Barry Bonds vs Shaquille O’Neal

[falcolombardi]

So this has nothing to do with Bonds but we are in the off-season and the 90s baseball discussion reminded me of this. I'd love to see an ejected NBA player do this. You don't need to know anything about the sport to enjoy this video.

Watch on YouTube

Manager antics were a big thing in the 90's. They were almost as big of stars as the players.

I miss it the same way I miss NBA coaches wearing suits. NBA coaches ditching suits to me is baffaling cause they all look better in suits. Show some pride in your appearance you're on national tv

I even saw sitcoms randomly joke over this "ohh you look as elegant as a nba coach"

Nba messed up this part imo

[sp6r=underrated]

Manager antics were a big thing in the 90's. They were almost as big of stars as the players.

I miss it the same way I miss NBA coaches wearing suits. NBA coaches ditching suits to me is baffaling cause they all look better in suits. Show some pride in your appearance you're on national tv

I even saw sitcoms randomly joke over this "ohh you look as elegant as a nba coach"

Nba messed up this part imo

Yeah it was one of the cool things about the NBA. Coaches didn't look like bums. NFL coaches are required to model crappy, ill-fitting NFL merchandise. MLB managers are squezzed into uniforms made for 24 yr olds.

NBA coaches looked urbane and sophisticated. Now they are like NFL coaches modeling crappy ill fitting merchandise.






This transition is sad.

[Heej]

Damn idk much about baseball but it sounds like he was already an all time great hitter even before the roids. He was just super accurate hitting it or did he have great placement too or something? I like hearing in-depth breakdowns about other sports I'm not knowledgeable of.

Hitting is a combination of hand eye coordination, vision, reflexes, muscle memory. It is closer to tennis than basketball. Strengths is what turns hits into home runs.

Bonds was ATG in all those areas. There is a famous story that at an all star game he was calling out pitches in the dugout as the pitcher threw it. Even all stars hitters, some of whom were HOFers in their own right, marveled at how quickly he could see what pitch was being thrown. That extra half second of vision made it much easier for him to tell whether it was a ball (don't swing) or strike (hit it to the moon). Then he had monster hand eye coordination so once he identified it was worth swinging at he could make good contact. And his bat speed was off the charts good. Just a lethal combo.

You couldn't fool him easily. He was very disciplined in his approach and was quite comfortable taking walks. A lot of power hitters will force it if they aren't getting anything worth swing at. He would say walk me. Think about the patience James shows not to shoot when defenses are going crazy guarding him and passing off to teammates compared to how someone like Kobe forces it. Bonds was like James

So basically you had a dude who could see what you were throwing much quicker than other guys. And had the natural athleticism for hitting to punish you for it. Baseball hitting is also more of a skill thing than most of basketball. Think elite shooting as a parallel which also requires athleticism but a ton of practice. Bonds dad was an excellent baseball player. If you need to be a 10 to make the HOF he was an 8. His godfather was Willie Mays who is an ATG baseball player. Now we have a parallel with Steph Curry's shooting you have a guy with all the genetic traits for a sport being raised in a family that excels in it. Dangerous combination.

So the pre-roids Bonds was still the best player of the 90s despite competing against mostly cheaters. He was even a good baserunner. Most powerhitters aren't great baserunners. Bonds could run too which really punished teams for walking him.

Bonds before steroids was still a very strong dude. He led baseball in slugging (measure for power) multiple times before roids.

The best way to indicate how good Bonds was look here: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml

Notice all the numbers bolded pre-1999 which is when he went on the juice. He was still the best player in the sport and cruising to the HOF. Consider he almost won 4 STRAIGHT MVPs pre-Roids.

The roids just made a very strong dude into a guy with ATG strength which is when he began to nuke baseball.

Just wanna say, that was amazing. Appreciate that my man. Definitely looking at Bonds in a different light now.

[BoatsNZones]

It's an interesting question only in that as a singular talent you can impact basketball to such a higher degree than baseball. I am not a particularly young guy and have been following the sport for 30+ years, and you can make a legitimate argument that the two best peak baseball players in history are on the same team right now... one as a pitcher/hitter. They are not a playoff team, forget having a remote chance at a title.

As a singular talent, Bonds is unquestionably a more impressive professional athlete relative to his field or otherwise than Shaq. Shaq was huge/athletic and very impressive, but mostly huge/athletic. He had genes that 0.00000001 of humans will ever have. And in the NBA where one player is so important and that size is such a built in advantage, we got to see him on the biggest stages using that mass to embarrass most of his competition. Bonds was a 5 star talent / 3x MVP as a relatively normal sized human that said, "Oh, you're all just going to do steroids now?", and proceeded to absolutely obliterate the game and all of his competition after he joined the rest of the leagues best players in this little steroid filled foree' (rest assure, he had multiple MVP's in the league as it was going on). But as we saw in a clip earlier in this thread, when you can intentionally walk the man 3-2 bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and it's the right call (your team still loses), you start to understand just why it doesn't matter how good a singular talent is in baseball. You actually need to be 10-15 deep.

[sp6r=underrated]

It's an interesting question only in that as a singular talent you can impact basketball to such a higher degree than baseball. I am not a particularly young guy and have been following the sport for 30+ years, and you can make a legitimate argument that the two best peak baseball players in history are on the same team right now... one as a pitcher/hitter. They are not a playoff team, forget having a remote chance at a title.

As a singular talent, Bonds is unquestionably a more impressive professional athlete relative to his field or otherwise than Shaq. Shaq was huge/athletic and very impressive, but mostly huge/athletic. He had genes that 0.00000001 of humans will ever have. Bonds was a 5 star talent / 3x MVP as a relatively normal sized human that said, "Oh, you're all just going to do steroids now?" and proceeded to absolutely obliterate the game and all of his competition after he joined the rest of the league. But as we saw in a clip earlier in this thread, when you can intentionally walk the man 3-2 bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and it's the right call (your team still loses), you start to understand just why it doesn't matter how good a singular talent is in baseball. You actually need to be 10-15 deep.

One of my sneaking suspicions is that the NFL is going to find their "protect/elevate" the QB at all costs, rule changes will bring a limited form of player empowerment to the NFL.

Under the old pass interference/roughing QB rules, QBs didn't matter nearly as much. Now they are beginning to take over the game. It will only be a matter of time until they start using that power.

[BoatsNZones]

It's an interesting question only in that as a singular talent you can impact basketball to such a higher degree than baseball. I am not a particularly young guy and have been following the sport for 30+ years, and you can make a legitimate argument that the two best peak baseball players in history are on the same team right now... one as a pitcher/hitter. They are not a playoff team, forget having a remote chance at a title.

As a singular talent, Bonds is unquestionably a more impressive professional athlete relative to his field or otherwise than Shaq. Shaq was huge/athletic and very impressive, but mostly huge/athletic. He had genes that 0.00000001 of humans will ever have. Bonds was a 5 star talent / 3x MVP as a relatively normal sized human that said, "Oh, you're all just going to do steroids now?" and proceeded to absolutely obliterate the game and all of his competition after he joined the rest of the league. But as we saw in a clip earlier in this thread, when you can intentionally walk the man 3-2 bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and it's the right call (your team still loses), you start to understand just why it doesn't matter how good a singular talent is in baseball. You actually need to be 10-15 deep.

One of my sneaking suspicions is that the NFL is going to find their "protect/elevate" the QB at all costs, rule changes will bring a limited form of player empowerment to the NFL.

Under the old pass interference/roughing QB rules, QBs didn't matter nearly as much. Now they are beginning to take over the game. It will only be a matter of time until they start using that power.

Are you saying that because the rules are almost "steroids" for NFL QB's and correlating that to their power as talents relative to NBA superstars? If so yeah, I could see it. I definitely don't know the NFL CBA like I do NBA, but I do know that we're already seeing far longer guaranteed contracts in the past 3-5 years than ever before. We're seeing longer guaranteed contracts for other key positions like DE's/TE's and WR's right now too though. That said, the NFL as a brand is just SO much stronger than the NBA as a brand (which is why players have more relative power in the NBA... Jordan for example actually may have been bigger than the NBA), so I don't see it ever going too much further. But yeah, QB's were already the kings of American pro sports and now they're basically treated like we're in practice with the red no-hit jerseys. So that matters in contract negotiations being that they can likely play longer and be seen as more secure assets for the team.

Also to stay on topic, Bonds > Shaq ; )

[falcolombardi]

It's an interesting question only in that as a singular talent you can impact basketball to such a higher degree than baseball. I am not a particularly young guy and have been following the sport for 30+ years, and you can make a legitimate argument that the two best peak baseball players in history are on the same team right now... one as a pitcher/hitter. They are not a playoff team, forget having a remote chance at a title.

As a singular talent, Bonds is unquestionably a more impressive professional athlete relative to his field or otherwise than Shaq. Shaq was huge/athletic and very impressive, but mostly huge/athletic. He had genes that 0.00000001 of humans will ever have. Bonds was a 5 star talent / 3x MVP as a relatively normal sized human that said, "Oh, you're all just going to do steroids now?" and proceeded to absolutely obliterate the game and all of his competition after he joined the rest of the league. But as we saw in a clip earlier in this thread, when you can intentionally walk the man 3-2 bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and it's the right call (your team still loses), you start to understand just why it doesn't matter how good a singular talent is in baseball. You actually need to be 10-15 deep.

One of my sneaking suspicions is that the NFL is going to find their "protect/elevate" the QB at all costs, rule changes will bring a limited form of player empowerment to the NFL.

Under the old pass interference/roughing QB rules, QBs didn't matter nearly as much. Now they are beginning to take over the game. It will only be a matter of time until they start using that power.

Didnt that already happen with lamar jackson/ aaron rodgers drama of sorts? (Not too much knowlesge of the nfl)

[sp6r=underrated]

It's an interesting question only in that as a singular talent you can impact basketball to such a higher degree than baseball. I am not a particularly young guy and have been following the sport for 30+ years, and you can make a legitimate argument that the two best peak baseball players in history are on the same team right now... one as a pitcher/hitter. They are not a playoff team, forget having a remote chance at a title.

As a singular talent, Bonds is unquestionably a more impressive professional athlete relative to his field or otherwise than Shaq. Shaq was huge/athletic and very impressive, but mostly huge/athletic. He had genes that 0.00000001 of humans will ever have. Bonds was a 5 star talent / 3x MVP as a relatively normal sized human that said, "Oh, you're all just going to do steroids now?" and proceeded to absolutely obliterate the game and all of his competition after he joined the rest of the league. But as we saw in a clip earlier in this thread, when you can intentionally walk the man 3-2 bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and it's the right call (your team still loses), you start to understand just why it doesn't matter how good a singular talent is in baseball. You actually need to be 10-15 deep.

One of my sneaking suspicions is that the NFL is going to find their "protect/elevate" the QB at all costs, rule changes will bring a limited form of player empowerment to the NFL.

Under the old pass interference/roughing QB rules, QBs didn't matter nearly as much. Now they are beginning to take over the game. It will only be a matter of time until they start using that power.

Didnt that already happen with lamar jackson/ aaron rodgers drama of sorts? (Not too much knowlesge of the nfl)

Lamar Jackson not really. I'd say Aaron Rodgers contracts and Tom Brady getting the coach he disliked to move into mgmt are signs of player empowerment. But we haven't yet seen the stuff I'm talking about like trade demands out of these cities, roster structure demands, etc, like we see in the NBA. I think for instance Green Bay would have much lower odds of keeping a young Rodgers up there for his career once he established himself. And I'm not sure at all they could get away with chaining him to the bench.

Are you saying that because the rules are almost "steroids" for NFL QB's and correlating that to their power as talents relative to NBA superstars? If so yeah, I could see it.

Yup, pretty much. I think we'll see QBs use the leverage they have to push around teams a lot more. I think we will see situations were succesful coaches get canned, QBs force trades and just the general "keep the star happy" stuff we see in the NFL happen around QBs.

The NFL hasn't quite succeeded in making QBs as important as NBA superstars but they've augmented their importance alot. And once they did they're going to find they've created a class of players who will push back a lot more.

[Warriors Analyst]

Damn idk much about baseball but it sounds like he was already an all time great hitter even before the roids. He was just super accurate hitting it or did he have great placement too or something? I like hearing in-depth breakdowns about other sports I'm not knowledgeable of.

Hitting is a combination of hand eye coordination, vision, reflexes, muscle memory. It is closer to tennis than basketball. Strengths is what turns hits into home runs.

Bonds was ATG in all those areas. There is a famous story that at an all star game he was calling out pitches in the dugout as the pitcher threw it. Even all stars hitters, some of whom were HOFers in their own right, marveled at how quickly he could see what pitch was being thrown. That extra half second of vision made it much easier for him to tell whether it was a ball (don't swing) or strike (hit it to the moon). Then he had monster hand eye coordination so once he identified it was worth swinging at he could make good contact. And his bat speed was off the charts good. Just a lethal combo.

You couldn't fool him easily. He was very disciplined in his approach and was quite comfortable taking walks. A lot of power hitters will force it if they aren't getting anything worth swing at. He would say walk me. Think about the patience James shows not to shoot when defenses are going crazy guarding him and passing off to teammates compared to how someone like Kobe forces it. Bonds was like James

So basically you had a dude who could see what you were throwing much quicker than other guys. And had the natural athleticism for hitting to punish you for it. Baseball hitting is also more of a skill thing than most of basketball. Think elite shooting as a parallel which also requires athleticism but a ton of practice. Bonds dad was an excellent baseball player. If you need to be a 10 to make the HOF he was an 8. His godfather was Willie Mays who is an ATG baseball player. Now we have a parallel with Steph Curry's shooting you have a guy with all the genetic traits for a sport being raised in a family that excels in it. Dangerous combination.

So the pre-roids Bonds was still the best player of the 90s despite competing against mostly cheaters. He was even a good baserunner. Most powerhitters aren't great baserunners. Bonds could run too which really punished teams for walking him.

Bonds before steroids was still a very strong dude. He led baseball in slugging (measure for power) multiple times before roids.

The best way to indicate how good Bonds was look here: https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bondsba01.shtml

Notice all the numbers bolded pre-1999 which is when he went on the juice. He was still the best player in the sport and cruising to the HOF. Consider he almost won 4 STRAIGHT MVPs pre-Roids.

The roids just made a very strong dude into a guy with ATG strength which is when he began to nuke baseball.

Just wanna say, that was amazing. Appreciate that my man. Definitely looking at Bonds in a different light now.

I grew up in the Bay Area and was lucky to see both Bonds and Steph in my lifetime. I was much younger for Bonds. Maybe 13 when he retired?

But I think that the emotional experience of Bonfds is very analogous to Steph. Both players created a sense of anticipation and wonder on the most mundane of games against loser franchises. That feeling you get when Steph pulls up from three against literally anybody, that's the feeling Bonds gave you at the plate. You expected greatness, a greatness so stunning that it was absurd and could reduce you to laughter.

To that point, somebody in the thread said something earlier about Bonds getting walked intentionally to avoid HR's being similar to teams giving up easy 2's to avoid 3's... well... who does that sound like?