Tom Brady has been demoted to THIRD greatest athlete of all-time

[NJerseypaint]

50 minutes ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Not even that, because part of what I was doin was considering guys who were great athletes but also dominated their sports individually. Brady has never really dominated on an individual level moreso than his peers, but he's accomplished more than any QB has from a winning championships standpoint.

Like there's no way we can objectively sit here and compare someone like Giannis or Steph Curry or Lebron with Tom freaking Brady who can barely even move, much less do anything impressive athletically.

How dare you.

[Melbourne 9er]

I'm assuming that this thread should be changed to greatest American athletes?? Walter Lindrum was so dominant in billiards that they changed the rules and he became slightly less dominant. Don Bradman has a Test Match cricket average of over 30 runs more per innings than any other batsman in history. Some people need to broaden their horizons a little.

[CP3MVP]

On 12/19/2022 at 1:55 AM, ChazStandard said:

There’s nothing misogynistic about it. She’s not the greatest athlete ever in purely physical terms - strength size endurance or speed - and her achievements are tempered by the generally weaker opposition she played against. She’s not even close to best tennis player ever, she likely wouldn’t crack the top 1000.

“Woman’s tennis” is not a sport, tennis is. And there’s a lot of people who would beat her in a game of tennis.

Its not sexist to say that, but to make special case for her is patronising and unfair to the tennis players better than her.

And I would absolutely argue that weight classes in boxing preclude boxers from the greatest athlete talk. It just makes sense.

She’s never been the best tennis player on the planet so having her in this argument is laughable 

[ramssuperbowl99]

On 12/19/2022 at 12:02 PM, tyler735 said:

For me I’m more impressed by Messi being better than his peers than a guy like Phelps for example. No disrespect to Phelps who is probably the GOAT in swimming, but the talent pool is just not comparable between the 2 sports. There’s significantly more people in the world who make a living as professionals playing soccer than there are making a living as a professional swimmer. There’s just so much more competition to be the best in soccer with such a vast talent pool around the world.

Swimming is not 1 discipline, it's 4. The dilute talent pool is absolutely real, but Phelps' dominance in swimming would be like if Messi was simultaneously Messi in attack, Zidane in the midfield, Van Dijk in defense, and the 10th best goalkeeper in the world at the same time. He's not. He's an incredible attacking player who Argentina had to build an entire team of junkyard dogs around because he doesn't defend in any meaningful way.

 

Also laughed out loud at "probably" the GOAT in swimming.

[tyler735]

44 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Swimming is not 1 discipline, it's 4. The dilute talent pool is absolutely real, but Phelps' dominance in swimming would be like if Messi was simultaneously Messi in attack, Zidane in the midfield, Van Dijk in defense, and the 10th best goalkeeper in the world at the same time. He's not. He's an incredible attacking player who Argentina had to build an entire team of junkyard dogs around because he doesn't defend in any meaningful way.

That would be a reach and an apples to oranges comparison at best. Those are not comparable in any real sense between the 2 sports. In soccer, goals are obviously the biggest game changing metric, which is why attacking players are the highest paid in comparison to other positions. Messi happens to be the best in the world at scoring, assisting, and dribbling. His vision on the field is also 2nd to none. It is by design that he doesn't "defend" as much of the average player. It's not that he isn't capable of defending. He is able to play a "lazy" style because he is so much better than his peers as an attacking player and it allows him to conserve energy to utilize his one of a kind skillset in the attack. This is also the reason he was able to play every minute of the world cup at age 35. Argentina would have had "junk yard dogs" playing regardless of Messi. Argentinian players generally have a bit of attitude to them. It's a cultural aspect of their playstyle, which can easily be seen watching any team play in Argentine Primera Division. It's viewed as one of the more physical leagues around the world, which is where most of the Argentine National Team players started their careers playing for youth/senior teams in that league. If you think Phelps is the GOAT, that's fine and dandy, he's a legend of his sport, but I'd venture to say most around the world would view Messi as the GOAT. Obviously tough to compare between sports.

[adamq]

13 hours ago, Melbourne 9er said:

I'm assuming that this thread should be changed to greatest American athletes?? Walter Lindrum was so dominant in billiards that they changed the rules and he became slightly less dominant. Don Bradman has a Test Match cricket average of over 30 runs more per innings than any other batsman in history. Some people need to broaden their horizons a little.

Sam Snead my god

[ramssuperbowl99]

39 minutes ago, tyler735 said:

That would be a reach and an apples to oranges comparison at best. Those are not comparable in any real sense between the 2 sports. In soccer, goals are obviously the biggest game changing metric, which is why attacking players are the highest paid in comparison to other positions. Messi happens to be the best in the world at scoring, assisting, and dribbling. His vision on the field is also 2nd to none. It is by design that he doesn't "defend" as much of the average player. It's not that he isn't capable of defending. He is able to play a "lazy" style because he is so much better than his peers as an attacking player and it allows him to conserve energy to utilize his one of a kind skillset in the attack. This is also the reason he was able to play every minute of the world cup at age 35.

Cool story that adds up to deficient cardio. There's a reason he's last in distance covered and first in distance walked.

Meanwhile, in the Olympics, Phelps outsplit every single other swimmer in the breasstroke leg of the 400 IM - his "weakest" stroke far and away. So he's got an actual record on the biggest stage of doing everything at once better than everyone else.

Non-swimmers have no idea how ridiculous that is. It will never be done again.

39 minutes ago, tyler735 said:

Obviously tough to compare between sports.

Sure, and if you want to compare Phelps, that means at some point you'll have to learn what makes a swimmer good. Raw gold medal counts are the QB rating of swimming.

Edited December 21, 2022 by ramssuperbowl99

[tyler735]

5 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Cool story that adds up to deficient cardio. There's a reason he's last in distance covered and first in distance walked.

He also played every minute of the World Cup. As mentioned before, this is largely a tactical move that has been used throughout most of his career. One that has clearly paid off for Messi led teams over the years. It allows Messi to be in better positions to capitalize and create chances in the attack. Seems you don’t have a full understanding of the game.

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

2 minutes ago, tyler735 said:

He also played every minute of the World Cup. As mentioned before, this is largely a tactical move that has been used throughout most of his career. One that has clearly paid off for Messi led teams over the years. It allows Messi to be in better positions to capitalize and create chances in the attack. Seems you don’t have a full understanding of the game.

Could this not just be correlated to him walking more than any other player, thus saving energy, thus allowing him to play? Like, why is this impressive?

[ramssuperbowl99]

1 minute ago, tyler735 said:

He also played every minute of the World Cup. As mentioned before, this is largely a tactical move that has been used throughout most of his career. One that has clearly paid off for Messi led teams over the years. It allows Messi to be in better positions to capitalize and create chances in the attack. Seems you don’t have a full understanding of the game.

Nope, I'm a United fan. Watch plenty of high level soccer.

Messi adopted his tactical use of energy because his cardio isn't good enough to do everything at a high level for 90 minutes. That's normally not a knock on someone, but when you come up on someone as inhuman as Phelps who has a record of doing exactly that, it's gonna be held against him.

1 minute ago, tyler735 said:

Seems you don’t have a full understanding of the game.

And, I say this as respectfully as possible, you don't have the swimming background to have this conversation.

Talking about specialization in soccer and not mentioning that the average Olympic swimmer doesn't target only 1 stroke to train near exclusively, but typically targets 1 stroke and distance. Forget butterfly and breaststroke, there's very little high level overlap between the 100 and 200 butterfly.

Compare this to the total football approach of a Guardiola, who expects his defenders to support midfield, wing backs to support the attack, midfielders to drop deep and cover lanes from fullbacks, attackers to drop deep to avoid long ball reliance, etc. etc. Messi doesn't do those things because he's good enough not to, but it's a net negative for the team.

Meanwhile, there is simply no weakness in Phelps' game. As a swimmer, he was as close to perfection as a human will ever achieve.

[MWil23]

On 12/18/2022 at 2:32 PM, NeptunePenguins said:

Michael Jordan isn't actually great 

[MWil23]

On 12/18/2022 at 7:57 PM, Louis Friend said:

Serena Williams says hello. 

Are we really going to pretend she beats Nadal or Federer here?

[MWil23]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:03 AM, ramssuperbowl99 said:

So, by extension, you would rank Floyd Mayweather below every major heavyweight fighter since they'd whip the crap out of him?

They're how you rank people, so okay, but that seems dumb.

Given that I loathe Mayweather, yes, yes I would.

[MWil23]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:36 AM, adamq said:

Yes which is why most people don't compare across eras or genders. Is Tebow not one of the greatest CFF players ever because he sucked as a pro?

No, he wasn’t even the best quarterback on his own college team and that’s a demonstrable fact.

[ramssuperbowl99]

5 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

Given that I loathe Mayweather, yes, yes I would.

Which is totally fair.

There's nothing inherently sexist or anything about ranking Serena Williams lower than guys without her accolades because she would lose a match. They key is consistency. The potential for sexism comes in if that's the only type of physical limitation correction someone makes or doesn't make.

For example, if someone has Khabib as the greatest fighter of all time and Serena outside the top 250, they need to do some soul searching as to why that is.

Edited December 21, 2022 by ramssuperbowl99