Picture yourself in a random conversation in a bar, and somebody says that Michael Jordan was the greatest player ever. Heads nod. At some point, someone slams down his pint, points his finger, and starts pontificating about how Jordan would score 50 in today's NBA because back when he played, the hand-checking rules allowed defenders to get away with murder.

Now imagine you are LeBron James, listening to this conversation. Exactly how far back into your head do your eyeballs go? Are we talking "sarcastic-whatever-morons" eye roll, or full on "exorcist-complete-lack-of-retinas"?

Cause, I dunno, to me...I'm not sure how you could "hand check" any more than this. I watched a lot of basketball in the 90s, and I'm pretty sure it was never worse than that. Throughout the history of the NBA, the rulebook is thrown out the window at crunch time. This was true in the 90s, and this is true today. LeBron (or for that matter, Durant, or James, or Harden, or Curry) have to put up with a lot of the same types of hand-checking that Jordan had to suffer through.

The problem is that the "hand checking" rule changes addressed a very particular form of defense and how the defender was allowed to put their hand on a very specific location on the defender. But what folks now euphemistically call "hand-checking", when what they really mean is "poking, holding, grabbing, pinching, choking, arm pinning, leg sweeping, or tying up in kryptonite chains," well...that shit was never legal, not now, and not in Jordan's time either.

Unless, of course, it's under two minutes to go in a tight game....then, well, the refs just pretty much throw away the rule book entirely. At that point, the game is officiated according to the following criteria:

"If I blow this whistle, will I become (in)famous like the ref that Billy Crystal played in Forget Paris?"

YES: "Let the players play!" This is what my mom says any time any ref ever blows a whistle, for any reason. Mom has a very strict "No blood, no foul!" motto. In fact, blood might not be enough. Unless you can audibly hear the crunch of broken bones, she doesn't think that refs should "interfere" with the game.

NO: "Ok, as invisible as I want to be right now, I guess I can't really ignore that one."

And frankly, I consider this a problem. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but allowing referees to call games based on their judgment, rather than according to strict adherence to rules is a little too "WWE" for me. I think that a foul is a foul is a foul. A travel is a travel. A moving screen is a moving screen. Referees in the NBA are wildly inconsistent about enforcing these rules during normal conditions, and get very lax about it during end-of-game situations, and players are not fools. They will take advantage of the referees' reluctance to blow whistles. This leads to rough, escalating physical play in the closing minutes.

Which, you know, should be terrifying to the NBA. Because when things get rough, players get hurt. And unlike in the WWE, the injuries aren't faked. (Editor's note. Many of the injuries in the WWE aren't faked either if we want to get pedantic)