Name another sport...

Michael Schumacher.

 

It happens in football, argument that players are more protected today to belittle their achievements against those of the greats of the past, even though defensively and tactically teams have only gotten better. Happens in tennis too, some like to bring out how much harder it was with the smaller wooden racquets. So yeah, not so much based on opposition, but playing conditions of the time.

 

That's swell and all, but if the people you're talking to are relying on major count alone to compare eras, then they're pretty dumb. Most of the tour didn't even regularly play the Australian until the late 80s, so it's very easy for guys today to have comparatively inflated major counts. Beyond that, it doesn't even address the fact that simply taking the level of competition as constant across eras is an extremely weighty and often unjustified assumption.

 

Some of it is just the musings of embittered old timers, talking about the good old days. Some of it is that boxing fans get too personally attached to their favorite fighters and hate to see them lose...in no other sport, except now UFC/MMA stuff, are competitors exposed in the way that fighters are. When your hero gets his ass kicked in, it's hard to see and people concoct excuses.
I think each era is a bubble unto itself and comparing eras is usually pointless. Sure, Joe Louis made 20 defenses or something...maybe Mike Tyson would've knocked those guys out even earlier....but we'll never know. Maybe Ali isn't that good, because maybe Foreman and Frazier weren't that good, and maybe in another era they'd have been beaten. It's hard to picture, but we'll never know for sure. There's a futile chicken/egg thing that happens...Fighter A and Fighter B split two close fights...so they must be great! Well, who did Ali ever beat? Frazier. Well who the hell did Frazier beat? Ali.

 

Bills won like 55 games without Jordan in 1994. In 1993 with him, they won 57 games. They lost to the Knicks in the semi-conference in a 7 games series in 1994. The year before they beat the Knicks in 6. A difference, but not a Godly difference.

 

There's no exact quantifiable way, but one can definitely pay attention to things like playing styles, surface variety, and the form of the guys at the very top. I can't think of anyone who would regard the current women's tour as somehow a step up in quality from years past, even in terms of fitness. This certainly should caution against narratives that portray each generation as an improvement over the previous one.

That's fine and all, but what you're arguing for here then is that no comparison can ever really be made across eras, a distinctly different view than the idea that we can count up majors for overall tennis rankings or count up belts/wins/defenses to compare boxers. The former would suggest that we have no business ever saying anything about how guys from different generations would fare against each other or even whose resume is more impressive. This is certainly a defensible position, but it also takes a lot of the fun out of sports discussions. Such a view would also contradict your regular parading of the unprecedented nature of Pacquiao's accomplishments; obviously his wins only occurred in this particular era and so we can never really hold them up as indicating any superiority whatsoever against guys who came earlier and faced different competition.

 

That's not quite as fair or the same then as the Bulls added Harper and Rodman to their team. Rodman defensively made them tougher, and gave them an undeniable impact on the boards.

The Bull of 95-97 were better than any of the 90-93 as well. Jordan was a different player at this point. Probably not better, but a better team leader/player.