It's the style of offense that is boring. The 80's also had the 3-point line, but it was used sparingly. The offenses focused on players moving, the ball moving via the pass and not the dribble and many of the sets went thru the post.
Now, there is very little back-to-the-basket scoring and offenses are started and run by the dribble. Most sets start with a ball screen and the possession is played on the edge of a foul or a turnover. There are two dominant shots - the 3-pointer and the dunk.
Agreed. I hate it. The amount of time the ball spends 25 feet from the basket, the over-dribbling, the offense revolving around dribble penetration all the time.
It is the hand-checking rule changes.
I find it ugly to watch. I am watching less and less NBA over last few years.
Everybody's got their own taste; I get the appeal of great post play and passing. But I didn't like the handcheck era. Too many great players being neutralized by much less skilled players who'd grab and hold them. The 1990s New York Knicks were probably the most unwatchable team in my lifetime. Terrible, ugly basketball. I don't want to watch, say, Stanley Johnson turn Kyrie into an ordinary player by letting him deliver a forearm every time Kyrie tries crossing him up. That's not better basketball.
It wasn't only hand check that ruined the 1990s. It was probably even worse that people figured out the defensive help rules made interior defense impossible against really huge bigs, which slowed the game to a crawl. Dump the ball into the post, have four players watch the big pound, pound, pound the ball until he got close enough for a hook shot or a dunk. Yawn. It slowed the game way, way down. In the mid-1980s, when the league still had a decent balance between inside and outside play, the league average was about 100 possessions/game. In the mid-1990s the game slowed to about 90 possessions/game.
I'd like to see the interior defense rules tightened a little to help the big guys score more efficiently, but basically the product seems pretty good to me. Possibly a bigger court or moving the line back 6 inches. But the spacing and pace of the game makes for a lot of variability in player and team styles.