jojo4341 wrote:We've all had this discussion in terms of basketball and different eras. But what about other sports? Outside of basketball, I follow the NFL and Tennis on a casual level. I'm pretty clueless on other sports unless it's playoffs, olympics, World Cup, etc. Here are some of the usual arguments in basketball that we've all come to love:
-Game was more physical back then
-No one could shoot threes
-Players are bigger/stronger/faster/smarter today
-Defensive schemes have evolved
-Bill Russell would be like Ben Wallace today
-etc
For the most part, only a select few HoFs can "transcend" eras while the average player is better today because of a larger talent pool and advances in nutrition. This is absolutely true for the average player and individual sports. NO ONE who won the 100m sprint in the 1980s is beating Usain Bolt. I've done a little bit of research and was somewhat surprised by what I heard. What are you thoughts on the evolution of other sports? Some of my thoughts and/or questions below:
NFL:
-It's a passing league now
-Too much protection on the offensive player (especially QBs)
-Is Jim Brown still considered the GOAT RB?
-Would Joe Montana still be good today?
MLB:
-Babe Ruth today? I heard Sliders and Spltters didn't exist during his time.
-Are pitchers way better now than before? How would Nolan Ryan fare today?
NHL:
-I hear goals are lower today because goalies are bigger with bigger gear.
-I'm pretty sure Gretzky is still the GOAT but are his stats inflated?
Football (Soccer for us Americans):
-Much like baskteball, I was told defense was more physical back then but more tactical today.
-Pele was pretty much slammed in terms of being instantly transported to today's leagues and wouldn't be close to Messi/Ronaldo.
Tennis:
-Billie Jean King would have no chance vs Serena, right?
-Aside from upgrading the wooden rackets, are players that much better today? I know women's tennis evolved from serve & volley to baseline play like the men.
I realize we have other subforums, but just wanted to have a comprehensive list from basketball-minded people.
Just going to pick a few things on here that pop to mind.
I agree no one from the past beats Bolt, but the main reason I'm certain of this is that he represents a paradigm shift in how we think of sprinters. Guys like X weren't supposed to be able to sprint, so they sought out other avenues. Turns out all the conventional thinking was wrong and guys like Bolt probably should have been winning golds decades ago.
(I'm no track expert. I know Bolt's times were a huge improvement and the general physics of his frame. If people think my understanding is naive, please chime in.)
But I think that's the key thing: The guys in general who have the most dominant success are the spearheads who change the way a game is approach. Show me a guy who basically looks like a more modern version of Jim Brown and I'm not going to assume he's better than Brown just because he puts up bigger raw numbers, but if a guy puts up way better numbers while doing it in a fundamentally different way, then we have a clear basis for debate.
I happen to still side with Brown based on what I think the NFL has shown to work, and see a guy like Peterson as of that same mold...but a guy like Barry Sanders really should be the GOAT running back imho. As is, in his strengths, he is orders of magnitude better than Brown and he's far more interesting to watch. I wish I'd been able to see him a situation where he could really contend though.
I don't think there's much reason to think Joe Montana would struggle today. To me the name of the game in the NFL now is quarterbacks who make decisions quickly and throw with pinpoint accuracy, as opposed to the physical adonis who can throw an interception from 100 yards away. Other than Otto Graham of the '50s, Montana is the archetype for this style of play and to me if you're not one of those style quarterbacks, you're not a serious GOAT contender because it remains the dominant skillset today. I do think that Brady and Manning should probably be seen as the top 2 qb's in history to be clear, but I think Montana and Graham have earned a place in the discussion.
Tennis: Everyone has a shot against Serena at various points in her prime. Later in her career she's been more consistent, but she was never as unbeatable as the Grafs or the Navratilovas. Still, Serena's my GOAT at this point and if you're asking me to make a bet, I'd bet on her in a given match over any other female.
I also think that in some ways the women's game has come a lot further than the men's in the Open era. The best men before that were barnstorming from town to town playing each other every day. (Can you imagine how evolved the tactics of Fed, Rafa, Nola would be if the only guys they played were each other? Fed would have moved away from his conservative game much sooner.) What that means was that the guys at the very top back in the '50s were worthy for comparison with modern players, but after the top handful it fell off a cliff. The result of this is that I don't think Pancho Gonzales is out of place at all in a pre-Federer GOAT discussion. I think he's got a solid argument at being a better Sampras than Sampras.
By contrast, I don't think any woman from back in the '50s & '60s had anywhere near the developed skill that the women of the '80s & '90s had. I think someone like Maureen Connolly might have been a GOAT-worthy talent, but I don't think anyone can slice through modern competition as a teenager like she did.
As I say all this, changes to equipment has changed the shape of the ideal tennis player. Pancho's contemporaries like Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall deserve immense respect, but Rosewall was the GOAT clay courter at least through Borg, and he was half a foot shorter than Nadal. I don't think someone so much less powerful than Nadal really has a shot today.
Coming back to basketball, I'll say some of what I said before:
Developing sports are like other social phenomena. Their growth is S shaped: slow initially, then the hockey stick of rapid growth, then it settles. Minor hockey sticks emerge whenever there's a new paradigm shift, but something like the NBA had it's big hockey stick growth long ago.
When? Basically the '60s. In the late '50s offenses basically had no idea what they were doing. By '69 not only had you had Oscar, West, and eventually a year where Wilt actually led a great offense, but you also had Holzman's Knicks playing the first "beautiful game" in basketball. I've been fond of saying that the changes that have come after 1970 are small compared to what came before, but that's actually debatable now that we're seeing the full extent of what the 3-pointer can decades after it was available.
