both bird and maravich could dunk better than any player in WNBA history. give me a group of 50 random humans. i take the ones that can dunk, you take the ones that cant. i will win. by a lot. the examples you gave make my point, not yours. take the men and womens teams at LSU. put them together, all of them, both genders. now divide the team by dunking ability. you have exactly and precisely divided the better players, all of them men, and the shit players, all of them women. its hard to find a a better single metric to divide humans for basketball talent. and the two very poor counterexamples you listed, bird and pete, would be in the dunking group. because being able to dunk is very important. i doubt a single non-dunker has played for the LSU men in decades. and no dunker has ever played for the women. even waters dunks at 5'9. and the women who are 6'5 do not.
i stand corrected. earlier i said no lsu women have dunked, i was wrong, sylvia fowles once dunked. she was the 6th woman in history to do it. most colleges have never had a womens dunk. LSU happens to have fowles, a hall of famer, the leading rebounder in global history of women. she dunked.
I saw Maravich play in person, on TV, and in videos more times than I can possibly remember. I never saw him dunk. Bird dunked so rarely they once made fun of it in a commercial he did (McD's, I think). But the point is still valid. Bob Cousy. One of the greatest player in basketball history. I guarantee you that little 6-foot white dude from the '50s never dunked. Dunking is entertaining and it is an impressive athletic skill, but it is not the end all, be all measuring stick for basketball. Let's take your random group and refine it. LSU basketball. Let's have a 3-point shooting contest, another game component that takes a specific skill set. You can have arguably the greatest player in LSU history, Shaquille O'Neal. I'll take Seimone Augustus. How much money do you want to put on this contest?
Gymnastics is probably the only sport a man would actually have to have some training in because us fatties couldn’t do any of that sport. Then again, the women would have to train as well.
i did not say maravich dunks in games. thats never been the issue. its the size and/or athleticism to dunk that is at issue. bird almost never dunks, but again, he can. he is tall and athletic. those are the things that makes you able to dunk. both maravich and bird can absolutely, positively, dunk. as to bob cousy, i know nothing about him but i suspect if he played today would either suck, or can dunk. "but it is not the end all, be all measuring stick for basketball" nobody said it is. but its a great metric to separate good basketball players from normal people. everyone in the NBA can dunk. what percent of the general population can? 2%? its not a coincidence that every man LSU has can dunk and none of the women can. you made a point about free throw shooters. again, lets do a thought experiment. take the womens and mens team and divide them by the best dunkers, and also by the best free throw percentages (the women have a smaller ball that fits more easily in the hoop so its not actually fair). now, i select the half of the players that are the best dunkers. you can have the best free throw shooters. which team would win? mine, because my team is exactly the mens team. the good players. i challenge you tho think of a better metric we can divide people by to create a good team
thats true, and also womanhood is anathema to good gymasting. the best gymasts are often 12 years old chinese girls in the olympics illegally. the LSU college women are way way over the hill. the one sport women are actually at good or better at is super duper very long distance swimming, and its because women have kinda good low level endurance and also they are fatter so they float better and expend less energy to swim. so if you have a 150 mile swimming race, i wouldnt be suprised if a woman won. any other sport, basically no chance women are better at the sports that might also be won by a lucky bag of doritos in the wind
Great debate. I care more about women’s basketball and softball than I do men’s track and field. I think softball plays Thursday. If they dont challenge for a NC not sure our coach is great.
i like to watch LSU womens soccer kinda, because i really like soccer, but they are super terrible. especially the goalkeeping which is putrid. i think with 2 months are training i could make the womens team.
