceive and measure athleticism despite the years that have passed Michael Jordan and the way he played remains an outlier in the timeline of basketball where many players of the past have a game that aesthetically Isn't So favorable through the lens of 2024 Michael's acrobatics are to this day a spectacle and

that is a perk exclusive to a man that was arguably the best athlete in the history of the league but have you ever seen MJ attempt an East Bay [Applause] I like that well it's kind of weird this footage is from 1989 during Michael's athletic Peak he's got hands the size of baseball Ms 6' 6 in tall his vert is well over 40 in and yet he struggled to throw down a dunk that has become fairly routine in the NBA today but Michael had all of the physical tools to easily pull off an East Bay

and I have absolutely no doubt that he could after all this is just one missed attempt but this clip demonstrates that maybe it's not the athleticism that has gotten better over the years but rather the way players use their athleticism this is Orlando Woolridge and he was the first player to pull off an East Bay in the NBA dunk contest back in 1984 of course this dunk existed before 1984 but it wasn't something players would regularly attempt let alone pull off even for the League's highest Flyers but over time the dunk became more popular almost

like a measuring stick of elite jumping ability fast forward 15 years and a simple Eastbay would get you tens across the board in the NBA dunk contest in the late '90s and early 2000s but today this dunk hardly even turns heads players are doing this in games high school players who aren't nearly as explosive as a prime MJ are doing this dunk not because they are jumping higher or are more agile than their predecessors but because players today have been taught and trained on how to maximize optimize and use their physical tools to a far

greater extent than players of the past often times players of the past possessed all of the explosiveness and Agility to pull off what we see in the league today they just didn't know how to use it at least not like today's athletes do and according to countless studies regarding this topic this is the prevailing Theory utilization and optimization of pre-existing physical abilities the highlights and jaw-dropping Feats of athleticism that we see far more often from players today aren't a result of them being more athletic but rather having the skills and ability abilities to do more

with their athleticism the extra 5 to 10% of measurable Improvement of athletic ability may explain some of this but the evolution of specialized training and skill is the driving force here a player in the 9s may have had all the physical tools to slice up a defense cut through the lane and put together a clip for their highlight reel but without the skills to keep the ball in front of them along the way those physical tools are essentially watered down to a slower less explosive alternative Rising above a Defender for a poster is a feat

of athleticism but so is the combo a player put together to break their Defender and get to the rim in the first place without the skills to initiate the Highlight there is no highlight and as the skill level around the league has jumped dramatically over time so have all of the displays of athletic ability big men of the past may have had the vertical leap to go and catch a lob 12T in the air but without the body control play style or constant High pick and roll action that we see today they never get the

opportunity to put this athleticism on display for example Giannis an de kmo is a freak of nature and we know this because every other possession he comes barreling down the lane and shows off his incredible speed vert and strength his athleticism is always on full display but if Giannis played back in 1995 How likely is it that he gets relegated to the low post restricted to hook shots and having his back to the basket on most possessions if he isn't granted the opportunity to learn how to handle the ball and be a scoring threat from

outside and Float around the perimeter how often would he get a full head of steem to attack the basket and show off his physical tools similar to Giannis David Robinson was a freak of nature but outside of the occasional fast break or lob to the rim there wasn't nearly as many opportunities for fans to witness the full extent of his freakish abilities even play style itself can play a deceptive role on how we view athleticism of certain players in the 2008 NBA Combine Russell Westbrook recorded a Max vertical leap of 36.5 in not nearly as

high as you would expect from seemingly one of the most explosive athletes in NBA history 10 years later Grayson Allen a far cry from what you would consider to be an elite jumper recorded a Max vert of 40.5 in in fact Grayson Allen tested better than Westbrook in every single drill in the combine and even knowing this there isn't a soul on Earth who would say he is a better athlete than Westbrook was because while Westbrook was playing Above the Rim Grayson Allen was taking spot up threes if I were to ask you who was

the most explosive athlete between Stephen Curry and Blake Griffin the answer would be painfully obvious except most fans would get it wrong because in the 2009 combine their results were virtually identical Blake was actually more agile than Steph in the agility drill and Steph somehow clocked the same Max vert as Blake did athleticism and how we as fans identify it can be a very misleading thing it all depends on how and where you use it when a player in the NBA makes a crazy layup this is often a result of skill opening the door for

athleticism not the other way around knowing how to utilize the angles how to attack a Defender how to move your body and get the best look at a shot these are all skills that have been developed skills that are far beyond the average player of the past and skills that allow players to actually use their athleticism to their full potential and when we watch this it appears to be more athletic than what we saw in the past because it is but not in any quantifiable way that can be measured through a vert test or an

agility drill without the ball in their hands NBA players today are almost indiscernible from players of 25 years ago there's almost no measurable difference between them but give them the ball some space and a play style that emphasizes their abilities and very quickly the gap between what they are able ble to pull off on the court becomes clear as day but this isn't to Discount players of the past there were countless players who would be top tier athletes in any generation and the ones who had the skills to complement their athleticism prove that the NBA

has always been loaded with great athletes however the number of players who were able to reach their full athletic potential without the training technology equipment and knowledge that players of today have was far less leading to a league that appeared to be far less athletic than it is today are NBA players today better athletes than players of the past well technically yeah but not in the way that we have been led to believe NBA players have't evolved athletically they don't jump much higher or run much faster than the players that came before them but with

the benefit of Decades of advancements and how we measure train and improve athletes today's NBA players have optimized their athleticism far more than players of the past they understand their bodies and abilities more and they have been meticulously trained to know exactly how to get the most out of them the extra 5 to 10% of measurable increase in athletic performance may have something to do with the incredible plays we are now spoiled with but many of these athletic Feats can be attributed to a developed skill and compliment play style that is much more difficult to

measure athletically over time NBA players haven't changed much at all but how they use their athleticism that is the evolution [Music]