The fact that this series went down to 7, and actually went into overtime in game 7, shows that the empire of the Lakers is ending. Let them have their victory lap. Within the structure of the NBA's rules they've won fair and square.
As a result, anyone was allowed to foul Jabbar anytime and the foul was rarely called. In fact, it always seemed to me that the league encouraged double-team fouls where both defenders were hacking hard at Jabbar simultaneously. This was true thru his entire career.
At some point that did change for the new generation of stars. I think the league figured out that having stars with spectacular highlight reels sold tickets. The other thing that changed was the complete abandonment of the traveling rule on stars. Enforcement of just that rule on Jordan would have changed Jordan's career significantly. And some of his best highlights were extreme violations of traveling.
Jabbar never benefitted from the change. Even as an old man, it took two defenders constantly hacking at him to keep him from scoring 30-40 points a game. Without taking anything away from Johnson, Worthy and other Laker stars of that era, much of their success came from the fact that it took two defenders with freedom to hack to contain Jabbar. Playing him one on one was just not an option if you wanted to win. So the rest of the Lakers were playing 4 on 3 most of the time.