Highest reasonable peak ranking for George Mikan?

[penbeast0]

Highschool was an exaggeration lol I live in la now so I know most highschool players are trash, but If your criteria is time portalling and suiting them up with like a month of adjusting then I think it’s fair to say he’s not gonna be close to an NBA level player at all

If he grew up today that’s a different story of course

Wasn’t bhullar 7ft5? Making pro basketball in general across the world isn’t crazy it’s just in some areas you barely get paid, in indonesia the kids on the U-17 team would get washed by a decent middle schooler here

I think even there you are wrong. You get the occasional special athletic talent or unique size/quickness blend in any country and a decent (rather than a nationally ranked prospect) wouldn't have the size to cope. That and the top prospects anywhere as civilized as Indonesia are getting the equivalent of AAU coaches looking to train and possibly cash in on the really top talent so they are much closer to their peers here than the average middle schooler/high schooler would be.

[MyUniBroDavis]

Highschool was an exaggeration lol I live in la now so I know most highschool players are trash, but If your criteria is time portalling and suiting them up with like a month of adjusting then I think it’s fair to say he’s not gonna be close to an NBA level player at all

If he grew up today that’s a different story of course

Wasn’t bhullar 7ft5? Making pro basketball in general across the world isn’t crazy it’s just in some areas you barely get paid, in indonesia the kids on the U-17 team would get washed by a decent middle schooler here

I think even there you are wrong. You get the occasional special athletic talent or unique size/quickness blend in any country and a decent (rather than a nationally ranked prospect) wouldn't have the size to cope. That and the top prospects anywhere as civilized as Indonesia are getting the equivalent of AAU coaches looking to train and possibly cash in on the really top talent so they are much closer to their peers here than the average middle schooler/high schooler would be.

Are you talking about my second point in terms of players overseas, or the mikan not being an nba player today if you don’t let him train for more than a month or two

If it’s the second point, while I get some players who are hella athletic and tall can pick up basketball late, it’s usually a “trained for 2-3 years instead” I can’t think of anyone who got it in a month. If it’s an unfair criteria that’s fair, but i said “depending on criteria” and I think it is a valid viewpoint

If it’s the first point, I’m only saying that because I’ve played a kid on the U-17 team before and he really wasn’t impressive, the top guys would probably be big enough to just be too tall or something but outside of that the overall team wasn’t much better than our highschool team

This doesn’t apply to every single place of course but I was just kind of saying making pro basketball in some countries really isn’t too hard at all, at least in countries where basketball isn’t super developed and the wages are really bad for pro bball athletes

[Johnlac1]

Also worth noting Bob Kurland who was probably MIkan's equal but chose a high paying job while playing semi pro ball back when a lot of companies had them. They played h2h 5 times and Kurland basically played him to a draw and would get Mikan to foul out.

The few clips of Kurland available shows him looking pretty mobile. It would have really helped the early NBA if Kurland had chosen a pro career and they could have featured Mikan-Kurland matchups.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I've long since abandoned the idea that I can legitimately get behind an all-eras list of all-time greats and have it be ranked any kind of fair. I'm pretty much a "3pt era or before" kind of guy as a starting point these days, because there are just so many differences as you go back 50, 60, 70 years and more.

Wisdom was spoken here.

A lot of the older fans on this board have helped open my eyes to that basic approach, you know? Like, why is my benchmark taking people out of the time and context in which they trained and played and putting them into the modern era? Why compare guys who had second jobs and all that to guys who get paid $40 mil a year, with whole medical teams and airplanes and whatever else? Different shoes, different rims, different court surfaces, different training regimens. Yeah, the game has evolved, but what if we enforced palming and traveling and took away the 3pt line and reinstituted hand checking and illegal defense and narrowed the lane, removed the restricted area blah blah blah? Why always the modern bias of which I have been dreadfully guilty on many occasions? What about flipping it around? Dudes like penbeast and 70sfan and writerman from back in the day, and others on the PC Board projects have done a lot of work to showcase certain players and remind us of different ways to think. It's been fairly awesome, to be honest.

I always say, moreover, that pioneers need different skills to dominate.
Guys today must understand and then learn what they are thought and execute it perfectly, but those guys had to figure all their stuff out and the edge was coming from innovation.
It's not so obvious that a young LeBron or Kobe could have done that, for instance.

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[tsherkin]

I always say, moreover, that pioneers need different skills to dominate.
Guys today must understand and then learn what they are thought and execute it perfectly, but those guys had to figure all their stuff out and the edge was coming from innovation.
It's not so obvious that a young LeBron or Kobe could have done that, for instance.

The contexts weren't the same, for sure. As I said, it's one of the reasons I've come to dislike cross-era comparisons, especially as the gap starts to widen past large changes in rules and strategies, and certainly far enough back that the foundational elements of the industry/sport were different. Cousy was an insurance salesman during a portion of his NBA career, if memory serves, because it wasn't paying him enough initially to sustain him. They took buses everywhere, wore Chuck Taylors, the courts were different, they didn't have decades and decades of history and analysis and money behind the sport, the medicine, etc, etc, etc. It's just... not the same. So comparing backwards is always tough.

[ty 4191]

I'd love to see their arguments for why Babe Ruth was not the greatest baseball player ever - and Ruth played two decades prior to Mikan.

How much time do you have? We've been debating that at www.baseball-fever.com for 22 years, and it is by NO means a lock stock and barrel closed and shut issue, Sir.

[kcktiny]

How much time do you have? We've been debating that at www.baseball-fever.com for 22 years, and it is by NO means a lock stock and barrel closed and shut issue, Sir.

All the time in the world. Lets hear your arguments.

But I also want to hear not just what Ruth would do today, but plausible arguments for what the stars of today (or the past 20-30 some years) would have done back then.

You know - back in the 1910s and 1920s - before penicillin, vaccines for polio, measles, adequate surgery, before steriods, daily use of weight-lifting equipment, professional trainers, team provided nutrition - anything else I am missing?

By 1930 Ruth had twice as many career home runs as any other MLB player, despite having only the 39th most plate appearances among AL and NL players. Would love to hear your arguments for why he is not the greatest baseball player ever.

And don't forget, this is a player that the first 5 years of his baseball career was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball (in the late 1910s).