Kareem was an obvious stud. His statistical dominance is his prime is very similar to Jokic. The game was very different though as the three point shot didn't really exist for much of Kareem's time, and the depth of talent was way weaker. There were no foreign players in the NBA at the time and it wasn't anything that resembled a global game. Now it's like 45% of centers in the league are foreign (it seems that's the position with most foreign players). It's of course very crude analysis, but it's basically saying 1/3 to 1/2 of centers Kareem went up against in his day wouldn't be good enough to be in that position in the global era.
I'm also somewhat critical of the sky hook shot since it's essentially gone extinct in the modern game, partially due to the floor spacing, but I suspect also the players are just bigger and more agile these days. It's kind of like "Big George Foreman" where for his time he was considered some huge monster, but reality is the dude was like 220 pounds and would be dwarfed by later fighters not known as "Big" like Lenox Lewis, Klitsckos etc. Kareem was built much more like Chet Holmgren.
Then the wildcard was the ABA / NBA split during some of Kareem's best years. So not only was the talent less deep globally, it was split across leagues domestically to a decent degree.
Anyhow, I don't really like these discussions because it's so much hair splitting and seems like someone is shitting on great players, but it's hard to do apple-to-apple comparisons going so far back.
