I have no knowledge of NBA of the 90s, but I hate it that players often fear to drive to the lane an account of hard fouls. I can't help but think that this is not what sports should be about. It also makes offense less entertaining, and offense is why most fans, including myself, watch basketball
Most people who watch basketball in the United States have likely played basketball in either school, watched a pickup game somewhere, or have at least a fundamental understanding of the sport. So when you watch NBA players like James Harden get to the line 10+ times a game on someone grazing him with their underarm hair, it really gets annoying because you'd never see that anywhere other than the NBA.
What Jeff van Gundy and others are really harping on about is that the NBA needs rule reform to clarify what is a foul and what isn't and to further bring those rules closer to what most would consider a fairer form of basketball.
For instance, we know the offensive players can't jump into the defender's space simply to initiate contact; Kobe used to do this 10 years ago and there were subsequent rule clarifications handed down by the owners to prevent it. However, in recent memory, it seems the refs have tended to allow this if the ball-handler decides to simply run into a defender who is backing up.
Furthermore, to
@Lord Mar 's point, the end of the 1990's saw the end of the hand check on perimeter players. This made defending the perimeter almost impossible to do 1-on-1, which indeed made the game faster and more perimeter oriented. This was of course by design, and while most folks prefer the modern game, they don't necessarily agree with how the rules are enforced.
The reason is because, in essence, the NBA has always been, for most of it's history, a very physical game as is basketball itself. However, that trend has been changing over the last 15 years and that physicality has virtually been removed from the sport.
It isn't that the game should be rough with people getting hurt, but, a defender should be afforded the ability to guard his opponent fairly. And in today's NBA, for marketing purposes only, the rules allow many players to exploit the opposing teams defenses simply by exploiting the unfair enforcement of the rules (again, see James Harden).
