When asked how Antetokounmpo would fare in older eras, the Hall-of-Fame Bad Boy, said he would "absolutely" be an MVP caliber player.
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One of the more nauseating side effects of giving former athletes prime speaking platforms is having to listen to them spew their “back in my day” garbage. Old NBA heads are the worst. There are certainly worthwhile, compare-and-contrast conversations to be had about different eras. But if you’re one of these guys who try to claim the likes of LeBron James or Stephen Curry or Kevin Durant couldn’t have hacked it in the big bad 1980s and ’90s, please, for everyone’s sake, just put down the microphone. Half the dudes in the ’80s had trouble dribbling with their off hand.
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The latest utterly asinine old-head slight on today’s stars comes to us courtesy of Charles Oakley, who recently said on the “No Pump Fakes” podcast that 6-foot-11, 250-pound, two-time-MVP, NBA-champion and absolute freak-of-an-athlete Giannis Antetokounmpo “wouldn’t have been a force back in the day” and, in fact, would have “come off the bench.”
“He wouldn’t have been a force back in the day,” Oakley stated with astonishing audacity. “He would have struggled because they would make him shoot jump shots. He wouldn’t be doing no [Eurostep] to the basket and just get a layup. Somebody’s gonna knock his head off. … I’m glad he’s doing what he’s doing now, but he definitely wouldn’t have … he’d come off the bench back in the day.”
Being that Oakley was a starter in the prime of his career, what he’s saying, effectively, is that he was a better player than a two-time MVP who apparently wouldn’t have been able to crack the first five. Think about that madness.
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When asked how Antetokounmpo would fare in older eras, the Hall-of-Fame Bad Boy, in between giving Giannis — whom he called a modern-day pre-injury Ralph Sampson who would “absolutely” be an MVP caliber player in any era — his due credit, took the time to properly and necessarily eviscerate Oakley.
“Giannis [is] going around Oakley. Giannis [is] going around all of them. He’s dunking on them,” Thomas said. “He’s bigger. He’s faster. He’s stronger. You can talk all that stuff because you don’t play no more. You can talk all that stuff because you’ve got gray hair, and you’re sitting on the sidelines, smoking cigars about what you used to do. That dude would dog you every single time y’all stepped on the court.
“Now, you may hit him hard,” Thomas continued. “OK, all right. After you hit him hard, you ain’t got no game. You ain’t got no game.
“… All y’all stop it with: ‘He wouldn’t dominate in the [1980s].’ We ain’t never seen no dude like this come into our league,” Thomas concluded. “And give him his props, give him his credit. He would dog anybody in the ’80s, ’90s, 2000s and 3020 when we get there.”
