Doc Rivers knew when his time was running out as a player.
"The first year, they took my hand check away," Rivers recalled. "The next year, they took our forearm away. And then, I retired. I was done. I was like, 'I've got to move my feet? I quit. This is no fun anymore.'"
For 13 seasons, Rivers made a very good living in the NBA as one of the league's best on-ball defenders. Tall (6-foot-4) and strong, able to use his hands to steer opponents away from the basket, able to clip guards moving without the ball from their desired routes around the court. But the style that helped his Hawks teams get to the Playoffs and that put his 1994 New York Knicks team in the Finals is now a relic, consigned to the basement in Pat Riley's head.
You still have to play defense to win NBA championships. But now, you have to do it without fouling.
With the Playoffs underway, the teams that can slow their opponents down without putting them on the free throw line have a decided advantage. But that's much harder than in Rivers' day, when the Knicks would establish how the game would be called in the first five minutes by being as physical as possible, daring referees to call every bump and hold. Most times, the refs would ultimately let a lot of contact go, which is precisely what Riley wanted.
But the league has gradually legislated that kind of defense out of the game.
Since 1990, the NBA has ins uted a series of rules changes to increase the offensive player's flow and make physical play costly. First came increased penalties for flagrant fouls (1990) and fighting (1993), the implementation of the "five points" rule that called for automatic suspensions of players who amassed a certain number of flagrants (1993). Hand checking was eliminated in 1994. Using the forearm to defend players facing the basket went away in 1997.
In 1999, the league eliminated contact by a defender with his hands and forearms both in the backcourt and frontcourt, except on offensive players who caught the ball below the free throw line extended. Defenses were also prohibited from "re-routing" players off the ball. This freed up perimeter players who used screens to get open. Nor were defenders able any more to grab or impede offensive players setting screens. In 2001, the defensive three-second rule eliminated defenders camping out in the lane away from their offensive man to help.
The rules changes did what they were supposed to do -- open up the game. Scoring average has increased from an average 95.6 points per game in the 1997-98 season to this year's 100 per game. Overall field goal percentage has increased from 45.0 percent in '97-'98 to 45.9 percent this season. Three-point percentage has gone up, from .346 11 years ago to .367 this season. And fouls have gone down, from a league average of 1,837 fouls in 1997 to 1,726 this season. The statistical-based Basketball Prospectus wrote at the beginning of this season that the game's pace -- defined as possessions per game -- had increased from its nadir during the lockout season of 1999 (around 88 possessions per game) to around 91 per game in the 2007-08 season.
Free-flowing offense is now the norm, with players able to go almost unen bered anywhere on the court. As such, the game's most dominant individual players and those that are just good at drawing contact have even more of a chance to get to the foul line. So stars like Dwight Howard (the league leader in free throw attempts this season with 849), Dwyane Wade (second, 771) and LeBron James (third, 762) can have an even more outsized impact on games.
"You can't even touch a guy now," says Charlotte coach Larry Brown. "The college game is much more physical than our game. I always tease Michael [Jordan], if he played today, he'd average 50."
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) and kills good post play/post defense.
