Barozi said:
Soundwave said:
Wilt is basically a 90s player ... in the 60s. That's why he was abe to put up ridiculous numbers. But he is basically the exception.
Taking a 100 shots a game indicates a ridiculous style of play, playing in the modern era would be a rude awakening for these guys.
The 60s was not great basketball, I'm sorry if you think so, but come on. Things improve, and get better, sports in general have improved massively over the last 30 years due to things like TV (yes, being able to watch/study/break down game tape of every other athlete over and over again is a huge, and that footage being shown to millions of poeple worldwide encourages millions more to try and play the sport), training in the weight room, not to mention huge financial incentive (become a multi-millionaire, etc.), wildly more advanced coaching techniques, far superior development of players from a young age, etc. etc. etc.
Most athletes from the 60s would get their ass handed to them today against modern athletes and basketball is probably more extreme not less because it's by its nature a sport more dependant on athletcism and size.
You take the best tennis player from the 60s and put the against Nadal or Federer in their peak and they'd get wrecked. You take the best hockey team from the 60s and they would lose 10-1 to the Pittsburgh Penguins of today, I mean shit in the 60s/70s players in hockey would go have a cigarette in between periods, lol.
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Definitely agree with your post.
Modern athletes are better than past ones and that's basically a fact. Just look at all the world records in athletics, swimming etc. and tell me how many of them still haven't been beaten since the 60s.
Same can be said for team sports. In football (you know which one), it's very obvious as the game has become so much faster that even teams from the early 90s wouldn't stand 60 minutes on the pitch if they tried to keep up with modern teams.
And that's just the athelicism aspect. As you mentioned there have been many improvements in studying past games, more tactics, new rules, which alone could totally invalidate tactics that used to be advantageous and so on.
Now if these old athletes were born much later and thus still active today, I bet they could still be the best of their (new) era, but defintiely vastly superior to their past alter egos.
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I think people underestimate the effect of television too ... imagine being an athlete in the 50s/60s any basically never having seen some of your opponents play or only seeing it maybe once a month at best, lol. NBA was basically not televised except for the Finals until the 70s.
The talent pool for sports is so much bigger as TV become a staple and all games were televised. You could study/watch the greats, get inspiried, want to be like that, etc. etc. etc. Today an athlete watches constant footage of other competitors, breaking down every little nuance of their game and adjusting their training towards that, you have guy's like Kobe who obviously watched every little thing Jordan did for example and copied that. In the 60s half the players didn't even train in the summer (that's what training camp literally was for), they had to have part time jobs to pay their bills.
How can you compare that to a modern player who trains 2-6 hours almost every day in the summer with regimented diet and hours also spent in the weight room?
Wilt, Russell, and Jerry West IMO could still play well in today's era, though not nearly as dominant, but a lot of other guys from the 50s/60s would be completely exposed as mediocre players if they had to play against modern talent.
