Detroit Pistons: Barkley thinks Curry couldn’t handle the Bad Boys

One of the favorite pastimes of NBA fans is to compare players from different eras, and the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons of the 80’s are often used in these comparisons.

NBA basketball from that era was obviously more physical, but fans often act like the sport was closer to professional wrestling than modern basketball.

The Bad Boys often get reduced to “hard fouls” and “dirty play” while people ignore that they were also one of the highest-scoring teams in the league and had some of the most skilled players to ever play the game.

On the flip side, old-school fans act like modern players are a bunch of softies who would never be able to hack it in the old days, which is also patently absurd in so many ways.

Great players are great players and most of the best from the 80’s and 90’s would be just fine in the current era of offense and the best modern players could have adjusted to a more physical game.

But don’t tell that to Charles Barkley.

Detroit Pistons: Barkley thinks Curry couldn’t handle the Bad Boys

On a recent episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast, Charles Barkley gave his opinion on whether a guy like Stephen Curry would have been able to play in his era.

Here is the specific clip of him talking about the Pistons.

While I appreciate Barkley’s point of view and the fact that he is (sort of) giving props to the Detroit Pistons, I do get sick of them ALWAYS being the example of physical, dirty play, as if most of the NBA wasn’t playing the same way.

Does anyone remember the Knicks? The Heat? Michael Jordan and his precious Bulls? Everyone was hand-checking, throwing elbows and using exuberant fouls to stop easy buckets, things that have all been removed from the modern game. But the Bad Boys have become the avatar for that style in that era. So be it, but plenty of guys like Barkley threw punches as well.

While I do agree that Curry might have had a harder time staying healthy (shoes were worse, medical care and preventative training weren’t as developed as now), I still think he would have thrived in that era as well.

Great players adjust and the greatest make the league adjust to them, which is exactly what Stephen Curry has done to the NBA. Isiah Thomas was even smaller than Curry and he was able to handle the physicality, and if Curry had grown up playing that style of game, he could have too.

If anything, Curry would have been undone by crappy shoes and team doctors that advised players to “rub some dirt on it” but his shooting plays in any era, even one with diabolical Bad Boys in it.