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Tennis the 9th: Medical times out and teenage superstars


Which Tyler

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11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think you're overstating what hand checking did back in the 80's and 90's on the defensive side and I hate to break it to you, but Jordan wasn't a shooter (career less than 33% from outside).

This is really terrible analysis.  Look at the league averages for 3 point% throughout Jordan's career.  It was significantly lower up until at least his first retirement.  And when he came back he did start taking more 3s and making them at a higher clip than he had the rest of his career - up until his final year in 97-98 (and then, yes, he sucked while with the Wizards).  Jordan would have absolutely no trouble adapting to today's game.

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3 minutes ago, DMC said:

This is really terrible analysis.  Look at the league averages for 3 point% throughout Jordan's career.  It was significantly lower up until at least his first retirement.  And when he came back he did start taking more 3s and making them at a higher clip than he had the rest of his career - up until his final year in 97-98 (and then, yes, he sucked while with the Wizards).  Jordan would have absolutely no trouble adapting to today's game.

100%. I'm just pushing back against the idea that he'd become an elite shooter because we'd put him in the time machine that thrusts athletes into the future and automatically imbues them with abilities we don't know if they'll actually have. 

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24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm just pushing back against the idea that he'd become an elite shooter because we'd put him in the time machine that thrusts athletes into the future and automatically imbues them with abilities we don't know if they'll actually have. 

Well yeah, fair enough.  Jordan wouldn't need to be an elite shooter - just as he didn't in his era either.

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2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm still kind of confused on what you're arguing then.

 

The only thing I'm really arguing is that 'Serena would beat all the other potential GOATs because she was too powerful with too fast a serve so if you teleported her into the 80s with her racket and training to play Steffi Graf there' is a really terrible argument to hang the basic premise on. I don't think that's what 'greatest' means, and clearly neither do most people. 

Which is not to say that I think Serena definitely isn't the GOAT. Like I say I don't have a firm opinion but I follow enough to understand most of the arguments and I don't think it's like wild if someone picks her, there's good reasons to. It's just that the one you're using makes no sense to me so by leaning on it so hard you're making the whole concept seem a little more ridiculous. 
(ftr, I'm hyperbolising. You haven't really persuaded me to see Serena as a less deserving 'greatest', but honestly only because I already knew the reasons she might be). 


The Curry thing was purely an aside. You guys were having a side-discussion about whether basketball has significantly 'advanced' in its play. I added my 2 cents. Is that allowed?

 

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I think Steffi would get some mph boost from just racquet tech and new training techniques. You’d probably want to compare average serve speed in both eras and give an adjustment to Graf based on that.

Speaking of Serena anyone seen these Court comments? Sounds like a lot of sour grapes and such. Not like I care much about her (her era of tennis was a joke) but yeah odd time for these comments to come out.

Edit: Nm I read some backstory on Court. Eek some brutal things she’s said over the years. I guess she’s all into the homophobic and racist comments.

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1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 

The only thing I'm really arguing is that 'Serena would beat all the other potential GOATs because she was too powerful with too fast a serve so if you teleported her into the 80s with her racket and training to play Steffi Graf there' is a really terrible argument to hang the basic premise on. I don't think that's what 'greatest' means, and clearly neither do most people. 

You could give Serena the same racket Graf was using and very little would change. It's not like we're talking about the weird ones they used in the 50's and 60's. And these are two players who did play at the same time briefly. It's not like wondering if Bill Russell could play today because he retired in the early 70's...

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Which is not to say that I think Serena definitely isn't the GOAT. Like I say I don't have a firm opinion but I follow enough to understand most of the arguments and I don't think it's like wild if someone picks her, there's good reasons to. It's just that the one you're using makes no sense to me so by leaning on it so hard you're making the whole concept seem a little more ridiculous. 
(ftr, I'm hyperbolising. You haven't really persuaded me to see Serena as a less deserving 'greatest', but honestly only because I already knew the reasons she might be). 

Idk what doesn't make sense. There's a measurable level of difference between the two players being discussed and it's not within the margin of error nor can it be explained away by training, surface, equipment, etc. That's how big the gulf is. 

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The Curry thing was purely an aside. You guys were having a side-discussion about whether basketball has significantly 'advanced' in its play. I added my 2 cents. Is that allowed?

No, Never!!!! :P

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

Speaking of Serena anyone seen these Court comments? Sounds like a lot of sour grapes and such. Not like I care much about her (her era of tennis was a joke) but yeah odd time for these comments to come out.

Edit: Nm I read some backstory on Court. Eek some brutal things she’s said over the years. I guess she’s all into the homophobic and racist comments.

She's an old, bigoted white lady. Why are you surprised? There are reasons why she's left in the past.

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14 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I just used Halep because a few years back she was the top seed and lost in the first round and did again this year being top 10 and heavily favored. The sport is kind of weird, what do you want me to say? Tennis is like baseball, the favorite regularly loses. 

So, your point is that the sport is kind of weird but that it's 100% certain that Serena would sweep Graf (or anyone else) off the court? Seems reasonable.

14 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think you're overstating what hand checking did back in the 80's and 90's on the defensive side and I hate to break it to you, but Jordan wasn't a shooter (career less than 33% from outside). That would limit his ability to attack the rim a lot today. Westbrook is a career 30.5% shooter and we've seen how that's gone. 

If you think that Jordan would be 33% 3 point shooter with today's defence you are delusional. Either way, basketball is not the topic here.

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10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Idk what doesn't make sense. There's a measurable level of difference between the two players being discussed and it's not within the margin of error nor can it be explained away by training, surface, equipment, etc. That's how big the gulf is. 

 

Are you arguing Serena is the best or the greatest? If you are saying if steffi time travelled to today with no adaption time or equipment changes and played Serena, Serena would beat her I'll give you that. If you are saying greatest you need more to hang your argument on than a fast serve. Fed, Nadal nor Djokovic have insane serving speed. 

Steffi was world number one for longer in half the time. Won more tournaments. Had a much better statistical grand slam peak. Won 3 GS 5 times. Won the golden slam. Had the greatest forehand in tennis history (pretty much universally accepted, not me being old and cantankerous). 

You argument appears to be Serena has faster serve, Won 1 more grand slam (in double the time)) and is American. 

Also not for nothing Steffi is a far better human than Serena (no twatty meltdowns). 

Your fast serve argument is like saying Wilder is the greatest boxer due to his knock out power. Serving is one aspect of the game. Steffi's other half showed what you could do with a crap serve if other aspects of your game make up for it. 

Regardless a quick random search showed Steffi had the 6th fastest serve in 1990. So with today's tech, nutrition and training she'd be right up there. Your argument is embarrassingly weak. 

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2 minutes ago, baxus said:

 

If you think that Jordan would be 33% 3 point shooter with today's defence you are delusional. Either way, basketball is not the topic here.

He was a career .835 free thrower. If it was as important, with how driven he was and his will to win he would have made himself an excellent 3 pt shooter as well. 

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I imagine someone telling Jordan: "You know, if you work on this, you'll score 5 points more per game" and just chuckle.

The guy would practice that so much he'd wear out the floor in the gym around 3 point line.

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Just now, baxus said:

I imagine someone telling Jordan: "You know, if you work on this, you'll score 5 points more per game" and just chuckle.

The guy would practice that so much he'd wear out the floor in the gym around 3 point line.

Imagine all the easy points he would get if he even had decent 3 point shooters to spread the floor even more. He would drive with about 90% conversion rate.

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11 hours ago, Arakasi said:

Aww Nedal lost. Was hoping he could put another one on Djoker.

Quite surprising that Tiafoe caught him but he does have those exceptional days sometimes.

Looking forward to Alcaraz vs Sinner.

 

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7 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

You argument appears to be Serena has faster serve, Won 1 more grand slam (in double the time)) and is American. 

#NotAllAmericans

7 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Also not for nothing Steffi is a far better human than Serena

While it shouldn't be a factor in GOAT discussions, very much this.

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7 hours ago, baxus said:

Imagine him at his peak with people defending him basically not being allowed to touch him or even come too close.

To be fair Jordan got more calls than even LeBron.  It was pretty disgusting.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

To be fair Jordan got more calls than even LeBron.  It was pretty disgusting.

Agree wholeheartedly.  I actually think that Lebron gets surprisingly few calls for such a dominant player.  I feel like whenever I'm watching a Lebron game and someone makes a great defensive play on one of his drives, then they show the replay and it was actually just a foul that didn't get called. 

This is the NBA thread right?

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15 hours ago, baxus said:

If you think that Jordan would be 33% 3 point shooter with today's defence you are delusional. Either way, basketball is not the topic here.

Jordan would shoot better than 33% today, but I wouldn't assume he'd turn into an elite shooter. And that's what I was saying about Graf. Her serve would be better today, but I wouldn't assume she'd automatically become a top server today.

15 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Are you arguing Serena is the best or the greatest? If you are saying if steffi time travelled to today with no adaption time or equipment changes and played Serena, Serena would beat her I'll give you that. If you are saying greatest you need more to hang your argument on than a fast serve. Fed, Nadal nor Djokovic have insane serving speed. 

Both, at least on the women's side. And with the big three it's subjective who you think is the best/greatest. For it's Nadal, but Feds and Joker have very clear arguments for themselves. I just don't think that's true on the women's side.

 

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Steffi was world number one for longer in half the time. Won more tournaments. Had a much better statistical grand slam peak. Won 3 GS 5 times. Won the golden slam. Had the greatest forehand in tennis history (pretty much universally accepted, not me being old and cantankerous). 

You argument appears to be Serena has faster serve, Won 1 more grand slam (in double the time)) and is American. 

No, my argument would be she's simply better, has won more slams, including 14 doubles titles to Graf's one, has three more gold medals and did this while facing much stronger competition and a much deeper field, the latter probably being why Graf has a slightly better single's record. Serena was also hurt a lot which did impact her ability to be number 1, but no one ever doubted who was the best in this era. 

Also, the time argument is a bit misleading. If you remove Serena's first and last slam (which was several years ago now) her other 21 wins happened in basically the same window as Graf's 22, and again, during a more competitive period. Graf certainly can claim she had the most dominate single run as you mentioned, but one incredible year does not make a career argument. 

And FYI if Serena was a Brit I'd still be arguing for her over Graf.

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Also not for nothing Steffi is a far better human than Serena (no twatty meltdowns). 

As mentioned before this is irrelevant, and if anything is a reason why people don't want to crown her. Not liking her is not a valid way to assess her career, otherwise Jordan couldn't be the best/greatest player ever because on a personal he's far shittier than Serena. 

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Your fast serve argument is like saying Wilder is the greatest boxer due to his knock out power. Serving is one aspect of the game. Steffi's other half showed what you could do with a crap serve if other aspects of your game make up for it. 

Regardless a quick random search showed Steffi had the 6th fastest serve in 1990. So with today's tech, nutrition and training she'd be right up there. Your argument is embarrassingly weak. 

Tyson was the best boxer for a period and in the conversation for best ever because of his next level punching power. Serena is similar, expect she was also great at the other aspects of the sport. Not sure why you keep making this like I'm just talking about her all-time great serve and nothing else.

And again, going back to my first comment,  we know Graf's serve would improve if she benefited from modern training and tech, but we cannot say with any certainty it would make the 10% jump necessary to get her into like the top 20 and that's if we allowed for her best serve to be her average serve.

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23 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

As mentioned before this is irrelevant, and if anything is a reason why people don't want to crown her. Not liking her is not a valid way to assess her career,

I think conduct and sportsmanship are entirely valid qualities to consider when assessing a sportsperson's "greatness" - a great, especially someone you want to crown as the greatest should be someone who others should aspire to emulate, a hero, an inspiration. Whereas the examples shown by Serena (and others with similar or worse behaviour) mostly show how elite sport and our wider culture is willing to let people get away with inexcusable behaviour on absurd grounds such as supposed genius or skill. 

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