The Warriors got their asses kicked by the Thunder last night. It was a murder scene. A beatdown. The type of game that the Warriors were accustomed to being on the receiving end of before Steph Curry turned into a glitch in the NBA matrix. But despite the fact that the Dubs trail in the series 2-1 (the last time that happened, they ended up coming back to beat the Cavs for the NBA title), it goes without saying that Steph is still the NBA's current reigning "Best Player Alive." Despite that, all season there's been talk that Steph, and by extension the Warriors, would have struggled in the NBA of the '90s. One reason for that is that the game is less physical these days. Take, for instance, this opinion from former NBA guard Eldridge Recasner:

Now, it's easy to mock this opinion, as many NBA writers did, but I say we give Eldridge the benefit of the doubt for a moment and consider some reasons why Steph might have struggled in the NBA in the ’90s.

The aforementioned Karl Malone elbow probably would have done extreme damage to young Steph. ’90s NBA offenses didn't put an emphasis on the three-pointer, which would have marginalized Steph's best skill. Hand-checking being legal definitely would have hurt Steph's game. Playing in the league with Dell Curry might have been too weird for him and caused him to get too in his head to succeed. The father-son relationship is a complicated one at any age. It probably would have been hard for Steph to play NBA-level basketball when he was only 5 years old. Games would probably start after his bedtime, which would be a problem. As we've learned, rest is so important to NBA success. A sleepy Steph would have stood no chance at taking a charge from Isiah Thomas. Locker rooms would probably be a little too raunchy for a 5-year-old. He'd be too scandalized by all the cursing to focus on being a competitor, which would allow Dennis Rodman to block almost all of his shots. The cheerleaders would be a distraction for a kid deathly afraid of getting cooties, so Gary Payton could probably take him to the hole. Balancing a full kindergarten schedule with the travel realities of the National Basketball Association would be too much for anybody. His coloring would suffer, but so would his ability to check Reggie Miller coming off a screen. Any NBA team that signed him would be a laughingstock, seeing as he was a small child, and carrying that kind of pressure to prove people wrong would be too much for most 12-year-olds, let alone a kid who still rides a bike with training wheels. The first time baby Steph put a Barney album on the locker-room speakers, Michael Jordan would have thrown a lit cigar at him.

So I suppose all those old NBA guys are right. As good as Steph is now, he would have been worse if he had played in the NBA in the ’90s.