B-Ball Freak wrote:Captain_Caveman wrote:31to6 wrote:Teams the Bulls beat on the way to the finals: 1991 Pistons 50 wins you're right I'd forgotten how quickly they dropped off. Best Knicks team = 60 wins under COY Riley in 1993. Best Magic team = 60 wins in 1996 with prime Shaq. Best Pacers team = 58 wins in 1998 under COY Bird only team to make the Jordan Bulls sweat in a game 7 because Bird is Basketball Jesus.
I don't think I'll see 6-in-18 in the NFL again from the same coach and QB that's absolutely ridiculous. But I don't expect to see 6-in-6 in the NBA again either. Random thought -- and obviously football's infinitely more of a team game with one-off playoff randomness, but in Brady's most dominant individual years they didn't win it all.
B-Ball Freak wrote:Lol at "Jordan never beat a real team", the internet never ceases to amaze me.
If you came of age in the 90s, and grew up watching Gatorade ads, of course you think those 90s teams were great.
I came up in the 80s and know otherwise. The Celtics had to walk through Monsterland in the 80s to even get a chance to play the Lakers. Bird would have had like 9 rings if all he had to do was play beat teams like the Ewing Knicks on his way to play the Drexler Blazers or whoever the hell was on that Suns team with Barkley.
MJ was a great player, but put him in the 80s and he's lucky to win two. Put Kobe, LeBron, Bird, Magic, Duncan in the 90s, and they have even more rings.
Trash MJ to prop up Brady, I get it...its ok, they can both be GOATs.
I don't need to prop up Brady. He does a fine job of it all by himself.
As to MJ, sure... great player, but also overrated by people of a certain age. Dude never learned how to play team ball, and didn't win anything until he was 30. Granted he was up against real teams before he had one of his own, but it also wasn't very close, either. He came up in an era where athletes still got hyped and exalted. Rick Reilly writing constant glowing articles about him, and Nike and Gatorade telling a generation of kids to be like Mike. But if you were older, and understood what great basketball was, you also saw the side of him that was selfish and not that cerebral. You saw the league change rules to help market him. And you saw a slew of **** franchise teams that watered-down the league and left him with no true rival.
Said as far back as 2010 that LeBron was playing at a level higher than MJ ever did, and still believe it now. He'll never be the GOAT, because that argument was long ago -- by people of a certain age -- made to be about a ring count (while somehow ignoring that there was once another star with nearly twice as many of them as MJ has).
Back to Brady, well... there is no such rival for him, and if we are talking about the respective GOATs in each major US team sport, that is hallowed ground and the standards are higher. Winning 6 rings in no joke in any sport or era, but despite living an an era where we have become a culture of criticism, who hate and dissect these great athletes 24/7 instead of washing their balls in Sports Illustrated cover stories every couple of weeks, Brady has been more impressive. His kill list is (much) more impressive, having taken out no less than 7 MVPs or co-MVPs in the playoffs during their MVP seasons. The guy is a serial killer. He's not in Vegas drinking and gambling. He is prepping all year just to take you out. He never had to wait to have a real team put around him to start winning championships, and takes them to the AFCCG or the Super Bowl even when he doesn't. And for all the talk about MJ's competitive streak, he is also a guy who retired in the prime of his career... twice.
Verdict, MJ was phenomenal. Brady is better.
