Phil Jackson

These guys were proficient at the game and what they did.

And the era that they played in didn't have the same amount of high percentage shooting or even the access to the quality of material.

I mean, they played in

gyms that were hockey arenas and were converted and you know basically were still just coming out of the cage area when you know players played in cages and local churches and ethnic groups had their own teams and there were barnstormers that went around like the original Celtics and you know the various people that played that were predecessors

of the NBA era.

So those are some of the things that we wanted to get across.

Some of these old timers that were really influential in the game having to take a back seat because history has overlooked them.

There were talented big men, but there weren't the numbers that there are today.

Their size was limited, and obviously the court was limiting because of its depth and the actual lane size and the variety of rules that have changed the game, that have made it accessible to the modern player.

So that's why it's hard to put a judgment on a modern player versus...

You know, somebody from an era like Oscar Robertson or Jerry West or people from the 60s and late 50s and 60s, Elgin Baylor.

that everybody knows talent-wise they could have been playing the game today.

We didn't care.

We really didn't care.

Right.

That's kind of maybe our brusque nature, but...

The idea that this game is a competition that's played in narrow parameters and has used television to make it a spectacle has grown the game to great proportions where it's become an international game.

And particularly, the three-point shot has brought another sense of this game in

into play where the idea of shooting a layup or shooting a close shot is not valued as much as shooting a 25-foot shot, which has a much lower percentage because obviously there's a point differential.

So the idea is take advantage of this, and it has become the overwhelming feature in the NBA game today.