W.O. Hamilton and I used go out and pound a few after W's.
jaybate 1.0
10346 posts
P.S.: I'm feeling increasingly good about the robustness of my logic here.
You will shortly embrace it and feel as good as I do.
Its no fun polishing turds.
I'm not making you. You are making yourself.
And a :kissing_heart: back to you, sir.
Any time you say the "simple" this, or the "sound logic," it appears you are struggling to run away from my basic logic. Here it is again.
If Wilt gets to charge and travel, he scores way more.
If Wilt noes not get to charge and travel, he scores way less.
That was easy.
Therefore:
If you agree that Wilt would score more being able to charge and travel like Shaq did, while doing it against small ball players of the present, then you are thinking clearly. And anyone that didn't play a hurry up offense with Wilt today would be nuts, because he would blow another team out in the first half with almost never missing a basket on any trip.
If you insist that Wilt would score less being able to charge and travel like Shaq did, while doing it against small ball players of the present, then you are VERY confused.
Which is it?
( a late addition: I am just letting the logic work, it is NOT my opinion against yours. It is my logic against your 10 arguments. Alas, Your ten arguments aren't invalidating, or outweighing my logic. If they were, I would be happy to acknowledge it.)
I used to view Bob Knight largely through these lenses that you have presented on a recent thread. You showed him throwing a chair. You alluded to his fury. It all called up my recollections of his apparent vulgarity, aggressiveness and cruelty to players and reporters.
I still think he was and remains an intimidating jerk, and I would not want a child of mine to play for him, but...
When I began my nearly decade long inquiry into how D1 basketball worked, what I found again and again was Bob Knight sticking his neck way out and opposing all the forces that have apparently converge to compromise the game into the state that it appears to be in today where it appears to be dominated by both an apparent petroshoeco-agency complex and an apparent media-gaming complex, and appears to operate with a time zone and brand driven recruiting system, and has the appearance of a media being used to shape bettor expectations for big gaming, and has an an NCAA apparently admitting it lacks the resources to adequately police and enforce its own rules, despite staging a tournament that makes hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars, and an NCAA staging what appears to be a March Carney apparently riddled with what appears to be seeding engineering and referee engineering.
Call me a bleeding heart, but if Bob Knight were brave enough to stand up to those that have done what has apparently been done to college basketball, he deserves a ton of respect from all of us for doing so.
And when I put myself in Bob Knight's shoes, and walk around in them metaphorically, as Atticus Finch used to recommend to Jem and Scout that it was right to do, here is what I take away and want to go tell Miss Maudie across the street.
Bob Knight may indeed be a scary looking old Boo Radley with an anger management problem. And he may have acted badly at times, Mr. Finchbate 1.0, but, well, Mr. Finchbate 1.0, that white trash Bob Ewell in the petroshoeco jacket and wearing the media hat and shilling for big gaming, Mr. Finchbate 1.0, that white trash Bob Ewell is really the one that threatened your little Scout and all of the little Scouts that come into college basketball as recruits thinking they are going to make it in the NBA and mostly don't.
I know. I know.
For a long while, like Atticus Finch, I stood around wringing my hands at my keyboard and wiping the back of my neck with a white handkerchief at what was right and wrong, when it came to assessing the antics and vulgarities and cruelties and character and career of Mr. Bob Knight, sirs and ladies.
But then, well, then Sheriff Heck Tate he looked me in the eye, like I was just not thinkin' straight at all.
"Mr. Finchbate 1.0, you don't think it was your son Jem that tried to kill that white trash Bob Ewell in the woods tonight, do you? It wasn't Jem, Mr. Finchbate 1.0. He didn't stick a knife into the rib cage of Bob Ewell and try to kill him to keep him from preying on high school phenoms and young freshman basketball recruits. He didn't recruit players with prostitutes. He didn't make deals to have dump trucks come to Indiana, or to Texas Tech neither, as far as I can tell. Jem didn't make March Madness look like the March Carney, Mr. Finchbate 1.0. It was Mr. Bob Ewell that done that. And it was Mr. Arthur "Boo" Knight that stuck that knife into Bob Ewell. It was Mr. Arthur Knight that tried to save your children and all the other children that was being and are now still being preyed on by that white trash Mr. Bob Ewell, who survived the stabbing and has lived on more like Dracula than Bob Ewell."
"I, I, I, what are you saying, Heck. I, , I,..." I was flummoxed. "Well, then Heck, I will have to defend Arthur myself....I , I will defend him..."
"Mr. Finchbate 1.0, if you try to defend Arthur "Boo" Knight in a court of public opinion in this basketball world, it will expose him and he will have to testify and likely as not they will convict him instead of blaming that white trash Mr. Bob Ewell for what has been done to college basketball."
"Well, well, Heck, I, I, I,have to do something."
"Mr. Finchbate 1.0, it would be a sin to bring Arthur Knight into a court of public opinion, a sin, sir. And it is a sin to kill a Knightengale, Mr. Finchbate 1.0, a sin." Heck looked off the porch into the night a moment and then back. "I say that white trash Mr. Bob Ewell out their choking on his own blood and saliva from all the highschool and college kids lives he has gotten away with messing with, I say leave him out there. I say Bob Ewell attacked your children and he was so drunk with exploiting them that he finally just fell on his own knife. I say, let the dead bury the dead, Mr. Finchbate 1.0."
Bob Knight came into college basketball from being a second stringer career on a great Ohio State team learning the game under Fred Taylor and then with a fire in his belly about as hot as a thermo nuclear bomb went to Army to become a head coach at an incredibly young age and then was so successful that he got the Indiana job, cleaned it up and made it the most feared basketball program in the country once John Wooden stepped aside just a few years after Knight's feisty bravado made him a minor celebrity and enfant terrible, as well as a successful college basketball coach.
And when he was still very young, though with an NC under his belt, he saw just how deeply corrupt the college game was at the time, how much players were paid to play, and how many of the coaches were as engaged in the corruption as the players were. Bob Knight appeared to love the game of college basketball as much as any human being ever did. And he appeared a natural born strategist who could see long before the rest of us what was going to happen to a small time college game with deep good old boy legacy corruption--one that was still new to the TELEVISION ERA, well, he saw how the big media boys and the big gaming boys and the soon to be huge petroshoeco boys and the agents were going to converge on the greatest game ever invented like great birds of prey and pick it up by their talons and black mail it into submission with the legacy good old boy corruption that haunted it.
Bob Knight appeared to look around at all his coaching colleagues that he had admired and respected and he probably said something like we have to stop this, something like we have to do something NOW, or it will be too late!
And Bob Knight learned that most all of his heroes had feet of clay when it came to taking on these kinds of opponents. They all probably hung their heads ashamed and said, "we're too close to retirement and we've never made any FU money out of the game, like Dean has down at UNC, Inc. with his deal with Sonny and so on. We're just a bunch of old aging jocks that have been lucky as hell just to have jobs and houses. Most of us came from blue collar back grounds. Most of us are the first kids to ever get college degrees in our families. We know what happened to Claire Bee, when he tried to come clean. They threw him under the bus along with all the other small fry. Our little pension is all we've got Bob. We can't do it. We've all got little skeletons in our closets. But you? you're young and you've already made a bundle and you've played it straight and won. You could do it, Bobby."
And so Bob Knight must have walked around in a disillusioned daze for quite a while until finally he looked in the mirror one morning and said he could not live with himself if he just did nothing, just went along.
And so he appeared to try to expose all the reporters swapping PR for access, and looking the other way at corruption, all the shyster coaches cheating at recruiting and paying players, all the dishonest refs...
He took them all on at once.
And the blow back was apparently worse than even he ever dreamed it would be. The press hounded him to death. Coaching colleagues apparently turned pale yellow and didn't back him even when they could have without immediate retribution. They apparently even used it on him in recruiting.
And before long Bob Knight must have known he was ALL ALONE.
AND HE WAS STILL YOUNG AND HE HAD A FAMILY.
AND "THEY" WERE OUT TO GET HIM, or so it appeared.
All of the above is speculation of course.
Who can say how it really was?
But that's how it looked over the years, especially once I began reading what I could to find out what was supposedly really going on in college basketball.
All I as a fan can do is step inside his shoes and walk around in them figuratively, if you recall what I mean.
All I can do is imagine what it must have been like to be the greatest coach of his generation and likely to be one of the greatest of all time and be still young and to know that he had crossed a line that he could never get back across; that he would never be able to stop the media from trying to smear him beyond reclamation, because if they failed, and what all he had exposed stood unimpeached, it implied just how complicit in what was being done to college basketball the reporters were.
So he appeared to fight them.
He apparently fought them like some Jeremiah Johnson with a whistle and tennis shoes.
He fought the refs.
He fought the reporters.
He fought the coaches.
He fought the shoewhores.
He fought the paying of players.
And they just kept coming and coming.
He fought with them in Puerto Rico.
He fought with them in the Olympics.
He made the players go to class and exposed the coaches that didn't make them go to class.
He reputedly ran the players that would drag down his team GPA that weren't essential to the rotation.
He fought like a man who intended to take as many down with him as he could.
He was young!
He had some grey, some early grey.
But career wise, he was still young!!!!!!
Does anyone else remember what it was like to be 40 and incensed by the corruption in one's profession?
How disillusioning it was?
How scary it was to speak out?
How scary it was to take on the powers that were and would be for a long time to come.
Bob Knight, however imperfect he was, and he was apparently very imperfect, stood up for college basketball.
Bob Knight apparently went to the wall for college basketball.
Bob Knight reputedly hurt a lot of his own kids himself trying to push himself and his teams to prove that good could beat evil, even when evil got the dump trucks of players.
Bob Knight apparently took the forces of darkness in the game head on.
In the end they used his own flaws to get him.
That is how they always get the good guys. Even the best good guys have flaws. Weaknesses.
And Knight apparently had more than his share of flaws.
But man did he expose a lot of the scum bags.
No one could look around college basketball and not recognize them after Bob Knight got done.
After the human tornado that was Bob Knight ripped through Indiana, then Texas Tech and then broadcasting, no college basketball fan in the country had any excuse for saying they didn't know what was being done to college basketball and by whom.
After Bob Knight, all a fan could do was say, "Well, there's nothing I can do about it."
He shamed us all.
And we needed it.
And there was something doubly shaming about being shamed by someone with as many flaws as Bob Knight had. Wily devil that he was he probably understood that too.
Bob Knight seemed to be saying to us all, if even a jerk like me can see what's being done to the game and can take these sunnsabitches head on, none of you people out there, not one chancellor, not one AD, not one faculty, not one parent of a player, not one alumni, not one fan, not even one reporter has an excuse not to, too.
In the final analysis, Bob Knight lost his quest to be free of those that were apparently defiling the game of college basketball, same as Spartacus lost his quest to escape those that defiled Rome and enslaved him.
Spartacus, according to movie legend, had a son born free.
Bob Knight's son Pat got crushed, too.
But anyone that chooses to remember, rather than chooses to live in denial, knows what Bob Knight, as flawed as he apparently was, tried to do for the game.
And those of us that took the time to learn about it, even though they disliked how he treated his players, and those of us that tell it to others, and that continue to tell others about it, will never forget.
Even if it takes 2000 years to fix this too.
Rock Chalk, Bob Knight.
(Note: all opining and speculation on this fan's part.)
@Kcmatt7 I have made valid points. My traveling and charging (and traveling some more) “logic” has validity as there is absolutely nothing to prove that it is invalid and there are absolutely ZERO numbers to support that it is invalid.
ILLOGICAL… When someone implies that one would score less being able to charge and travel at will than one would score not being able to charge and travel at will (I do still think he would average in the very high 60s ppg and about 30 rebounds a game under today's rules and against todays small ball teams and that his team today would hurry the ball up the court every trip to get him as many FGAs as possible against 6-9 post men) logic does not appear to matter to such a board rat. Except for the one illogical thing you have brought up which again, you cannot justify, “scoring less when being allowed to charge and travel, and scoring more when not being able to charge and travel.” I mean quality and size of players is NOT ONLY NOT a 10x a better argument than “in my opinion it is easier to score when you can charge and travel than when you cannot despite when you were a little boy in gym class it was hard for you to score whether you did or not charge or travel .” Absolutely awful points you have made for your case. And I expect better from you…
(Note to @Kcmatt7 : I have tried to respond above in form, words, and punctuation as much like your own as possible, to make it as easy for you to understand, as possible. Its not my style. But if it will help you understand my point, then I am only too happy to do it. I guess you could call it playing "take what you give me." )
I agree. But that would really have only applied to the last 2 inches, same as was probably the case for the Morri. And Wilt was vastly more gifted, more driven, and more disciplined than the Morri. Right?
So let's say Wilt would 99% probably have reached 48 inches in today's game and about 75% likely have reached 50 inches.
Good night all.
The old man has to get his rest now.
Rock Chalk!
Makes sense on all counts. Thx.
Gotta get our newbies into a Big Ten bang ball game and see which ones like it, and which ones its going to be an acquired taste.
Sounds like Doke and Lightfoot will like it, but you never know till the live rounds fly.
I COULD SEE VICK PULLING A START VS. INDIANA, AFTER THIS PERFORMANCE.
I think Bragg could have problems with how rough Indiana will play this early in the season.
Self is probably trying to make Indiana prepare for Vick, but once Bragg has a chance to watch a few minutes and feel for what will be allowed and what will not be, then I am hoping Bragg will come in and do his thing. We are going to need four bigs even with playing a lot of 4 out.
Not me.
When a player is in a funk this early, it translates to TOUGHENING BOX!!!!!!!!!!!
About LaGerrie,
Actually, that quiet line could bode well for him. He was clearly ice cold from outside, but did not let it unsettle him. 5-6 front the FT line, and 4 reebs, and ZERO turnovers in 25 minutes is the kind of performance that is going to get him some SELF trust for the Indiana game.
And wouldn't it be great if he came out 4-4 against them Hoosiers?
I am really liking those 5 assists by our OAD.
That may be another first this early in the season.
Anyone,
Is Lightfoot supposed to be 4-7 kind of a FT shooter, or was he just off tonight?
Tyler may have played himself into being manager. Not much of a line score for playing against ESU.
To anyone...
When was the last time three first year big men played 9, 16, and 15 minutes without a pop tart? I can't ever remember something like that in Self's tenure. First year bigs like Colby (I know he was practicing last season but he's on one wheel), Udoka and Lightfoot have done something amazing, even if its off Broadway in an exhibition.
I'm sold on him sight unseen then.
Ooh, Self will probably adopt him then, especially if he plays operable. Self loves the play operable second tier guys. He loves them like no others.
Its quite possible Bragg is already in the toughening box. Self always sticks one newbie he's going to depend on most of the season in there first. Bragg may have been being psychologically dismantled by Self the last week or two in practices. He is brutal when its you turn in the toughening box.
Oooh, we can always use another meany
So I still haven't seen Lightfoot. What does he bring as a big?
So glad to hear it. Thx.
Frank's line looks very solid
Svi's line score finally looks like it was supposed to the last two seasons. Big numbers per minute, no fouls and only 1 TO.
Go, Svi, go!!!
Thanks. Your new nickname is "THE CONDENSER"!!!!!
Doke only had three fouls in 16 minutes, and he grabbed 7 reebs; that's good.
I pulled up the box.
Landen got 4 OR and 3 DR in 16 minutes; that's good.
Not to worry about Bragg. He was destined to suck for half a season, while he figures out the new body he is inhabiting.
Please. Didn't mean to be rude.
Give me a quick and dirty on who did well and who didn't.
Thx. I was way off. My bad.
I predicted 103 to 47.
What's the score so?
et al,
There just are these human beings that come along that are radical outliers among even the most extremely gifted.
They are once in a century types, or once in a couple of centuries types.
In literature, there really and truly has not been another dramatist as monstrously gifted as Shakespeare, another poet as gifted as Dante.
In music, every composer is in an extreme match up disadvantage when it comes to Beethoven and Mozart.
Michaelangelo just towers above most other painter/sculptors.
I have never understood why anyone doubts that Wilt is just a towering athletic freak.
Like Michael Jordan, Picasso was a virtuoso--a great, great figure of his chosen field, but Picasso is a pipsqueak next to Michaelangelo, because, well, because what ever Michaelangelo touched seemed to wreak of his towering genius. He painted brilliantly. he sculpted brilliantly, he even architected brilliantly.
Michaelangelo was a three sport sport star in art--a triathlete.
That Michaelangelo was this towering artistic freak in no way diminishes Picasso.
That Wilt was this towering athletic freak in no way diminishes Bill Russell, or Kareem, or Michael Jordan, or Lebron.
Its just how it is.
I really wish folks could just sit back and enjoy it.
But I understand there are persons that struggle with it.
Recall how much Andrea Hudy improved Marcus and Markieff Morri's verticals between freshman and sophomore seasons?
How much she has improved so many players verticals?
I forget how many inches she added to their verticals. Anyone recall?
Imagine if Dr. Hudy had gotten to train Wilt his freshman season, or any season before he began climbing above 275.
Imagine how high he would have jumped with modern training.
Let's take your studied estimate of 45 inches.
Even on Hudy's worst results she can add 3 inches to players verticals.
That would be 48 inches.
But lets recall that Wilt was a super driven type of athlete and a fantastic physical specimen; that even before the age of sophisticated weight training that he was able to add 25 to 40 pounds of pure muscle all by himself.
What would Hudy have likely done for Wilt's vertical, given the kind of flipping beast he was?
I don't think 50 inches would have been at all beyond his reach.
Next, watch the tapes of Wilt at 300 plus pounds VERY late in his career going up for Kareem's sky hook.
In watching a number of youtube feeds, it is clear that my memory is correct and that he often could not block Kareem.
But...
The fact is Wilt blocked Kareem's sky hook a number of times after a long career of incredibly high mpg and weighing by then something like 315.
Let's imagine Wilt in his first five seasons getting to work with Andrea Hudy and adding 5 inches to his already awesome vertical leap.
Now watch those you tube feeds of Kareem shooting the sky hook over Wilt. Focus carefully on all the ones Wilt missed the block on. Ask yourself: how many of those missed blocks would have been clean blocks withanother 5 inches of vertical? I would say 2/3s for near certain? But at least half.
I am not using Kareem to knock him here. I am using Kareem to put what Wilt could have done in the modern game, especially the last couple of seasons of runt ball in the NBA.
We can go through the same thought experiment with Kareem facing the modern players. Hudy could have added 3-5 inches to Kareem's vertical and its arguable if any current NBA player would have EVER blocked a SINGLE skyhook by Kareem. Imagine how much higher his shooting percentage would have been in today's game, if he had never had to worry about his sky hook being blocked EVER!!!!!
There is a very good case that Wilt AND Kareem would have been unstoppable in today's game, except when they faced each other. And frankly, if Wilt had been able to charge and walk, it is doubtful that Kareem could ever have stopped Wilt.
The Romans both as a republic and as a dictatorial empire knew how to live!
Lots of sports, lots of sex, all followed by a good hot bath.
Their big flaws were slavery and making persons fight to the death to put butts in the seats.
I was remarking similarly about The Voice and America's Got Talent.
I enjoy these two shows a lot, because they are about something other than hyper pessimism, hyper ugliness, and hyper authoritarianism resplendent in baroque-noir style holding down the mindlessly violent and ugly serfs by near torture interrogation and extraction of coerced confessions as the best we can hope for in a duly constituted republic and a nation of laws temporarily overrun by an arrogant private oligarchy drunk on the capacity of recent technology to amplify their greed and grasp over command and control.
BUT...
Then a friend sent me a feed of a kinescope of the Jimmy Durante Show--an early variety show from 1952--and I watched it in amazement, for I had forgotten how marvelous it was to be entertained by skilled, professional entertainers.
My friend suggested that sport is popular, because it is the last type of popular entertainment where technology and economics converge to still permit/require highly talented, skilled, and drilled pre-professionals and professionals be the performers.
He is a KU fan. He said imagine KU Basketball in which Bill Self, Frank Mason, Devonte, Josh, Bragg, and Landen sit in big, tech-throne chairs along the court and watch and judge the walk-ons, who are the primary performers for the team for the entire season. He said that is The Voice.
It took awhile to sink in.
The point is that it is not economical to pay the professional entertainers on The Voice to perform their actual skills every night. They charge too much. The economics of the show only work if they sit there and do nothing and watch, like you and me, while amateurs looking for a big break perform for nothing, or next to nothing, and subject themselves to the debasement of being commoditized before our eyes.
I am not knocking The Voice and shows like it. I don't blame Americans thirsting for entertainment wanting to watch amateurs sing and dance, instead of beat confessions out of scum bags and white collar criminals (aka white middle class men being image reengineered with mass media to not be such an influential, successful portion of the society and electorate). But how economically dysfunctional is it, when the American economy can no longer afford to be entertained by skilled, professional entertainers, EVEN virtually and remotely through TV?
So: it is not just that Americans are base and crazed seekers of instant gratification. That is largely the effect of a cause. The cause is that the American economy can afford to present skilled performers even virtually to the American public, given its high 22% unemployment (when accounted for with pre-1980 criteria), outsourced high paying jobs (accomplished with tax subsidy), largely failed experiment with central bank centric central planning, and largely failed experiment with deeply subsidized oligopoly market regimes, etc.
Through out American little "r" republican history, until the rise of blatantly insipid and anti-democratic neo conservative deconstruction of legacy Constitutional order and New Deal economic institutions, and the temporary, but 16 year and counting eclipse of the sovereign republic with the National Security State apparatus and its FEMA COG shadow government (and no doubt with the interference of central bank centric interests from states outside the USA) that appears to be badly bungling the staging of this Presidential election, well, through out that long little "r" republican history, America arts and letters and popular entertainment grew to become some of the most wildly popular and beloved art forms and entertainment products in the world.
The American popular song came to dominate popular music in the 20th Century. Dixieland, ragtime, jazz, blues, country, even American classical music blossomed BEFORE the great baroque-noir era of increasingly unaffordable entertainment by skilled professional entertainers.
The American popular movie came to dominate popular cinema in the 20th Century. Shorts. Silent films. Talkies. Epics. Americans produced some of the best of all of these types of entertainment and found ways to make them affordable enough to pay skilled professionals to act in them and found movies chains, separated from production companies by anti-trust enforcement, capable of not gouging so much for distribution that Americans actually got to see great skilled professional performers at least on the screen.
Radio the same.
Television the same.
Music the same.
The republic operating constitutionally under rule of law found ways to afford to entertain citizens with skilled professional performers. Self entertainment stayed on the porch swing, where it belonged. Amateur entertainment stayed in small venues like regional theater, and mellerdrammers.
Its not that the old republic did not have casualties of modernization. Vaudeville, which developed many of the skilled professional entertainers of the old republic of the 20th Century could not compete with the outlets of movies, radio and television. The fabulous territorial big bands that lived in KC and toured the southwestern US playing in gin joints that sold Pendergast booze disappeared with the end of prohibition, the end of the Depression, and the mass urbanization after WWII. But the ascendent, replacement outlets (portals if you will) for entertainment could still afford to use skilled professional performers.
It is almost unbelievable that we have now at least two generations of young Americans that know only reality TV and amateur TV; that have never been consistently entertained by skilled professionals. We are literally being entertained in national, regional and even global audiences now by persons that wouldn't even have been allowed on a vaudeville stage, wouldn't even have been allowed on Howdy Doody; wouldn't even have been allowed on 12 Street and Vine.
It is so extraordinary that I am not really able even to take a stab at the likely effects on culture over the next several decades.
I know there are great performers out there todays, and that in fields like digital down load music, we are perhaps at an all time zenith of quantity of skilled professional performers, whether or not I still listen to and like much of it. Steve's iPod and his phone and DARPA's internet enabled this.
But movies, television, and streaming video?
More and more they cannot afford to use skilled professional actors. More and more they have to use walk ons and special effects, and locations without artifice to try to crank the shit out on a budget that makes ends meet.
I know the very top of the entertainment biz is more flush than ever before, because of the globalization of markets, coupled with the balkanizing of 2000 channels. and growing.
But look for a musical that is more than Meryl Streep hoofing in Greece with a bunch of nobodies free riding off some Mediterranean scenery, or someone trying to stretch a rock video out to feature length, and you won't find it. The economics don't pencil. They haven't penciled since back in the third quarter of the old 20th Century republic.
We are having a brief renaiissance of the mini serial on NetFlicks and HBO. House of Cards and Masters of Sex come to mind, but there are lots more. It is not that there is no good product out there. There may be more than there has been in a long time.
But reality TV and amateur TV used to be exceptions to the rule, rather than dominant product of the time. Ted Mack Amateur Hour, the game shows, and so on were there to fill till prime time.
Now prime time is full of them.
More and more media is reruns.
Even the original products are so formulaic and populated with the same underlying polygonal FX, that they are essentially reruns that are being seen for the first time. Tasty paradox.
One truly great irony of our time is that even the intel agencies are reputedly getting away from real false flag casualty events and starting to stage fake false flag casualty events; i.e., casualty event simulations using trained accident simulation actors given legends and that quickly disappear., or so it is reputed by some. On one level we should be grateful. Better they scare us with fake injuries than really hurting a bunch of innocent persons. But best would be if they just stopped doing false flags entirely--faked or real. Regardless, when ever someone on the alternate news internet takes the time to go frame by frame through one of these faked terrorist events, and one looks at the accident simulation actors, they really don't look all that skilled and professional. We are not talking Betty Davis playing persons that have just supposedly had their limbs blown off. They look more like they have been doing it a few years part time and are just going through the motions so the intel cameramen can get their shots and feed them to mainstream media, or so it is reputed to be done. I don't know. I don't have any first hand knowledge of this sort of thing. I am just struck by the irony and emblematic aspects of the reputed activity in the age of hyper realism and post skilled professional actor entertainment.
Excellent point.
As time passes, all persons of any kind in all fields fade, from subsequent generations memories...unless they are made part of what might be called instituted memory, aka official history. We remember some founders of our country, some Presidents, some generals, but not others, many generations after anyone was alive to witness them, because they are taught to us in schools by our government's and its scholars' and oligarchs' preferences. And later reinforced by author's and media in books, film, tv, and internet usually strongly subsidized by government and private oligarchs seeking to reinvigorate a certain memory intended to help rationalize a present or anticipated activity.
So it follows that passage of time, and absence of those in media having seen him play, explains the fading of Wilt's phenomenal abilities from media coverage, just as you suggest, and the likely quite conscious decision to only partially institute and largely not teach his accomplishments; and instead institute and teach first Magic/Bird and then MJ and perhaps now Lebron, is likely driven by the marketing need to generate revenues from each succeeding generation by the most expedient means at hand--the appeal to each generation's vanity that its athletes (and by implicit suggestion-- it) are the greatest yet; that progress is never ending and linear.
It is so much easier to sell beer by saying your star is the best there ever was, so don't turn that dial, and bet while you can, for your greatest ever player will retire soon. Appeals to scarcity and vanity are powerful marketing tools in the hands of someone aiming the media spotlight.
Making persons think this is the greatest player at the biggest moment in sports history is "giving them thoughts that control things;" i.e., programming them how to think, so that they willingly suspend (or at least limit) reason and disbelief, and so watch, buy and bet on the "greatest show on earth" ever! That's entertainment! That is the Essense of Carney showmanship, augmented by advertising, propaganda, and when necessary, a psy-op.
In a big moment, you never want them thinking about anything other than the spectacle at hand, unless that thinking makes the spectacle seem even bigger and makes them want to watch, buy and bet more.
You've got to make'em think of Mike, not Wilt. Lebron not Wilt.
Wilt was waaaaaay better. That won't make a 20 year old today watch, buy and bet!
And now you've got to glorify Small Ball, when there is a drought of big men.
"That's entertainment!"
So: what we are each describing separately is likely required jointly to create the phenomenon we observe over the length of time we observe it in the case of basketball and Wilt.
Rock Chalk
Here is an interesting overview discussion of the origins of syphilis to add to your quiver.
Reading it makes me lean to syphilis being everywhere before Columbus, but its not remotely conclusive IMHO.
I can see why you have found the issue fascinating.
I am most curious about the evidence of the 248 exhumed English skeletons with syphilitic like lesions from the 1300s.
The story speculates a connection to Viking visits to New England.
After reading at most a tiny bit on the issue, I have a question for you, because you have studied this awhile.
What draws you to the new world origin hypothesis?
And did you notice how cleverly LB broke the Wilt embargo by tangent, when asked about Bird-Magic.
There appears a concerted effort to marginalize Wilt from NBA memory in the Nike-Jordan era. Nike Jordan were to huge of a money maker for the NBA and the petroshoeco-agency complex to allow the memory of Wilt get in the way.
How can you hype Mike as the greatest for Nike, if everyone remembers how much better Wilt actually was? It was never Wilt hating. It was business. They apparently HAD to bury Wilt legend to make the Mike myth work.
Thanks for the Rick suggestion.
I'm now thinking about writing in Mario Chalmers.
Until the issue of the Eurasian super corridors creating the oil and gas needed to successfully back a Shanghai Security Pact Reserve Currency without The Fed owners being involved is resolved peacefully...
We're back to needing some Chester Nimitz magnitude luck and Chalmers is the only guy I can think of with that much fight and luck in him.
Chalmers has as much experience as an elected official as Trump and Mario has not reputedly destroyed 30,000 some emails, if heard Director Comey's testimony correctly.
Maybe I'm just getting picky about candidate quality in my old age. :smiley:
Might as well listen to LB tell a Wilt Chamberlain at 43 years old story, too.
Thanks for posting the feed about Wilt.
My take away was that block of Jabbar's sky hook, when Wilt was way past his jumping prime.
Imagine if Wilt had played his first tens seasons coincident with Kareem.
They were both about the same size.
Wilt was of course a vastly better jumper than Kareem, as the tape of him in old age at 300+ pounds shows with him swatting Kareem's sky hook effortlessly.
Imagine how many sky hooks of Kareem's Wilt would have blocked, when Wilt was Kareem's weight?
Would Kareem have even tried the sky hook on Wilt the first five years of Wilt's career?
Next, imagine Kareem trying to guard Wilt the first five years of Wilt's career.
Wilt could easily out maneuver Kareem and do finger roles and fadeaways on Kareem, even when Wilt was an old man lugging 300+ pounds around.
Imagine how consistently Wilt could have blown around and by Kareem, or shot the fade away, when Wilt was in his first five years.
Wilt probably could have scored 40-50 points on Kareem, or fouled him out in ten minutes, while holding Kareem to 10-15 points during Wilt's first five seasons.
The man was an order of magnitude better than any other center that played the game...except maybe for Big Russ.
I have always thought that Big Russ would have become a great offensive player had he played on lesser teams his first five years in the league.
Big Russ was a great, great, GREAT athlete, who had the strongest will I have ever seen in a basketball player, even stronger than Wilt's.
Just as Wilt became what his teams needed early on, and then again later on, Big Russ became what was needed by the Celts and they were so successful that he never had to develop his offensive game his entire career.
But I recall in college that he could hang numbers whenever his team needed them.
But i don't think Big Russ could have stopped the sky hook of the great Kareem, so, I've got to give the edge to Wilt as the all time center.
But I do so with the GREATEST respect for pound for pound the greatest center that ever played the game--Big Russ.
But without the pound for pound, I've got to go with Wilt.
Kareem and Big Russ were a tie, and Kareem might have been better than Big Russ had Kareem layed off the weed he reputedly used regularly.
Bottom line these three guys were pre-charge and travel era. They were about as good statistically, in some cases better, in the pre-charge and travel era, as were the guys that came after them in the Charge and Travel Era.
Logical conclusion: Wilt, Big Russ, and Kareem were waaaaaay better than the centers that have come after them. Waaaaaaaay better.
Really, Wilt would likely have scored as many as another 5,000 career points in the charge and travel era, even with the lower number of trips in the charge and travel era. Why? Because he would have literally been unstoppable.
@Kcmatt7 said:
Players didn’t make enough for it to actually be enticing to play basketball competitively growing up as a kid.
All of these sorts of arguments can be inverted on themselves easily and validly.
Players make so much now that they protect the merchandize and don't play nearly as hard, so Wilt would completely whip their asses today, if he played today as hard as he did then.
As a result, IMHO, all this sorts of arguments are rather superfluous.
"But let’s just not lie about who he played against or why his stats were so inflated."
--@Kcmatt7
No one advocating for Wilt ever has to lie; that's why its so fun to advocate for Wilt.
It is only those trying to understate his accomplishments and abilities in comparison to modern players, and trying to diminish the quality of the competition he played against and the rules (no normalized charging and traveling) that he labored under that skirt an acute Pinnochio effect.
Rock Chalk!!!
After considerable deliberation, and the stalling of the previously proposed mock write in campaign, I have come to the sober conclusion that it would not be appropriate for Coach Self to take the team to meet the eventual President of the United States, after winning the ring this season, unless the eventual President of the United States and First Family agrees not to be present for the event.
Neither prospective President, until complete adjudication of all the disgraceful allegations made against both Presidential candidates, should be allowed anywhere near student athletes. We may well have to accept one of these two candidates as our President and Comander-in-Chief for four years prior to thorough adjudication of the disgraceful allegations, but we do not have to risk exposing our fine young men to either one before we know the truth.
I mean no disrespect to the families of either candidate, but I don't want either candidate up at Camp David alone with the launch codes prior to adjudication of the allegations.
I propose that Coach Self agree to the GREAT HONOR of bringing our ring-winning players to the White House, if the event were officiated by the then sitting Vice President, assuming no disgraceful allegations surface about either vice presidential candidate between now and then.
If disgraceful allegations that will take years to adjudicate WERE made against the the then sitting Vice President between now and then, I propose that the statutory Presidential line of succession be followed in a search for a Federal official to officiate the ring-winning team's visit.
Our young men of KU Basketball should not be denied the opportunity to see the most noble house in our Republic--the People's House--the White House. I am so filled with pride and respect for the White House that I get chills every time I see it. I want our players to see the People's House. I just don't want them exposed to either Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, until I know what kind of persons a jury of their peers finds them to be (note: mainstream media is reporting that both sides are reputedly threatening inquiries and litigations no matter who wins). I am okay with Tim Kaine, or Mike Pence, unless allegations requiring adjudication arise between now and the team's momentous visit.
Rock Chalk!
(Note: all fiction. No malice.)
The Amazing Batenac 1.0 predicts....
Emporia State: 47
KU: 103
Good to know, but I did not see an @Crimsonorblue22-Ra Church. :smiley: