KrAzY3 wrote:You have to love the arrogance of modern athletes. Who is to say that Jim Thorpe or Jesse Owens would not be the greatest athletes if they were alive today?
Modern athletes benefit from a host of things, modern medicine, scientific advances, better equipment, etc... when my grandfather was playing sports they told them not to drink water! Heck there was an Olympic marathon once were the runners were nearly killed by idiotic advice. So yes, of course these guys were not putting up the numbers we see today. What this doesn't mean though is that given what modern athletes have to work with today they wouldn't be capable of the same things, or... even better things.
JJ wasn't even really wrong about what he said, it was more how he said it, and partly also how people took it, but mainly the way he said it. JJ saying guys weren't as good because the average player didn't have the same resources and couldn't spend summers working on their game and were plumbers and bus drivers is 100% true. If those guys made enough money and had the facilities, trainers, knowledge, rules, etc that guys have now, they would have been better. If I didn't have to study, work, etc, and basketball was my job, I would be even better at it than I am, yea, of course. This doesn't mean outliers aren't there, but outliers can be advantaged in the early stages of a league, because everything is a first, strategy is stil developing, rules are still being ironed out, and an outlier early is more likely to have a larger gap from the average player even in a smaller league.
On the other hand, if the pool of professional basketball players was anywhere close to what it is now, yes, there are guys who played in the early years who would no longer make the cut. We even see this for example in some graduate professions, the GPA to get in 30 years ago was like 2.7 and now you won't get in without a 3.5, community service, great recommendation letters, etc, and some people who got in then would be pushed out now, even with more school options, but many would still be fine, just work a little harder than they did before.
There's no sport which in his infancy is going to have the same quality of athletes and competition as when it has become established and popular, it's just not realistic or logical to think so. BUT, the problem can come if everyone who played in the infancy of a sport gets diminished and/or disregarded, and while certainly that wasn't JJ's intent persay, that's how it comes off in the way his comments were made. And not diminishing them is not about not acknowledging the different circumstances and being able to have honest conversation about league quality etc, but about doing that while respecting that they paved the way and allowed you to have what you have. No, not every guy who made the NBA in the 60's would still make it now if they were born in 1995, but there are still many that would, and the ones that did helped all the current guys have what they have.
