Understanding Greatness!!!

[iamworthy]

Ive had this question on my mind for a while now and instead of asking this question on the the General Board I thought I would bring it to the fam...first. How old should you or do you have to be to recognize and understand greatness. Example, can a 30 yr old man truely appreciate the greatness of KAJ? Can a 25 yr old understand the greatness of Jordan, Magic...etc. Theres a difference in watching these guys play at a young age and actually understanding what you are watching. Stats really only tell half of the story. What do you guys think?

[TommyTheCat]

i think it's pretty hard to break it down specifically by age. some 15 year old kids that live and breath basketball comprehend what they are watching better than some 35 year old casual fan. having said that, it's pretty hard to believe a 7 year old kid watching a nba game has a firm grasp on everything going on. i started playing and watching sports..........hockey, basketball and baseball..........around the age of 5 but probably didn't understand greatness until a few/several years after that. also, sometimes it's easier when you get a player like wayne gretzky that was lightyears ahead of his peers during his prime.

btw, great question and i think you should also post it on the general board

[Erik Eleven]

To truly understand greatness, you have to embody it yourself.

That means, none of us is qualified and we should all stop posting about it.

[DEEP3CL]

I agree 100% with what your saying imworthy, I think age has a definite factor in understanding what your watching. For example I was in elementary school (5th) when the Lakers drafted Magic, and since I grew up watching them I find myself comparing every generation of basketball to the one I grew up with. Some here won't realize what they're watching until it's ten years past them.

Those Laker teams of the 80's taught me about basketball, in the 90's I learned the business side of it so I've evolved with every decade. A lot of the younger generation judge players only off stats, but I'm here to tell you numbers don't make the player...............hell if that was the case Micheal Cooper would suck by today's standards.

[J Rob]

I definately believe age, place, and time come into play when we try to define greatness.

Something I always come back to is everyone refers to Larry and Magic's 80's teams as the golden age of basketball. Now, even though I'm only 24, I would never dispute that it was some of the greatest basketball ever played, however, there are some things to note.

One of the biggest facts is that most of current the media members and slightly older fans who cite that as the greatest era, first became basketball fans during the 80's. It was a combination of their age and the fact that Magic and Larry made the NBA a national phenomenon.

So, was it really the best basketball era or was it a magical rivalry that captivated a nation?

With Jordan, he was lucky enough to come along and dominate a fairly weak decade of basketball in the 90's. This captivated and brought in an entire new generation of basketball fans who no matter what will refer to him as the greatest basketball player ever.

Then there's my generation who has grown up on Kobe, Shaq, Duncan, etc. To us Laker fans, we pretty much swear by Kobe. We've seen his miraculous talent and marveled at his accomplishments. We've begun to challenge the Jordan lovers and scoff at those that say Lebron is or will be greater. Meanwhile we only caught the tail end of Jordan's greatness and watch maybe 4 or 5 of Lebron's games a year?

I guess what I'm driving at is ultimately greatness comes down to perception. The era we grew up on, city we live in, our understanding of the game, the effort we put in to look through the variables, etc. all play into it.

So to answer the question, no unfortunately. I don't think I'll ever truly know how great KAJ was. I'll never understand the feeling my Dad had watching Magic lead showtime. I'll never know if Jordan really would've beat Kobe head to head in the finals.

But then again, I suppose I will be able to my kids that Shaq would've destroyed Dwight Howard in his prime. Then they'll laugh at me and tell me how old school I am and that D-12 is the best center ever...

Great post iamworthy.

[MasterRyu]

I think the right number is 79. That would make you in your 20's in the 1950's. Which means you have seen pretty much all the NBA greats. So 79 would be the age. No question.

[J Rob]

I'm always slightly disappointed when thought provoking threads end up with less than 10 replies while "How We Could get A.I.!" type threads will generate 10 pages...

Hmm, what can you do?

[aroba]

We're talking about modern bball here.
The 80's changed the game forever. Not only talking about the Celtics-lakers 80's rivalry, but talking about how a 6' 9 point guard run the showtime, how a new feature called "3-point line" was dominated by a tall white player in order to win games at the buzzer, no matter who defended him.
We still had some of the best from the 70's like Dr J, Mo Malone and KAJ. We had Nique on his human highlight film flying days.

And also a young player that all youngsters wanted to be like, fly like, dunk like and also wear like. He also made shorts wider and longer after him.

After the 80's many jordanesque players appeared. Players that took the game over by themselves. Any white player with nice shooting touch was named after Bird, any tall guard was compared with Magic.

80's were special in many, many ways.

Now, that's greatness