See my post above to disprove this whole post & prove why CC is already the GOAT!
I’ll put it right below this post actually.
The 2nd greatest woman’s b-ball player of all time??
- Thread starter ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAWK
- Start date
I’ll put it right below this post actually.
The overall talent level is irrelevant to how good they were. That's like saying Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle were just average baseball players and Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West were just run of the mill basketball players.
The 1986 Celtics had five HOF's (Bird, Parish, McHale, Dennis Johnson, Walton) with Scott Wedman (2 time All-Star) and Walton coming off the bench. Ainge was pretty good too. That's how good the 86 Celtics were.
Danny Ainge is the only athlete ever to be named high school All American in Football, Basketball and Baseball
As crazy as that is, Joe Mauer's H.S. accomplishments might be even more impressive. #1 pick in the MLB draft, #1 high school QB in the nation his senior year and averaged 20 points a game in basketball.
Ryne Sandberg was drafted late because he had already signed a D1 letter of intent to play QB. Was a Parade All American and there are still those that saw him as a QB that say he was a better QB than baseball player. Just an Ok basketball player, first team all city…not a sport he concentrated on.
The overall talent level is very relevant….a good player playing against bad players looks even better. The talent that Ruth, Mays and Mantle played against was light years ahead of what those women played against. Many of the star women gymnasts from the past wouldn’t even make a college team these days. Same with women’s basketball….many of the stars back in the day would be average players today. Clark is playing against the most talent there has ever been in women’s basketball…these other women, not so much.
Cheryl Miller would have been a star in any era. 6-2, incredible athlete could handle the ball and play anywhere on the floor. Of course the talent pool overall is better as there are more opportunities for women now, but the USC teams she played on had other Olympic players and all americans as well. You look at the athleticism of the Iowa women's team that made the Final 4 under Vivian and they had some players and definitely had some athletes. And they weren't playing Coe College or the sisters of the poor.
Cheryl Miller would be good today, but I doubt she would dominate like she did back then. There just wasn’t enough great players back then to get a good sense of what she would be like today. It would be like a great D3 men’s basketball player being called the GOAT because he dominated all the D3 athletes he played against (and some of those athletes are very good), but would he dominate D1? Maybe, maybe not…but I doubt anyone would call him the GOAT.
Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals in the ‘72 Olympics-ALL in world record times, yet none of those times would have qualified him for the ‘84 US team tryouts. Phelps then had 8 golds in one Olympics, 7 in World Record times and the 8th a new Olympic record, yet none of his individual world records stands today. If I understand you correctly, we shouldn’t consider either one the greatest of all time and their sports.
So if someone breaks all the D1 records playing at the D3 level, they should be considered the GOAT? What about a guy who breaks all the records playing minor league baseball, is he the GOAT? It matters who you play against in team sports.
She played against the best available at the time. And was better than her brother growing up who became an NBA legend.
How is it possible to break a D-1 record if you are playing in D-3? Essentially, by your standards the GOAT will never exist for more than a brief passing of time because the next best thing is always on the horizon.
Nancy Lieberman was talented and physically athletic enough to go through a training camp with the Lakers. Even as great as CC is, I doubt she would be able to physically last a week in that environment where she was tested. So please stop using the argument that just because she played in the 70's against weak competition that she was not able to compete.
Put it to you this way, is Caitlin a better basketball player than Connor? Of course she is. Would Connor beat her maybe 10-2 in a 1:1 game to 10. Yep. And the fact is she may not even be able to get her shot off against him. Same comparison of Reggie to Cheryl.
I never said she wasn’t able to compete. I said it’s hard to judge players of the past in women’s basketball because the competition was putrid. And women’s sports are different than men’s sports because back in the day, very few women played seriously and the quality of players overall was bad. Hell, it wasn’t that long ago when women played basketball in the fall and played 6 on 6.
So someone in D-3 can’t score more career points than Caitlin Clark? They can’t have more assists? Records are numbers and players at the D-3 level can exceed numbers.
No, Caitlyn is not a better basketball player than Connor. She is a better basketball player than over 99% of the women out there.
Just because you "play the game better" at a certain level of competition doesn't make you a better player than someone else more physically gifted who is also an awfully good basketball player in their own right at a much higher level of competition.
Reggie was a much better basketball player than Cheryl, AIAEC.
I think you are greatly over valuing the totality of talent. Sure there are MORE Cheryl Miller types than before, but the bottom end talent in the WNBA is not impressive. I’m not disagreeing we have more talent or thst we have impressive top end talent, but you just aren’t aware there were some GREAT women’s ballers in the 70s/80s. I doubt you took the time to watch the video I posted to start with but you should look those two women up magic Paula and Maria Hortencia from Brazil. They were fabulous.
It should be said I have a long-standing belief soccer, bleeding into the suburbs and then rural America has greatly helped to increase the general athleticism of the population and especially the re-emergence of the white athlete.
Just look at the University of Iowa football team. We have a remarkable amount of Uber athletic white football players and I’ll bet if you look backwards, most of them played soccer in their young years.
I would. No other one person has accomplished what they have.
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Of course they can - But it would be a D-3 record. Not a D-1 record.
Not true. Go watch their videos where Reggie says she was the best player in the neighborhood boy or girl. But you're to biased.
If the bottom end talent in the WNBA nowadays is not good, imagine what the bottom end talent level in the college game was in the 70’s. That’s my point.
Of course he’s going to say that, it was his sister. I seriously doubt Cheryl Miller could have played in the NBA in any era.
Absolutely. There has been no medical advancements. There has been no more nutritional information since Spitz competed.
He probably would be slower now since he would have to swim through everyone else’s wake.
It’s not like we take ligaments out of your knees these days and put them in your elbows to extend your career. Crazy talk.
Pretty easy to play in a league that kept out many of superstars of the era.
In your world Roger Bannister was trash. Carl Lewis sucked. Edwin Moises needed lessons on how to run.
People get faster. Games evolve. Technology gets better.
Even in a simple sport like running…you literally cannot compare the present superstars and their times to runners of the past. The equipment a runner has today is night and day different than the equipment of 25 years ago.
But you are going to tell us that you somehow know that Cheryl Miller would not be a star today…you really think a 6’2 forward with a sweet shot, had a knack for getting to the ball either by blocking a shot or getting the rebound wouldn’t be a superstar today?
You must think that she is dumb or something…her physical size matches up or exceeds the stars of today. Granted her coaching records sort of seem to say she has that knack for knowing how to play the game.
Where in the world did I say Cheryl Miller would not be a star today? In fact I said the opposite. But I also said I’m not sure she would be the GOAT playing against the talent level of today compared to what she played against. And your other examples are just silly…I never said they were trash, just not the GOAT. I agree with your statement that you can’t compare past athletes with today’s, so to say someone from 30-40 years ago is the GOAT in women’s basketball is just absurd.
Maybe I know too much about hoop but I have to bump this thread!
I’d pay good $$$ to watch the 2nd best woman’s player ever, go one on one against the 3rd greatest woman’s player ever.
Winner gets the 4th goodest woman’s player ever one on one.
Because Caitlin, as/is the no.1 GOAT, is such a blowout compared to the no.2 bestest woman ever that it’s getting almost disgusting!!
I’d pay good $$$ to watch the 2nd best woman’s player ever, go one on one against the 3rd greatest woman’s player ever.
Winner gets the 4th goodest woman’s player ever one on one.
Because Caitlin, as/is the no.1 GOAT, is such a blowout compared to the no.2 bestest woman ever that it’s getting almost disgusting!!
