Yes I can respect the brilliance of each the big 3 and I certainly don't dislike any of them (I just don't particularly care about the 'GOAT race'). My assessment of a particular era goes well beyond who is winning grand slam titles, with the quality players of occupying smaller ATP events, unseeded at majors and masters events etc also incredibly important. A lot of comparisons of depth and competition across eras (for both men's and women's tennis) that I've read over the years have only tended to focus on players ranked in the top 10 or just the players winning majors, which isn't really good enough IMO.
Serve-volleyers (though it must be said the prevalence of serve-volleyers noticeably decreased in the 90s compared to the 80s), all-court players, attacking baseliners, counter-punchers and grinders all could and did do well in the 90s (there were periods when each of those styles was represented in the top 10), there were far more matches between playing with noticeably different players styles, and far more 'interesting', 'unorthodox' and / or simply dangerous lower ranked players for the big guns to worry about. Also crucially in those days the established aristocracy had to genuinely worry about talented youngers snapping at their heels, beating them on the big stage and potentially overtaking them. As well as variety in the sport drastically decreasing, so has general 'creativity' as well. In those days I'd attend / watch tournaments spoilt for choice between following the top ranked players, the group of players behind them, the promising youngsters, the flashy and dangerous unseeded players etc.
I much preferred men's tennis in the 00s compared to past decade as well, with the players born in the first half of the 80s in largely in their primes, quite a few players born in the late 70s doing very well through to the middle to latter part of the decade, and players born in the latter half of the 80s showing promise, breaking through and making huge waves (absolutely seismic in Nadal's case of course). Of course early on there was Goran's fairytale 2001 Wimbledon win, Sampras's 2002 US Open title, a lot of brilliance from Agassi, Costa's performances at RG in both 2002 and 2003 etc. I found a player like Olivier Mutis (I watched him play Srichaphan at Wimbledon and Roddick at RG live), who never even broke into the ATP top 70 far more interesting to watch than a typical active ATP player. Speaking of Srichaphan, I'd rather watch him warm up / train than many active players outside the big 3. OK a bit of an exaggeration there but an overwhelmingly more entertaining player compared to the modern day norm.
And I repeat it's nothing to be with being a Djokovic (or Nadal) 'hater' or anything. If I look back to the first major that Djokovic won at the 2008 AO, I thought that there were many, many more interesting players at the bottom half of the seeding scale or unseeded altogether to follow, compared to the 2020 and 2021 AO events when things were absolutely sparse in comparison.
