General Boston Sports Thread

[truth18]

I LOVE BOSTON

[Higgs Boston]

Read on Twitter

Typical comment hyping or saying great things to someone to get positives comments about you, in other words, "you are the basketball GOAT" and things like that.

[Kalela]

So, what else can we beat LA in?

Hopefully Davis.

[truth18]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

[soxfan2003]

I was optimistic going into Super Bowl after the Chiefs win when the Patriots survived it without injury but going into the playoffs, I thought Patriots would go to the Super Bowl but probably lose it to the Saints or Rams. I didn't expect Patriots to survive Chiefs game without key injuries. I am glad that the Patriots were able to pull this one out. I wish it was co MVPS with Edelman and Gilmore sharing it. Ideally, it would have been Edelman sharing it with the entire defense. Rams got a good deal of pressure on Brady but you expect that when facing a defensive line that talented. Defense certainly won this game but it wasn't a one man effort on defense with so many different players contributing. Edelman was key in making sure Rams didn't get real good field position since their field goal kicker looks like he can hit 60+ yarders. Pass rush excellent, run defense very good and very few easy throws for Goff thanks to great secondary play. Even one of the Rams big plays came within a half a foot from being snuffed out.

Obviously, a team win but I have great respect for the mental and physical toughness of Chung, Hightower, Gronk, Edelman since those 4 players have played in a lot of hard hitting NFL games and have had to take a pounding or have to try to give out out a pounding. And obviously the smart play of the entire team needs to be pointed out. Players like McCourty twins, Slater, Brady need to be credited with that.
Special teams when you have no big mistakes in coverage and some nice plays in coverage doesn't get enough credit.

Sony Michel. Patriots don't win Super bowl without him. Burkhead shows the importance of decent depth.

Gotta give the Rams defense credit for how they were able to disguise their defense a good deal throughout the game and take away James White. The Brady pick was a great defensive scheme by Rams defensive coordinator and good timing by Rams secondary.

It goes without saying Flores, O line coach and runnings back coach need kudos. I think Flores agent wishes that he waited to negotiate his contract with the Dolphins since after that performance by the D, he could easily command more money. I may be missing someone but I think the Patriots running backs had zero fumbles in the playoffs and in most years they are low in that category.

BB has cemented himself as the best coach of all time and Brady for sure deserves to be considered greatest football player of all time. Nice to see Ty Law in HOF, Seymour, Wilfork hopefully joins him.

[reload141]

I’ve been on it since 8am. Just want to say, how amazing are the Patriots?!?

[soxfan2003]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

Jordan certainly most exciting great basketball player ever with his pre titles play even more exciting. Despite Dallas meltdown, I do think Lebron a bit more valuable for his career -- I know...not a popular opinion -- but Jordan may deserve like Ruth deserves it over Bonds for just being first truly amazing performer in their respective sports. And Jordan more fun to watch. I am not a big hockey fan but even I recognized as a kid what Gretzky was doing was just ridiculous.

In no particular order, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps and Muhammad Ali I think are the five post 1950 at least North American GOATS in individual sports. Boxing a difficult one but gotta give it to Ali since he was the best heavyweight when many of the best athletes went into boxing instead of football/basketball et cetera. Perhaps honorable mention to
Lindsey Vonn who seems like a complete psycho when it comes to skiing injured.

I do respect opinions of folks who say Russell or Wilt in basketball in the sense Wilt was so dominant he changed the rules. Imagine if dunks were worth 3 and 3's were just worth 2.

[Joshyjess]

BREAKING NEWS!!! - The NFL is once again accusing the New England Patriots of cheating during the Super Bowl. This time they are calling it DefenseGate. Apparently the Patriots used too much defense, and didn't allow the Rams to score enough points. Roger Goodell promised a full investigation would be forthcoming.

[ermocrate]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

Jordan certainly most exciting great basketball player ever with his pre titles play even more exciting. Despite Dallas meltdown, I do think Lebron a bit more valuable for his career -- I know...not a popular opinion -- but Jordan may deserve like Ruth deserves it over Bonds for just being first truly amazing performer in their respective sports. And Jordan more fun to watch. I am not a big hockey fan but even I recognized as a kid what Gretzky was doing was just ridiculous.

In no particular order, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps and Muhammad Ali I think are the five post 1950 at least North American GOATS in individual sports. Boxing a difficult one but gotta give it to Ali since he was the best heavyweight when many of the best athletes went into boxing instead of football/basketball et cetera. Perhaps honorable mention to
Lindsey Vonn who seems like a complete psycho when it comes to skiing injured.

I do respect opinions of folks who say Russell or Wilt in basketball in the sense Wilt was so dominant he changed the rules. Imagine if dunks were worth 3 and 3's were just worth 2.

LeBron is a great physical specimen heavily helped Fromm an NBA desperately in need of a new face at the time especially I never his first few year, he wasn’t able to shoot to save his life and the number of walk, charging, over the back not called before he started to know how to play as a pro are infinite. Despite that he needed Wade to teach him how to win and has been Wade’s Robin in both the titles he won in Miami, the new he returned to Cleveland and there’s he was the leader but still need someone who closed for him. They are right now ridicously pumping two other stars, Giannis who’s very talented but not enough to not walk every single time and Harden, who’s amount of fouls taken I still ridiculous and fake in most cases. Anyway to me LBJ in no better than Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kareem, Russel, Chamberlain or Robertson.

[Froob]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

Jordan certainly most exciting great basketball player ever with his pre titles play even more exciting. Despite Dallas meltdown, I do think Lebron a bit more valuable for his career -- I know...not a popular opinion -- but Jordan may deserve like Ruth deserves it over Bonds for just being first truly amazing performer in their respective sports. And Jordan more fun to watch. I am not a big hockey fan but even I recognized as a kid what Gretzky was doing was just ridiculous.

In no particular order, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps and Muhammad Ali I think are the five post 1950 at least North American GOATS in individual sports. Boxing a difficult one but gotta give it to Ali since he was the best heavyweight when many of the best athletes went into boxing instead of football/basketball et cetera. Perhaps honorable mention to
Lindsey Vonn who seems like a complete psycho when it comes to skiing injured.

I do respect opinions of folks who say Russell or Wilt in basketball in the sense Wilt was so dominant he changed the rules. Imagine if dunks were worth 3 and 3's were just worth 2.

LeBron is a great physical specimen heavily helped Fromm an NBA desperately in need of a new face at the time especially I never his first few year, he wasn’t able to shoot to save his life and the number of walk, charging, over the back not called before he started to know how to play as a pro are infinite. Despite that he needed Wade to teach him how to win and has been Wade’s Robin in both the titles he won in Miami, the new he returned to Cleveland and there’s he was the leader but still need someone who closed for him. They are right now ridicously pumping two other stars, Giannis who’s very talented but not enough to not walk every single time and Harden, who’s amount of fouls taken I still ridiculous and fake in most cases. Anyway to me LBJ in no better than Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kareem, Russel, Chamberlain or Robertson.

Not to make this into a big thing in this thread, but that's blatantly untrue. LeBron was the unequivocally best player and it wasn't close. LeBron was supposed to win on a team that had Mo Williams as his second option? Winning 60+ games in those back to back seasons was nuts. He didn't need Wade to teach him anything. Aside from one really bad game 5, LeBron was killing us in that 2010 series, even the close out game he had a crazy triple (or near) double.

100% agree on Giannis...it's obnoxious playing him the calls he gets.

[sam_I_am]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

I love Tom Brady and respect his ability and intangibles, but Jordan is way in front in my opinion. When you watch Brady, he makes the simple look easy. When he makes the clutch throw it looks like something every NFL quarterback could do. Jordan had all of that too - he never gets enough credit for how incredibly dedicated to mastering the fundamentals he was. And that is because of the fact that when you watched him play, his jaw dropping talent overwhelmed you. If Brady could throw like Aaron Rogers, run like Cam Newton and maintain all his his clutch abilities and decision making....then he would be the MJ of football. Jordan won 6 titles in 8 years and it would have been 8/8 if he didn’t take 2 years off for baseball. Maybe would have been 8/10 if Bulls didn’t blow it up too soon.

I think Brady is the Larry Bird of football if Larry took care of himself better and had stayed healthy. Bird’s wasn’t always the most physically gifted player but his teams always had a shot to win.

[KGtabake]

This was the first Superbowl i've ever watched(i'm from Greece and in here-like in europe in general- this sport ain't popular).
Congrats to you guys and i understand why Brady is considered one of the greatest ever in any sport.
If you allow me to say this though.....that was the most boring final i've ever watched in any sport lol
Do teams always play like this in finals? Nobody seemed capable to score.
Also Maroon 5 was a little bit ridiculous
But don't mind me, what do i know in the end? Congrats again and hopefully the Celtics will bring one more championship in a few months

[Parliament10]

This was the first Superbowl i've ever watched(i'm from Greece and in here-like in europe in general- this sport ain't popular).
Congrats to you guys and i understand why Brady is considered one of the greatest ever in any sport.
If you allow me to say this though.....that was the most boring final i've ever watched in any sport lol
Do teams always play like this in finals? Nobody seemed capable to score.
Also Maroon 5 was a little bit ridiculous
But don't mind me, what do i know in the end? Congrats again and hopefully the Celtics will bring one more championship in a few months

This was an unusually low scoring Super Bowl. Which means that both teams played great Defense.

[Celts17Pride]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

3c. Rozier?

[Captain_Caveman]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

I love Tom Brady and respect his ability and intangibles, but Jordan is way in front in my opinion. When you watch Brady, he makes the simple look easy. When he makes the clutch throw it looks like something every NFL quarterback could do. Jordan had all of that too - he never gets enough credit for how incredibly dedicated to mastering the fundamentals he was. And that is because of the fact that when you watched him play, his jaw dropping talent overwhelmed you. If Brady could throw like Aaron Rogers, run like Cam Newton and maintain all his his clutch abilities and decision making....then he would be the MJ of football. Jordan won 6 titles in 8 years and it would have been 8/8 if he didn’t take 2 years off for baseball. Maybe would have been 8/10 if Bulls didn’t blow it up too soon.

I think Brady is the Larry Bird of football if Larry took care of himself better and had stayed healthy. Bird’s wasn’t always the most physically gifted player but his teams always had a shot to win.

Jordan never beat a real team, and dominated with stacked teams in an expansion era with no rival.

[celtics543]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

I love Tom Brady and respect his ability and intangibles, but Jordan is way in front in my opinion. When you watch Brady, he makes the simple look easy. When he makes the clutch throw it looks like something every NFL quarterback could do. Jordan had all of that too - he never gets enough credit for how incredibly dedicated to mastering the fundamentals he was. And that is because of the fact that when you watched him play, his jaw dropping talent overwhelmed you. If Brady could throw like Aaron Rogers, run like Cam Newton and maintain all his his clutch abilities and decision making....then he would be the MJ of football. Jordan won 6 titles in 8 years and it would have been 8/8 if he didn’t take 2 years off for baseball. Maybe would have been 8/10 if Bulls didn’t blow it up too soon.

I think Brady is the Larry Bird of football if Larry took care of himself better and had stayed healthy. Bird’s wasn’t always the most physically gifted player but his teams always had a shot to win.

Jordan never beat a real team, and dominated with stacked teams in an expansion era with no rival.

I'd probably put Gretzky first, he's way way ahead of any other hockey player and it's more of a world sport than football is now or basketball was in the MJ era. Ruth would be last as I'm not sure it's even indisputable that he's the best baseball player of all time.

[soxfan2003]

1. Brady
2. Jordan
3a. Gretzky
3b. Ruth

North American goats.

I love Tom Brady and respect his ability and intangibles, but Jordan is way in front in my opinion. When you watch Brady, he makes the simple look easy. When he makes the clutch throw it looks like something every NFL quarterback could do. Jordan had all of that too - he never gets enough credit for how incredibly dedicated to mastering the fundamentals he was. And that is because of the fact that when you watched him play, his jaw dropping talent overwhelmed you. If Brady could throw like Aaron Rogers, run like Cam Newton and maintain all his his clutch abilities and decision making....then he would be the MJ of football. Jordan won 6 titles in 8 years and it would have been 8/8 if he didn’t take 2 years off for baseball. Maybe would have been 8/10 if Bulls didn’t blow it up too soon.

I think Brady is the Larry Bird of football if Larry took care of himself better and had stayed healthy. Bird’s wasn’t always the most physically gifted player but his teams always had a shot to win.

Jordan never beat a real team, and dominated with stacked teams in an expansion era with no rival.

Very well said.

When Jordan was out that first year after his retirement, Bulls won 55 games with Pippen and where a bad call away from probably making NBA finals... Tough to compare sports but when Brady was hurt with ACL, the Patriots went from 16-0 regular season to 11-5 missing the playoffs with a much easier schedule since they got real lucky with schedule that year. The Bulls were a great team but the competition was not that great by historical standards since the NBA added 6 teams in a short period of time, diluting the talent pool a ton. To Jordan's credit, with his exciting style of play and great ability he did help make the game more popular worldwide eventually increasing the talent pool many years later. Same thing with what Tiger Woods did.

I don't say this to denigrate Jordan but the competition he faced when he won championships was certainly below the mid to late 80's because of expansion. For example, he didn't even face Karl Malone and John Stockton at their true best. When Malone and Stockton were at their best, other teams in the west were actually better and usually had more than 2 high level players. Although not to the level of truly great teams, Seattle was excellent but when he faced them, Gary Payton was hurt.

That being said, I respect the opinions of people who do call Jordan GOAT basketball player even though I kind of disagree with it in the sense that I think if Lebron had been drafted by the Chicago Bulls and later inherited equivalent talent, he would have more championships against that diluted competition.

Jordan's true greatness from my perspective was shown with what he did against the 86 and 87 Celtics -- swept both times but remarkable performance in 86 especially -- and against Detroit in the losses and victory.

Jordan is one of those weird athletes that if you are a huge fan of the game, you kind of recognize he was more impressive in some of the losses than the series wins.

Going off against an injured Lakers team and then a Suns team that didn't play interior defense and had a somewhat old 6"4 Charles Barkley to provide interior defense was nowhere near as impressive as the stats suggest.

If I was going to make an argument for Jordan over Brady and Lebron -- who for sure benefited from weak and often terrible east but did a lot with junk teammates -- my argument would probably go Jordan as the last athlete whose prime in his 20's I feel like 95% confident it was done without PEDs of any sort. He was a damn exciting player to watch especially when he was facing genuine competition like the Pistons.

With so much money on the line and so much competitiveness when it comes to athletes, sadly I can't assume pretty much anyone isn't on PEDS.

[soxfan2003]

I love Tom Brady and respect his ability and intangibles, but Jordan is way in front in my opinion. When you watch Brady, he makes the simple look easy. When he makes the clutch throw it looks like something every NFL quarterback could do. Jordan had all of that too - he never gets enough credit for how incredibly dedicated to mastering the fundamentals he was. And that is because of the fact that when you watched him play, his jaw dropping talent overwhelmed you. If Brady could throw like Aaron Rogers, run like Cam Newton and maintain all his his clutch abilities and decision making....then he would be the MJ of football. Jordan won 6 titles in 8 years and it would have been 8/8 if he didn’t take 2 years off for baseball. Maybe would have been 8/10 if Bulls didn’t blow it up too soon.

I think Brady is the Larry Bird of football if Larry took care of himself better and had stayed healthy. Bird’s wasn’t always the most physically gifted player but his teams always had a shot to win.

Jordan never beat a real team, and dominated with stacked teams in an expansion era with no rival.

I'd probably put Gretzky first, he's way way ahead of any other hockey player and it's more of a world sport than football is now or basketball was in the MJ era. Ruth would be last as I'm not sure it's even indisputable that he's the best baseball player of all time.

Gretzky probably most dominant for his sport but I may not rank him highest since hockey is just accessible to less people. Realistically, most hockey players come from Canada, overseas where its cold and the cold states in the United States. Not many players from California or Texas or the south in general -- hockey fans correct me if I am wrong.

Barry Bonds on steroids has to get the award as best hitter of all time so I would give Bonds on roids as award as best baseball player that has ever played.
But I think to be fair to past legends, you do have to take into account how dominant they were for the eras that they played in.

I have no doubt if Ruth played baseball today and the sport was on the level, he would be ridiculous and step up his game as needed. He may have had to work much harder for it and had a few less hotdogs.

Somethings are judgement calls. I for sure don't think if Jessie Owens or Carl Lewis grew up at the same time/area as Usain Bolt that either of them would run as fast in the 100m. But give Owens and Lewis credit for different reasons. They both did long jump. And each year training methods improve and obviously Owens wasn't on PEDs like steroids or HGH.

But I sure do think if Ruth had modern training and injected himself with massive steroids/HGH, his only competition would be Barry Bonds on steroids and he would be better than Sosa and McGwire on PEDs.

[ermocrate]

Jordan certainly most exciting great basketball player ever with his pre titles play even more exciting. Despite Dallas meltdown, I do think Lebron a bit more valuable for his career -- I know...not a popular opinion -- but Jordan may deserve like Ruth deserves it over Bonds for just being first truly amazing performer in their respective sports. And Jordan more fun to watch. I am not a big hockey fan but even I recognized as a kid what Gretzky was doing was just ridiculous.

In no particular order, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, Carl Lewis, Michael Phelps and Muhammad Ali I think are the five post 1950 at least North American GOATS in individual sports. Boxing a difficult one but gotta give it to Ali since he was the best heavyweight when many of the best athletes went into boxing instead of football/basketball et cetera. Perhaps honorable mention to
Lindsey Vonn who seems like a complete psycho when it comes to skiing injured.

I do respect opinions of folks who say Russell or Wilt in basketball in the sense Wilt was so dominant he changed the rules. Imagine if dunks were worth 3 and 3's were just worth 2.

LeBron is a great physical specimen heavily helped Fromm an NBA desperately in need of a new face at the time especially I never his first few year, he wasn’t able to shoot to save his life and the number of walk, charging, over the back not called before he started to know how to play as a pro are infinite. Despite that he needed Wade to teach him how to win and has been Wade’s Robin in both the titles he won in Miami, the new he returned to Cleveland and there’s he was the leader but still need someone who closed for him. They are right now ridicously pumping two other stars, Giannis who’s very talented but not enough to not walk every single time and Harden, who’s amount of fouls taken I still ridiculous and fake in most cases. Anyway to me LBJ in no better than Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kareem, Russel, Chamberlain or Robertson.

Not to make this into a big thing in this thread, but that's blatantly untrue. LeBron was the unequivocally best player and it wasn't close. LeBron was supposed to win on a team that had Mo Williams as his second option? Winning 60+ games in those back to back seasons was nuts. He didn't need Wade to teach him anything. Aside from one really bad game 5, LeBron was killing us in that 2010 series, even the close out game he had a crazy triple (or near) double.

100% agree on Giannis...it's obnoxious playing him the calls he gets.

He got often out of control and was not going anywhere in term of personal playing improvement, He was the best player in Miami but he lacked in leadership, in that one aspect of the game he was helped big time from D.Wade also I think he helped a lot LeBron in giving him directions on how to take care of his body and improve his game... When he got back to Cleveland he was not perfect but still a decent leader. I'm not blaming him, someone is just a natural killer, someone is not, plus he didn't have the teachers other greats had.

[jmr07019]