"Scottie Pippen, Grant Hill, Toni Kukoc – you had bigger, stronger wings" – LeBron James gives credit to '90s guys who changed the game
"Scottie Pippen, Grant Hill, Toni Kukoc – you had bigger, stronger wings" – LeBron James gives credit to '90s guys who changed the game originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Many retired NBA players do nothing but downplay the value of today's game. They rarely call out someone directly, but between the lines, there's a tone of bitterness toward the league's current pace and space style of play.
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But when the roles are reversed, we mostly hear praise.
Today's players often praise their idols and those they modeled their game after. LeBron James did the same in a conversation with Steve Nash when he touched on the '90s era.
"When I was growing up, I always thought that a shooting guard meant exactly that — a player who's going to shoot the most in the game. At that time, there were at most two players who brought the ball past half-court. When you look at the late '80s or early '90s — let's say the New York Knicks. Mark Jackson brought the ball up, hardly ever John Starks," said James on the Mind the Game podcast.
"Ewing never, after a rebound, pushed the ball in transition. Even when Jackson went to the Indiana Pacers, Reggie almost never brought the ball up on offense," the four-time NBA champion continued.
LeBron on players who changed the gameThe topic of conversation was actually players like Nikola Jokic, who, from the center position, grabs a rebound, leads the fast break and facilitates for teammates.
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King James then spoke about himself as someone who entered the league in 2003 and was viewed strictly as a small forward. After a few games, coach Paul Silas realized what kind of potential LeBron had and slowly started giving him more and more responsibilities.
In the early 2000s, more and more freedom was being given to players who weren't strictly point guards to do a bit of everything on the court. James mentioned the guys who were pioneers of that style of play.
"A point guard is the guy w ho brings the ball up and delivers assists. He practically runs the entire coaching system," he said. "In the '90s, the game slowly started to change. You had players like Grant Hill, Scottie Pippen and Toni Kukoc. You had those bigger, longer wings — point forwards. They were changing the game, but at that time, it was still unknown territory," he continued.
With LeBron's arrival, a new era beganAnd truly, when you look back, it wasn't normal to have players over 6'6" tall grabbing defensi ve rebounds, running down the floor at full speed and dishing out assists for easy points. But because of the players James mentioned, coaches slowly started to change their way of thinking, and a new era practically began in the early 2000s.
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"When I came into the league, you had players like Tracy McGrady and Kobe Bryant who didn't care about anything except going out and busting you. I came in as a forward and started playing point forward and the game started to truly change in the late 2010s. We all know this is a copycat league, and if one team does something successfully, others will try the same thing," the Los Angeles Lakers superstar concluded.
Indeed, Scottie pippen, Grant Hill and Toni Kukoc were avant-garde at the time. Their all-around play on both ends of the floor was something new, and generations like James', who were still developing as players, saw them as role models, taking something from their games to build their own playing sty les.
Seeing one of the greatest, not just basketball players but athletes of all time, speak with such deep respect about the generations before him — despite becoming much more successful than Pippen, Hill and Kukoc — only adds to James' greatness. That's something every young player should do — the same goes for many of the old heads.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
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