Detroit Pistons: Is Gilbert Arenas right about Bill Laimbeer?

If there is one thing that NBA fans will never get tired of debating, it’s whether players from the 80’s and 90’s could play in today’s game and vice versa, and the Detroit Pistons are usually at the center of the debate.

Many young fans think the old players aren’t athletic and skilled enough to hang in the modern game and old heads think today’s players are too soft for the old school NBA.

I’m an old head myself and find these debates to be tedious at best, as I loved both eras and you can find ample support for either argument. The truth is that the game has changed so much that it is hard to compare, but I am pretty sure LeBron James would have been great in the “physical” 80’s and that players like Isiah Thomas would be still be great in today’s game.

The Detroit Pistons almost always get mentioned, as many modern fans see them as symbolic of the physical (and dirty) style of play the late 80’s and early 90’s are now known for. But people who didn’t actually watch the team play and just go by Youtube videos miss that these “Bad Boy” Pistons were actually very skilled and scored a ton of points to go along with their elite defense.

No, they didn’t shoot as many 3-point shots, but just about every one on the team could hit a mid-range jumper, which is more than you can say for a lot of teams now.

It wasn’t just all hard fouls and hand checks, which is why I have argued that the 1988-89 Pistons were a top-5 team all time.

Gilbert Arenas recently restarted this debate (cheers!) on his No Chill show, and of course, had to drag the Detroit Pistons through the mud once again to make his point.

Detroit Pistons: Gilbert Arenas talks nonsense about Bill Laimbeer

Arenas started this segment by saying that players from the 80’s could never hang with players from the later eras, using Bill Laimbeer of an example of a player who wouldn’t be able to play in the modern NBA:

https://twitter.com/fuboSports/status/1628115302906007560

If you only watch YouTube videos, then sure, Bill Laimbeer was just a goon mostly known for fouling Larry Bird a lot.

But if you actually watched his career, you’d know that Laimbeer was the prototype for the modern stretch-five, was a great shooter and would arguably be even more valuable now as a big man who could knock down shots.

The 3-pointer was barely part of the game in Laimbeer’s day, and he never averaged more than two attempts from long range per game, but he still knocked down over 200 of them in his career, which was the record for centers before the game changed to involve a lot more 3-point shots.

That number is now dwarfed by guys like Karl-Anthony Towns, who attempted more in one season than Laimbeer made in his career, which shows just how much the game has changed.

But Laimbeer wasn’t just some goon out there. This guy was a four-time All-Star who once averaged 17.5 points, 12.4 rebounds and 1.9 assists in a season while shooting over 50 percent from the floor on almost exclusively jump shots.

He may be known for his hard fouls by YouTube historians, but he was a quality defender who could switch all over the floor and averaged a block per game for his career. He defended all of the best big men from his era, which happened to be the heyday of centers.

He was also a good passer and could shoot the lights out on any given night.

His shooting would be more of a weapon now, as we’ve seen with guys like Brook Lopez, who went from a traditional big to one that lives outside of the 3-point line on offense.

There were much better examples of guys from the 80’s that he could have used (Kurt Rambis comes to mind), even other guys on the Detroit Pistons like Rick Mahorn.

Bil Laimbeer is now underrated for what he did in his career and his skill set would translate to the modern game even without the ability to clothesline a guy at the rim.