Even before TNT NBA analyst Stan Van Gundy made the reference early in Game 2 of the Golden State-Houston series, I had the same thought after watching the Rockets’ Amen Thompson get clobbered by a screen and watching the Warriors’ Draymond Green and the Rockets’ Dillon Brooks grab and clutch and crash to the court.
It’s 1980s and 1990s NBA – reminiscent of the Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat and New York Knicks teams that punished with their physicality and sometimes crossed the line to do so.
And I wondered, with all the supposed complaints about the style of today’s NBA and the idea that players shoot too many 3-pointers: is that the kind of NBA we want to watch?