But who would you rather see, LeBron, Kobe, and Wade. Or Magic, Jordan, and Barkley. I'll take the 90's. No dominant centers today. Well, very few. What happened to the Patrick Ewing's, The Hakeeem's, The David Robinsons, yes a few good swingmen and scorers today. Those players taught the world how to play basketball in 92', we've regretted it ever since. We cant even win a gold medal now. "Today's dominant centers" are just big muscualar guys who are too strong for everyone(Dwight). 'Nique was a far better in game dunker than anyone today. So to say more athleticism today, is not entirely true. Jordan would light up anybody today, on both ends. Magic....what can i say? He was MAGIC. Bird, wow, skinny white boy, with no strength or speed, but was still better than any player you wanna name today. Stockton, a better passer than anyone(idk about Nash). What proof do you have that there is more talent today? Also Talent depth.

I agree that the talent level is higher today, but i also got to say that todays league can not compete with the late 80's-90's as far as producing legends. Barkley,Malone,Drexler,Robinson,Ewing,Oneal,Hakeem,Miller,Isaiah,Bird,Magic,Wilkins,Mutombo,Mourning ,KJ,Stockton,Hardaway,andJordan are just better than Bryant,Duncan,KG,Yao,T-mac,Carter,Kidd,Nash,Howard,and Amare.I attribute todays phenoms lack of maturity to the inundation of the league with high school talent. I thought the early 2000's were the weakest the league has been in my lifetime of watching the NBA. To prove my point the 76ers were in the finals with only AI and they beat the bucks who had ALLen,Cassel,and Big-dog to get their.Allen,Cassel,and big dog are good but would hardly get into the playoffs today or in the past. The league is rapidly getting tougher and harder to compete as the late 90's picks are now on top of their game,and we are getting better ready players coming out of the draft.

ya ia gree with the hunger to be the best and to attain a championship...the dollor has taken over sports now its now mainly about money and not glory. And yes i also agree with the fact about waitng a couple of years instead of going from high school...casue think about it...Lebron and kobe would have teared up college ball and they would have gotten ALOT more experience by the time they entered the rookie season they would probobly be scoring like 25-30 ppg in their rookie season.

they have played long enough to know that they wont be replacing many of the aforementioned players.

its way to hard to compare these guys...a lot of people will say today's athletes are much stronger and faster...but who's to say mj wouldn't school kobe or vice versa if they are in they're prime....it's just like the discussion about baseball....would today's baseball players be as good as guys like ruth or gehrig or williams if they didn't use hgh .....unless we can put player in a time machine i guess we'll never know...also there are so many more international players in the nba then ever...whos' to say that there wasn't somebody better then bird or jordan or magic playing overseas that we never heard of..

And mikealsky, if you notice, the headline says "diminished in the NBA". Not overseas.