This offseason, the NBA officially announced that it will severely crack down on scoring behaviors such as "cheating fouls" and "touching porcelain".
Sure enough, once the new policy was introduced, the number of free throws by the stars was greatly reduced, the physical confrontation rose sharply, and conflicts between players were not uncommon, and many fans shouted that the former NBA was back.
So what do fans call the "former NBA"?
Don't go back to the last century, back to the 2009 Western Conference Finals, Anthony and Kobe Bryant, who are at their peak, will give you the answer.
To this day, guago recalls the western finals that year, and the first thing he remembers is still the words that Kobe Bryant said to him before the G1 game: The real war has begun!
Gua Ge grinned and responded: "Then let him start, I like this."
Six games in the series, the two sides truly achieved "Body to Body, be a man".
Kobe Bryant's trash talk didn't stop, and one of his favorite words was: Wait until the fourth quarter to see, I will let you get no points.
At the same time, the elbows on the hand have not stopped, that round of the series, Kobe Bryant did everything to make a full range of physical blows to Guago, shoulders, arms, elbows, back, thighs, calves, Kobe Bryant is eager to be in any part of the body, and Guago to divide the victory and defeat.
And how does Anthony see Kobe's actions?
He said this: Kobe wants to fight me physically, my idea is, then fight, I am taller than him, so I can eat him hard. He elbowed me, I elbowed him, and he would laugh and taunt me: That's it? That's it? I also responded to him with a smile: Then anger me, let's see how it turns out.
Two men who love physical confrontation meet in the Western Showdown, and coincidentally, the referee also acquiesced to the scale of the confrontation between them: as long as there is no killing and no blood, you two will go to trouble, we want to see how far you can make trouble.
In the end, the series won and lost with the Lakers 4:2 Nuggets,
In this round of the series, Kobe Bryant showed a stronger superstar color: 34 points, 5.8 rebounds, 5.8 assists and 48.1% shooting rate; Guago also under The test of Kobe, with the strength to make this paranoid man recognize him, the average shot: 27.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 40.7% shooting rate.
Some people say that the Western Conference Finals that year were more intense than the finals.
And gave evidence: in the Western Conference Finals, the Lakers and the Nuggets fought six games, and the score was extremely close; in the Finals against the Magic, Kobe Bryant ended the opponent with only five games, and the score was extremely different.
Of course, these are all afterwords, more than a decade later, no one has talked about "what would happen if it was the Nuggets who entered the Finals at that time", people only remember the six hand-to-hand combat that really happened.
That was the deepest memory of a generation of fans for physical confrontation.