Actually, I quite like basketball.
I can't believe I was owned at comment 1. Although the standard formulation is "rather".
As in "Actually, I rather like Anne Hathaway."
How are we accounting for era here? This is a decent true-talent-of-their-era list (though including Rodman is somewhat nuts IMO) but it's totally unclear to me that this group would be dominant in today's NBA. I mean you usually have to have an implicit relative-to-era for GOAT discussions, but that seems different when you're assembling a GOAT starting five.
Anne Hathaway couldn't rebound for shit compared to Rodman.
I mean, the starting five hypothesis 's different because you're by definition assembling players from different eras to create a "team" and that seems really hard. I mean would George Mikan play well with LeBron? Maybe?
it's totally unclear to me that this group would be dominant in today's NBA
Really? Players lift more weights these days, but these aren't Mikan-era players; none of these guys was shooting a two-handed set shot. I think they'd be fine.
And if you have time to kill (lots of it) this is the ultimate geek-out on the greatness of Dennis Rodman.
That guy is at 538 now, for whatever that's worth.
Tactics and strategy have changed so much, it's not just lifting weights. If your mostly-80s/90s dream team was playing the 2014-2015 Golden State Warriors, would they win? Not sure. Bird, your 3, wasn't much of a 3 point shooter; neither were Magic and the 1 and Jordan at the 2. I mean, you'd have Magic+Jordan, and it's not like those guys couldn't shoot threes, but still.
Also, are we getting the athlete at the peak individual season or at some average point in their careers? I mean obviously you choose MJ on either method, but it makes a difference for some of the other picks.
Do you have to specify a year/age for each player on the team? Or are you somehow choosing them based on their total body of work? (And if the latter, ok, but at what level are they playing on your team?) I ask mostly because of your point about Shaq. I agree Kareem had a more impressive career, but I'm not sure that Shaq wasn't better at his peak. He just slid downhill pretty quickly.
Addressing both this point and the point in comment 4, it might be more interesting to debate the best possible starting 5 from any particular year, assuming the players all would perform as well as they did (or would have) performed that year.
This would be an interesting thing to model but hard. There's lots of data but really probably not many degrees of freedom for the analyses you'd need to separate history effects from cohort effects from the Laker's coach looking like an extra in Wall Street. Plus, the interactions with teammates.
One really boring way to do it would be to check this list, pull the players by position, and assume you get the player at their peak season and don't need to account for era. That would give you
1 - Chris Paul 08-09
2 - MJ 88-89
3 - Dr. J 75-76
4 - LeBron 07-08
5 - David Robinson 93-94
Now that definitely feels worse to me than the team you picked, but is it?
Actually, the list in 13 is Laker-free, so it can't be right.
Bird, your 3, wasn't much of a 3 point shooter
Bird had a stretch of years where he shot over 40% from three. That's as good as anyone outside of a few shooting specialists. He didn't take nearly as many as Steph Curry, but he didn't take just 50, either.
The age/year question is interesting. Who knows? Best individual season? Most of these guys played long enough to have a great talent season and a great wily veteran season--tough to say.
Obviously, the inevitable end of a world that doesn't murder every participant in a fantasy league is games designed to test hypotheses that let you study the contribution of each player controlling for teammates, opponents, coaching, and the like.
In other words, ogged is killing sports.
Another problem is that there are a million ways to slice the stats, and no way to account for how they'd all play together (which makes this a nice discussion question). You say David Robinson had a great year, I say Hakeem ate him alive when they were both at their peak, etc.
Moby, you might enjoy the link to the Rodman thing. It's a landmark blogosphere sports stats geekout.
It's only hard to account for how they'd play together because the schedule is a shitty experimental design for those questions.
I'm not even sure Hakeem (peak) was better than Tim Duncan (peak).
Thanks but I can't math now. Drinking.
Also, I never got into professional sports. I like college, because of the more pure exploitation.
You could put Duncan in without a lot of argument.
I'm only following the Steelers because Anne Hathaway has been in a movie with a scene filmed on Heinz Field.
Yeah, I think if pressed, considering some vague rule like "you get him at around his peak, but not necessarily his peak season, and have to account for career and whether he had longevity, and don't worry much or at all about era" I'd probably go:
1 - Magic
2 - MJ
3 - LeBron
4 - Duncan
5 - Kareem
That feels pretty much right. Also I think all those guys could play together pretty dang well. Maybe you swap Russell for Kareem, as much as it pains me to say it.
I can't really say much, but I can't help but feel uncomfortable with the narrow time range of this set of players; it's like a 70-y.o. New Yorker arguing that all of the best baseball players just happened to play for the Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants in the 1950s. Those were very, very talented teams, but come on.
That said, the main thing I notice is how much ogged seems to be selecting for versatility--most of these guys were superb all-arounders*. Is it possible that (say) MJ/Magic plus 3 specialists gives you a better outcome?
*not that all 5 are super-balanced players, but none of them is anything like a specialist (Rodman would probably qualify there)
35.last: Yes, since with all of the other offensive fire power you would probably want a more defensive center.
I got drunk so I decided to mail city council tomorrow. Doug eventually stopped having his staff reply to me. I'm trying to avoid that with the new guy.
I don't know much about basketball, but I am kind of wondering what was the longest all-boy thread in Unfogged history. You'd want to do that by era, obviously.
And is the longest all-girl thread longer, or shorter?
As for the peak year question, that seems a bit unfair, because there are probably outlier seasons that would bring in some players who are clearly not the absolute elite. Maybe look at either 3 year windows or cherry-pick 3 best seasons, to get some sense of a player's deeper strengths. (on preview, 25.1 is about right)
As for era, there's 2 parts: strength/training/medical advances, and strategy/style. The first part you handle by leveling out/looking at context: if Hakeem was the biggest/strongest of his era, then he'd be among the biggest/strongest of our era if he'd only been born later. That doesn't help the real old timers, but it gets you pretty much anyone from the shot clock era, or maybe from Wilt through today.
For the second part, it's worth remembering that changes in style aren't "advances" as such (just like evolution wasn't "leading" to humanity): they're where we've gotten to over time, but a mediocre coach isn't smarter than Red Auerbach because he's using 60 more years of invention. Point being, a player of today time-shifted backwards wouldn't necessarily run wild over the old timers, because he doesn't know how to play their style either.
Shorter but it can start again with much less of a rest.
31.3 approaches one of my peeves, talking about tennis players of yore as being obviously outclassed by today's players. Aside from strength/training, really all anybody's talking about is racquet technology, and why on earth does Federer get credit for using racquets designed and manufactured by somebody else? Give him a wooden racquet and send him back to 1977, and can he beat Bjorn Borg? Maybe, but the fact that he can hit a ball really hard, and hit effectively with a sweet spot that is almost literally larger than Bjorn's entire racquet head, is question-begging at its worst. I bet Saddam's army could have kicked the shit out of Napoleon's, as long as he gets to keep the modern weapons.
I guess, but the era thing just makes it impossible. I mean Bill Russell was absolutely the best defender of all time relative to era, but I'm not even sure that reconstituted 1965 Bill Russell would be a particularly effective defensive player today.
Before I posted 31, I was totally thinking along the lines of 29/30.
34: You can never eliminate this problem, but I guess here's one way to think of it: was Russell GOAT defender because he was like a foot taller than everyone else, and it was like a college kid playing against Jr. HSers? Or did he have other skills that would translate? Was he especially well-suited to his era, or did he do well in many aspects?
As I say, no definitive answers, but I think you get some sense of how to discount. None of them were historic talents, of course, but think about a team like the '90s Knicks: in most other eras, they'd have been a terrible team, because few eras allowed that much hard contact (among other things that allowed them to excel--Starks strikes me as a guy who'd do well in some decades but be unplayable in others, just for his physicality and skillset). So those guys get steeply discounted. By contrast, MJ's Bulls, their contemporaries and rivals, could compete in most eras. In 1992, they were kind of close to each other; plunk them down in 2013, and the Bulls could compete, while the Knicks would suck.
I think the only no-brainers are Jordan and LeBron. Beyond that you want to start thinking about what would make the lineup work. You want a point guard who is good off the ball, since LeBron and Jordan are going to dominate the ball. The Jordan teams never used a traditional point guard, and LeBron slots nicely into the Pippen point forward role. Steph Curry from last year is a pretty natural choice (Nash is another obvious option, but he's a clear step down defensively from Curry. Kidd after he learned to shoot from 3 is another possibility, for more size and defense.) For the rest you really want defense and rebounding. Probably some subset of Rodman, Garnett, Duncan, and Olajuwon.
Another way of thinking about this, is that the Bulls team from 95-96 is pretty clearly the best team, so let's start with that and only sub in people who are clear improvements in ways that don't mess things up. I'm also going to say Kerr was in their crunch time lineup over Harper, even though Harper started (not sure if that's really true). So Curry is my rich-man's Kerr, can't improve on Jordan, LeBron is my rich-man's Pippen, can't improve on Rodman, and any top center is an improvement on Longley. So: Curry, Jordan, James, Rodman, Olajuwon.
Russell over Kareem, for sure. Otherwise, I'd take your list against the field, I think it's that good.
But the methodology in 38 just recreates the era problem by selecting one of the better teams. The 96 Bulls were set up to run the triangle offense, which only worked at a particular time and with a particular set of players. Not sure you would ever run that with Curry at the 1.
I don't have anything meaningful to contribute re: basketball. I watched it a fair bit in the 90s when it was on UK TV, but have lost track.
But generally, on sports over time, I think anyone who thinks any of the classic soccer teams, or soccer players, of the past would have much of a chance against a modern team, is kidding themselves. Everyone is so much faster, and fitter. I'd guess the same would apply to rugby. There were genius flair players of the past (soccer and rugby) who'd still be genius flair players now, but as a team game, things have progressed massively.
Everyone is so much faster, and fitter.
I thought so, too, but is it really true? (There's also 33's point about technology.) Cycling provides an interesting way to disaggregate the two, since for awhile they had two categories for the "how far can you go in an hour?" record, one frozen at 1972-era technology, the other allowed to vary. The 1972-set record was only broken 30 years later, and that barely (.02%).
The equivalent one-hour-run record sees more progress, but it's still less dramatic than I would have thought: 3% in 40 years.
I picked these because they seem good proxies for "being fast over an extended period of time, due to fitness training".
Now, it's possible that these results are concealing the real shift, which is that before, only the total crazy outliers could approach these results, and now, a ton of lesser athletes are able to, even if the record itself hasn't moved much.
I'm also not sure how this information translates to a team sport like basketball, which I barely understand. I think the second effect--better training gets even 2nd-tier athletes near 1970-record levels of fitness--would be the more relevant one, because now superstars can't easily dominate through their superstar fitness alone. So I guess on net I'm still siding with ttaM: even if we assume the most athletic of today's basketball stars are probably only 5% more athletic, whatever that means, than those of the 70s, they need to stand out against lesser lights who are now considerably more athletic than the 2nd-tier ones of the 70s.
But as I said, I don't know basketball at all. Just thought it was worth complicating the 'so much faster and fitter' point. And to be fair, I was probably giving an uncharitable misreading, since what he meant was probably just that soccer players are much faster and fitter which may well be totally true, period.
re: 42
I think with soccer, it's definitely true, and with rugby it's dramatically true. Modern rugby players are a completely different size and shape. Bigger and leaner and faster. Whereas before only forwards would be 200lbs plus, you've now got backs [the fast, technical, try-scoring guys] who are huge. 220lb guys with sub-11 second 100 metre times.
Take a look at:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/27/sport/rugby-sporting-physique-compared/
If you watch soccer matches from the 70s, and I've watched entire classic World Cup games when they've been reshown recently, it looks like they are all strolling about, and taking nice long rests. I don't think the basic technique is any worse, and there's a lot of beautiful play on display, but it's unquestionably slower, and less intense.
I don't think I know enough about basketball to say if the same trend is there.
Although I am reminded of a nice joke, from Jinky Johnstone, the Celtic player from the 1960s and 70s.
Asked by Paul McStay, the then Celtic captain, at a reunion event for the team that won the European Cup in 1967, how the then Celtic team [early 90s] would do against the 1967 team:
Johnston: "It would probably be a draw."
McStay: "Well, that's very flattering to think the current team draws comparisons with that great team of the 1960s."
Johnston: "Well, you have to remember, we are all in our 60s now."
43: Stephen Jay Gould had a rather elegant argument that first-rank baseball players are getting, overall, better, based on the lack of really good scores for batsmen in modern baseball; you'd get a really good score, he argued, only when a first-class batsman was facing a not-quite-as-good pitcher and could knock him all over the field. Now that everyone in every team was clustered around the top level, that didn't happen so often.
Rugby, too, has gone from amateur to professional, which must make a big difference.
44. I've seen a similar gag about cricket attributed to Donald Bradman.
47. I've heard it as "How would Ted Williams do in baseball today?" (Obvs. heard some years ago.)
Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9)'s method is a good one. The best players on each team are going to be the best shooters, but on this sort of team you are going to need defense and rebounding from some players.
Rodman was cut from his high school basketball team because he was too short. He had a growth spurt after high school then made the NBA. Now he is on a bunch of these best team ever lists. The NBA is about height.
The NBA and dating Madonna, I'd bet.
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There is a poster up in the corridor recruiting women for STEM fields that says "Do you have an engineer in you?" How wrong is it that my first thought was "Would you like one?"
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It would also be wrong to send out an email that said "I am sorry to inform you that we will not be accepting your proposal. Please know that this does not reflect on your Kantian worth as a human being."
Please know that this does not reflect on your Kantian worth as a human being.
"The implications for your utilitarian worth are left as an exercise for the reader."
I was out yesterday, but agree with most of what's been said.
But I have to admit, if we're playing with modern rules I might be tempted to go full pace-and-space. Using this logic:
Another way of thinking about this, is that the Bulls team from 95-96 is pretty clearly the best team, so let's start with that and only sub in people who are clear improvements in ways that don't mess things up.
What about starting with the 2014-15 Warriors who, like the Bulls, lead the league in both offensive and defensive efficiency and tied for the most wins of any team in the last 15 years, playing in one of the toughest conferences ever (definitely tougher competition than DAL faced in their 67 win season and much, much tougher than MIA faced in their 66 win season). Go with
Steph Curry (2014-15)
Jordan (90-91)
Kevin Durant (2013-14)
LeBron James (2012-13)
Dwight Howard (2008-09)
LeBron is much better than Draymond Green with the same defensive versitility. KD is much better than Barnes. Jordan might screw things up a little bit, but we'll take him anyway, and a Jordan/Howard P&R with Curry, Durant, James spacing the floor is a scary, scary thing.
Howard isn't in the category of all-time great C's with Hakeem or Kareem, but he might be a better fit for this team -- he is specifically better at the pick and roll on both offense and defense -- only by a little bit, admittedly, but I don't want to be running post-ups with this team.
The team lacks offensive rebounding, but that also matches the current game, which emphasizes transition defense -- and it would get back on defense.
It doesn't work by RT's (quite sensible) criteria:
you get him at around his peak, but not necessarily his peak season, and have to account for career and whether he had longevity
Because Curry & Durant each only have one MVP season.
38 seems good, though I'd take Tim Duncan over Rodman (especially since you have Lebron to do the "defend all five positions" thing.)
I know "chemistry" is bullshit, but I still wouldn't risk putting Howard on a dream team. Especially one with Michael Jordan.
57: I came very close to putting in Garnett over Rodman. Garnett's peak was shorter than Duncan's, but he was really really good during that peak. And he's much more Rodman-esque. I also think that one can't count LeBron defensively as *both* Pippen and Rodman. If you're trying to mimic that team, you need *two* players who are better all-around defenders than Michael Jordan.
I think you guys need to pick a sport where there had been less change in the play over decades. Probably curling or cricket would work better.
Also, 6-man (Kukoc role) is Durant. (Maybe Bird, but he's before my time.)
One of you is Bill Simmons.
[Runs screaming.]
Don't sleep on Oscar Robertson. Have you looked at his stat line? Do you remember his nickname?
I think you need to consider Oscar Robertson's work in the litigation area.
Probably curling or cricket would work better.
Can't speak for curling, but there's been a huge change in game play in cricket in my lifetime; likewise soccer. I think the takeaway is that all sports are in constant evolution, and comparing you father's on field heroes with today's is pretty much meaningless.
The NFL is fundamentally different now that somebody noticed the rules do say that the place kicker can't be a mule.
65: Exactly! Meaningless is the new black.
You can use a mule to punt, but for that you'd need to teach the mule to hold a ball.
Give a mule a football and he'll eat for a day, teach a mule to punt and ...
I know "chemistry" is bullshit, but I still wouldn't risk putting Howard on a dream team. Especially one with Michael Jordan.
Probably right, I might have been too clever.
I was trying to think about Centers who had the speed and technique to shadow perimeter players, the strength to defend anyone in the post, and who could be a monster rolling to the hoop and realized that Howard might be the best player in NBA history at those three things.
I actually thought seriously about putting Pippen on that team instead of Jordan (playing out of position at SG -- which he could defend, and the team has plenty of ball-handlers) for his defense. Pippen/Durant/James would be be able to switch all over the place.
But that really would have been too clever.
Also, 6-man (Kukoc role) is Durant. (Maybe Bird, but he's before my time.)
Incidentally, thinking about Durant/Bird, Bird was before my time as well but based on highlights he's a much, much better passer and a similar shooter (though it's hard to compare across era's, Durant both shoots more 3s and faces defenses which are more committed to contesting the 3), but my preference for Durant is based on the Defensive end -- better athlete, more agile, more consistently focused on defense (though neither is defensive savant), and longer arms.
Young Garnett is also someone who could switch like crazy. Durant at 2, Lebron 3, Garnett 4 is another way to run that concept.
I do see what you're going for there with Howard, but I just don't see him surviving a practice with Michael Jordan. You could also just say you're fine with one role player and pick Tyson Chandler?
It'd also be interesting to try to improve the recent Miami teams. David Robinson as Bosh? Younger Ray Allen as Ray Allen. Jordan as Wade (or even just younger Wade as Wade). And who the hell was their fifth crunch time guy?
I dunno, 55 seems like the right answer for me, and properly weighted towards modernity, if the question is "what group of five players would win a game over hypothetically reconstituted other players." Bird was in my era of most avid watching and I don't think he could handle today's perimeter game. I agree that Howard is a schlump but I can't think of another center who better fits the criteria.
How about future Anthony Davis for your 5?
74: Great innovation! Time travel forward as well as back! How about Lebron's kid?
Facebook recently suggested that I look at ball-handling clips of Muggsy Bogues' fifth-grade grandson.
That could have been better phrased.
I think even 2016-2017 Anthony Davis is already the right pick there, if you're worried about say 2018-2019 Davis being too much time travel.
Dwight Howard??? You're dead to me. Free throws! Can't shoot!
Garnett was someone I considered. Reliable scorer, great defender, tall and quick. But you have to watch out for matchup problems with Shaq. If you have no big bodies, he's going to cause problems.
And I don't get putting Curry on this team. He's a primary shooter--what are Michael and Lebron (or whoever) going to do? You'd be better off with a great shooter who doesn't need a lot of touches and plays great defense. And I'm not sure who that is.
I went through the same thought process as 79.last, including failing to come up with anyone. In the end I decided Curry is enough better at shooting the 3-ball than everyone else that it's ok that you're wasting his ball handling skills. I also think he's actually much better defensively than the other top 3-point shooters (Miller, Allen, Nash). I briefly considered Dan Majerle.
Imagine Curry with all the open space Kerr got.
Bird was also shooting threes from the smaller arc (as was Kerr for much of his career).
Remember that last year Steph Curry shot 69% on 3-pointers from the left corner. There's just no one else who offers anything close to that.
That seems really specific. Is there a guy who can do better from 3-pointers from the right corner? Or the top?
Maybe instead we should get that guy that was Bill Hader's basketball double in that Amy Schumer movie. From the article I read it sounds like he's an amazing 3-point shooter.
Corner threes are special because they're closer to the basket. If he wasn't ball handling he would spend a lot more time hanging out in the corner waiting for a catch-and-shoot. You have to be a little careful with looking at Curry's 3-point stats, because he takes way more 3-pointers off the dribble than anyone else. For example, by many measures Kyle Korver is slightly better, but 95% of his shots are assisted. In the kind of lineups we're talking about, Curry could hang out in the corner and take open threes and his percentage would go up even higher.
The most ridiculous stat about how good Curry is when he's not being very closely guarded, is that he shoots 43% on shots taken from 25-29 feet (the 3-point line is 23.75 feet at the top, and 22 feet in the corner).
After further consideration the one player I'm sure should be on my dream team is me. I'm unbeatable in my dreams.
He "only" shot 49% from the other corner. It's not entirely clear why there's such a big difference. Presumably it has something to do with which kind of plays end up with him in each of the corners. NickS, any explanation?
He "only" shot 49% from the other corner. It's not entirely clear why there's such a big difference. Presumably it has something to do with which kind of plays end up with him in each of the corners. NickS, any explanation?
Nope, no good explanation. The three possibilities that I'd look at are:
1) That it's statistical noise based on small sample sizes.
2) That the shots are more open on one side of the court (the "kind of plays" hypothesis). I don't know enough about the GS playbook to have a sense of that but an easy example would be that I would expect Shumpert to shoot better from the right corner than the left in CLE -- because LeBron likes to start plays from the left side of the court which means the most likely player to get an open shot is the person standing in the right corner (in that case it looks like he shoots about the same, but gets more attempts from the right side).
3) That it reflects some quirk of him as a player that he shoots better from one side than the other.
One important piece of data is that the previous year he shot better from the other corner. Usually I would say that means it's noise, but in Steph's case they also installed a totally new offense so it's not really clear. Also, Steph's shot chart changed a bunch in other ways between those two years (mostly that he's now good near the rim).
There are four corners and nearly all players aren't distinguishable from each other on two of them.
Though the change says it's clearly either 1 or 2. His stats this year should say which. The difference between the two was even more extreme in the playoffs (smaller sample size), where at some point he was over 90% from the left corner.
One thing I found suggests that Barnes is a right corner guy, so the left corner is more open for Curry in their scheme.
Now that "3 and D" is a named role for a player, there must be some very good ones in the league, but I don't watch enough these days to know who they are.
Usually "3-and-D" players guard wings and not point guards. I don't think you want Kyle Korver guarding starting point guards. Danny Green would be perfectly fine (since he's used to covering for Parker), but I just don't believe you're better off with Danny Green than Steph Curry.
80 and 93 are both correct.
On that note there's a small chance that 15-16 Kawhi Leonard is a better fit for the All-Time team than 15-16 Anthony Davis. Davis is the better all-around player and has a higher ceiling, but Kawhi has the potential to be an all-time role-player if he can stay healthy and build on his finish from last year.
What would a team look like where you basically just maximize for being an elite defender against multiple positions? Say you trot out Pippen, Leonard, Lebron, Garnett, and Davis? Your offense is obviously not in the same league as these other teams, but how the hell do you do anything against that defense?
95 -- Kareem sky hook. None of those guys can defend against that. That's one spot where going old-school would help you.
Fair enough, though you still need to get consistent entry passes, and you'd immediately double and trust that with that much length you'd be able to recover on the perimeter.
More seriously, don't you just try to go small and set as fast a pace as possible? I mean assuming that you had a fast and ultra-elite shooting team. Those guys are fast but not that fast.
Don't need speed defensively if your arms are long enough.
So there is exactly one comment by a female commenter in this thread. We're so predictable.
I thought Megan was an NBA fan (at least I remember her being a fan of Ron Artest when he was in Sac), but she doesn't comment much these days.
Also, Kobe has not been mentioned once up to now.
Kobe doesn't need to be on a hypothetical all time starting five team because he has RINGZ.
This was supposed to accompany that.
103: Hockey not basketball, but this is a way better taunt.
Kobe is such a clear step down from Jordan that there's really no reason to have him in the discussion.
Cricket tactics have changed hugely, even in ODIs --- a defensible score used to be 250, now it would be 300, and 350 is where a lot of teams will be aiming.
42's cycling analysis suffers from two related problems: one, it's like using Bradman as a comparison in cricket - Merckx was so clearly the definitional GOAT -, and secondly the BHE/UCI HR split didn't exist until '97, which is why no-one beat Merckx's effort in UCI HR until then - i.e could Moser have beaten Merckx's record on Merckx's kit? Maybe, but he never tried, so it's impossible to know. Boardman did, and Moser was a more dominant rider than Boardman, so it seems pretty plausible.
Also as with everything in cycling, drugs.
If you watch soccer matches from the 70s, and I've watched entire classic World Cup games when they've been reshown recently, it looks like they are all strolling about, and taking nice long rests. I don't think the basic technique is any worse, and there's a lot of beautiful play on display, but it's unquestionably slower, and less intense.
Yeah, I mean here's the '74 World Cup Final, famous for Holland scoring on a penalty before the Germans ever even touched the ball. Except watch the first minute; there's no pressure on the ball at all, and even when Cruyff starts to dribble from the center circle no one tries to tackle him until he's almost to the box.
I'm not sure I agree about the technique, though. (At the very least, lots of aimless passes in that match.)
I do also remember reading something right around the last summer Olympics that if you did some calculations to account for the amount of energy old tracks sucked up vs. new ones, 100-meter dash times haven't actually improved that much over the past century. IIRC, put 1936-vintage Jesse Owens on a modern track and he'd still be competitive.
Oh hey, it was David Epstein and he did a TED talk about it.
If you dig around, you'll see people talking about how the 1991 Tokyo track where Powell broke Beamon's altitude-assisted long jump record* was abnormally optimized for speed, I think by being harder than usually. I vaguely remember someone suggesting it didn't meet regulations for what a track surface should be.
Also, drugs.
*Dig around and you'll see people saying Beamon's jump was also excessively wind-aided but the gauge didn't give the correct reading.
109. Stanley Matthews was a great footballer beyond doubt, but he played at the top level until he was 50 years old. Assuming he was human, there must have been a range of factors beyond his raw talent, from slower game play to pitch preparation to fewer or lighter injuries, which made this possible. How would he fare today? Who knows? I'm sure he'd have a notable career, but I take leave to doubt he'd be playing for England at 42. Also, he played in a position which essentially no longer exists (though he would do fine as a right midfielder in the modern game.)
"All time great" teams need too much extraneous research to be plausible that they stop being fun.
re: 109
I was thinking of, say, Brazil-Italy, from 1970, which is one I watched pretty much all the way through a year or so back, when there's some undeniably beautiful stuff from Pelé, Tostão, et al. They wouldn't get the space, though, now.
re: 107
IIRC, Mercx came back for a charity thing just a few years back, and went from being overweight to looking in real shape. Some people have that sort of mental focus.