I don't know anything about basketball. I could probably name at most five former NBA players and no current ones. In fact, for my own amusement I will now attempt to list all the basketball players I can think of.
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Shaq
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Michael Jordan
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Wilt Chamberlin.
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I listened to an episode of a podcast one time that argued that sports teams would actually perform better if the owners only recruited middle-of-the-road super-athletes rather than the current strategy of paying princely sums of money for one superstar player and then filling out the rest of the team with below-average super-athletes. One of the examples they talked about was some short white guy who scooted on his ass like a dog and by doing so was able to sink every shot he ever took. But his method of winning at the game was so unglamorous that owners knew they couldn't monetize him. Don't remember his name.
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Lebron James
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Kobe Bryant (I only learned who he was when he died)
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BeethovenAir Bud
I'm sure I could come up with one or two more if I really tried. Isn't there some white lady everyone is mad at for some reason? Caitlin Clark?
I've never watched a basketball game in my life. So I was shocked to learn that two of the best players currently in the roster are a Slovenian giant and the tallest Serb who has ever or will ever live. It's like when I learned some time ago that the greatest baseball player to ever live is a 6'4 Japanese man. It feels like it shouldn't be true. It would be like learning that the Macedonian Phalanx was actually best employed by some pre-Roman King of the Iberians. Such a thing is theoretically possible, but it feels like it shouldn't be true. There's no reason the tallest man east of the Vienna can't be a great basketball player or that a Japanese man can't be the king of baseball, but these are American sports. Americans should be the best at them. The best soccer player in the world should come from either Latam or France, if they were from America then something has gone wrong with the timeline. Rugby, Australia. Polo, Britain. E-sports, Korea. This is how the world is ordered. Also if it's not clear from the post I don't follow any sports, not just basketball.
The best soccer player in the world should come from either Latam or France, if they were from America then something has gone wrong with the timeline.
Or maybe we're considering women.
Quite a few Americans have been in the top ten, so it's not unreasonable to think one will top the list eventually.
As another European, I can't name many basketball players either. I'm pretty sure the copilot in Airplane!, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, was one though. And from DPRK news stories, Dennis Rodman, whose daughter Trinity was #5 on the footballers list last year.
One of the best aspects of soccer and basketball is the low material barrier to entry. You don't need much expensive equipment like most other sports, so a great player can come from almost anywhere in the world.
Yeah, which is why an "American" sport like basketball can have greats from outside the US and its 4 or 5% of the global population. Even with reduced outside interest, the ~20:1 outnumbering can turn out some fierce competition.
It's not actually that surprising when considering history, and hilariously, it all goes back to
and socialism. Also people from the Dinaric Alps are some of the tallest in the world, so when you add all that up, it's really a no-brainerI found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I used to play NBA jam when it was a Midway arcade game and you could do crazy dunks/shove people. or enter codes and be like Raiden from Mortal Kombat.
so I can probably name like 10 former players not in your list:
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Scotty Pippen
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Patrick Ewing
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Anfernee Hardaway
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Charles Barkley
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Magic Johnson
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Hakeem Alajuan (sp?)
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Dekembe Mutumbo
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Larry Bird
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Horace Grant
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Pete Marovich (I saw a movie about his early life).
Only 4/10 of these names have spelling errors in them, I think you know more about basketball than you’re letting on
If I tried really hard I might've been able to name Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. I've heard the names Scotty Pippen and Patrick Ewing but even under threat of bodily harm I probably couldn't have connected those names to basketball. When you said that you could play Raiden in NBA jam I thought some of the names on your list might be fake, as a joke. So initially I thought Ewing was an actor. And I thought Scotty Pippen was the protagonist of one of those older adolescent Fantasy book series, like The Chronicles of Narnia or Sabriel. But then I hit Barkley and Johnson and realized the list was entirely real.
Can you really blame me re: Scotty Pippen though? I mean his name is evocative of Pippin Took from LOTR, Pippi Longstocking, and Scott Pilgrim simultaneously.
tbh, I struggled a lot after the first 5 and almost gave up until I remembered Larry bird. and started trying to think of famous white dude basketball pros. I don't know why that lead me immediately to remembering Horace Grant, but if I'm honest it was probably because he was the first guy I knew of in basketball that had prescription glasses/goggles and back when I was a dorky kid with glasses, glasses were for dorky kids who suck at sports. so I remember thinking "if he can be a pro sports star... so can I?"
legit, almost all of my abilities to remember the names of pro sports athletes come from video games I played in middle school, so the name clusters are like snap shots in time and can be bizarrely obscure by now.
Video games were a huge boost to recognition for a lot of athletes. Prior to this, you had to read box scores to really commit these peoppe to memory. Maybe your big sports fans knew their own team's full rosters down to the 12th-man, and the top 3-6 from other relevant teams. Only the real dweebs bothered to know much more veyond that because you had to go looking for it.
Video games changed all that. You might pick the Milwaukee Bucks because you thought the logo was cool, and then you'd find yourself needing to substitute a point guard in for trash time
Prior to this, you had to read box scores to really commit these peoppe to memory.
This is collectable trading card erasure
Fair. I forgot about the card kiddies who memorized Stojko Vrankovich's statlines because they spent their entire weekly allowance for that deck and they were determined to get their money's worth.
When I was little my mom gave me a shoebox of her extra cards to try and get me started collecting. Those cards never left that shoebox, but I have carried an uncharacteristic knowledge of the ~1990 era NFL rookies to show for it.
If you collect WNBA trading cards, are you allowed to say that you have binders full of women?
totally. I know shit about hockey, except that in ~1993 if you let me pick the Pittsburg Penguins, I was gonna stuff it down the opposing teams throat and Mario "Le Magnifique" Lemieux was guaranteed to get a hat trick because he was the greatest player of all time.
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