countryboy667 wrote:AEnigma wrote:countryboy667 wrote:Yeah--you're right. Ted Williams, Hasnk Aaron, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Bob Feller, Rocky Marciano, Joe Louis, Barry Sanders, Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Boris Becker, and Rod Laver would all be third-rate scrubs today compared to today's ubermensch
I love how the resort is always to go, “Oh so you are calling these guys scrubs??????” I guess hard to expect much else when you have no actual argument past blind nostalgia.
No, they would not be scrubs. They would also not be the best players in the modern iterations of their sports. Mind-blowing I know.
Well, we'll just have to disagree. Great athletes are great athletes, whether they were born in 2000 or when Julius Caesar was a toddler. The difference today as compared to the past is NOT base athletic ability. Evolution doesn't work that way, to turn human beings into supermen in the few decades since guys like the ones I mentioned were playing. It's equipment, playing conditions, and medical care.
And better training and better investment and a substantially wider talent pool and improved strategising and…
No, it is not all base level athleticism, but the average on that front in the professional pool has certainly climbed in addition to being further maximised.
Take any of those guys I named, bring them to 2023 in in their primes, give then a year to adjust to the new realities, and all of them would be at the very worst top 3-4 in their respective sports, with guys like Williams, Koufax, Sanders, Nicklaus, and Laver probably the clear number ones.
Baseless. Being #1 in what had been a sample of a hundred does not mean that maintains when the sample becomes a thousand. Nor does it mean all you need to catch up to years of developmental evolution is a short period of adjustment. Bodies do not train like that. Habits are not built like that.
Not just basketball, but in regard to all sports, I keep hearing "the game has changed". Undoubtedly true. But there never seems to be the understanding that change is not always for the better. I used to love baseball, lived and died with the fortunes of my Detroit Tigers. I can barely stand to watch the game today. Technically the product may be more sophisticated and streamlined, and the athletes overall as good, but it's BORING watching a string of ultra-specialized releivers for relievers for releivers carefully having their pitch count monitored. Same for today's NBA--I no longer pay my hard earned money to go to NBA games because if I want to see a bunch of chuckers I can go to the local city park on any nice summer day and see a bunch of them playing in pick up games. Football? Why not have just a quarterback and have all the rest of the players selected at random off the street, because in today's game the QB is the only essential player, the only one who really counts in today's game.
Okay so like I said, blind nostalgia. You affinities should not be confused for quality. Just because you liked older eras does not mean they were a more complete form of the sport. Plenty of people prefer college sports to professional too.
In all those sports, the game has changed. The operative question should be has the change been for the better, and if you think it has been, is your thinking based on the fact that today's ATHLETES are actually BETTER than those in the past, or because you just like today's style better than the styles of the past?
I dislike the aesthetics of three-point reliance but that does not mean I am incapable of recognising it is a dramatically more effective approach. Overall though, yes, I like it when players are the best versions of themselves and when we can feel confident that the league was able to identify the best players from a global population. Again, mind-blowing, I know.
