The Bulls' 1997-98 documentary The Last Dance hit, ESPN counted how the NBA has changed over the past 20 years.
Michael Jordan earned $33.1 million in annual salary in 1997-98, topping the league. But that season, eight of the top 10 players in the salary were centers.
In the 2019-20 season, none of the league's top 20 players were centers. The top five players are all point guards (Curry, Paul, Westbrook, Wall and Harden). Among the top 20 players, only Blake Griffin and Paul Millsap are two big forwards.
Synergy Sports began counting round types in 2004–05, averaging 18.5 blocks per game in the 2004–05 season and 41.8 this season. He averaged 22.7 low-backs hits per game in 2004–05 and fell to 10.6 this season.
In 2019-20, the Hornets averaged 96.2 rounds per game at the bottom, but that statistic would easily beat the then-number one Celtics (94.9) in the 1997-98 season.
In the 1997-98 season, the best player was a defender who excelled in low back-and-back shots and liked to shoot backs. In the 2019-20 season, only LaMarcus Aldridge is still sticking to this style of play.
During his second triple crown, Jordan's favorite shot was a shot between the elbow zone and the bottom line. It was also the ethos of 1996-98: 26 percent of the league's shots came from this area.
In the 1997–98 season, 34 players made at least 300 shots in this part of the region, and in the 2018–19 season, only Aldridge alone made 332 shots. In the 1997–98 season, Jordan made 869 shots in the lower zone.
James Harden made 1,909 shots last season, and only 29 came from the bottom two-point zone. In the 1997-98 season, the Bulls shot 962 three-point attempts, and Harden shot 1,028 goals alone last season.
In the 1997-98 season, the NBA averaged 40 bottom-line two-pointers per game, falling to 10 in the 2019-20 season.