Miami Heat's Jimmy Butler Wants NBA To Revert To Physical Days

Butler says he wants the league to have more contact like the 1980s and 1990s

Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler is among today's NBA players who feel the league has been reduced to being too "soft" or "weak." 

Which is why Butler thinks the league needs to return to the old days of physical basketball in the 1980s and `90s. In a recent interview with Complex Sports.

Butler said "the game has changed in a lot of ways." 

“They’re not letting you get into no brawls no more," Butler said in the interview. "Nobody’s going to let you do that. I wish that they would let us do that a little bit if I’m being honest." 

Butler is not trying to insinuate a more violent game. He is advocating for more leniency when it comes to aggressive play. Butler prefers physicality, which is less common because of stricter rules.  Players nowadays receive technical fouls for plays that would have been acceptable in the past. 

Butler believes that the players still have that old-school passion and fight, but the NBA has restricted them from pursuing it.

"I really do think [rivalries are] still there," Butler said. "The game has just changed. It’s not as much banging and knocking people to the ground anymore. You can’t do it like that, or you get a Flagrant 1, Flagrant 2, a tech, or something. I wish it would go back to that time.”

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Jayden Armant is a contributor to Inside The Heat. He is a student at Howard University. He can be reached at jayden.armant@bison.howard.edu or follow him on Twitter @jaydenarmant