| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 11188
Back to top |
|
StevenHW
Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 10980
Location: Sacramento, California
Back to top |
|
Michelle89
Joined: 17 Nov 2010
Posts: 16464
Location: Holland
Back to top |
|
Ay Mate
Joined: 12 Nov 2016
Posts: 1280
Back to top |
 Posted: 09/26/18 5:45 am ::: |
Reply  |
|
Swoopes is old news that no one really cares about anymore. Same goes with the Comets. Swoopes won 4 rings against a WNBA with only 7 other teams that had little to no talent on them. Brunson won 5 rings when the WNBA was bigger, faster, stronger and bursting with talent across all 12 teams.
The Comets winning the first 4 championships is NOT at all impressive. If you took the Comets, when they were at their peak in the WNBA, and put them in the WNBA today, they’d be lucky to even make the playoffs.
|
|
ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 11132
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 9:23 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| Ay Mate wrote: |
Swoopes is old news that no one really cares about anymore. Same goes with the Comets. Swoopes won 4 rings against a WNBA with only 7 other teams that had little to no talent on them. Brunson won 5 rings when the WNBA was bigger, faster, stronger and bursting with talent across all 12 teams.
The Comets winning the first 4 championships is NOT at all impressive. If you took the Comets, when they were at their peak in the WNBA, and put them in the WNBA today, they’d be lucky to even make the playoffs. |
Typical hyperbole, but also, in this case, pretty accurate. The Comets were great in their time, and had four superb players, but it would be very difficult for those four to carry a team to a WNBA title in this era.
And though many on this board have fond -- or not so fond -- memories of Swoopes, Cooper, Thompson and Arcain, it is getting to be ancient history. For example, depending on what other sports you follow, which teams won titles in 1998 in MLB, NFL and NCAA women's basketball?
_________________
Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
|
|
Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 11188
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 9:33 am ::: Re: Swoopes Reminding Her Classic Nemesis Of the Ring Count |
Reply |
|
| Okay. Then I'll stop posting about Swoopes and the Comets.
_________________
I'm all for the separation of church and hate.
|
|
Silky Johnson
Joined: 29 Sep 2014
Posts: 3315
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 11:18 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| ClayK wrote: |
| Typical hyperbole, but also, in this case, pretty accurate. The Comets were great in their time, and had four superb players, but it would be very difficult for those four to carry a team to a WNBA title in this era... |
Eh, maybe. The problem with comparing teams across eras is the same is it always has been: it presupposes that, all things being equal, that Team A would beat Team B, or vice versa. Except that all things aren't equal, never have been equal, and never could be equal.
Science progresses ever forward: training improves, nutrition improves, coaching and player development improves. When Cynthia Cooper graduated from high school, the only player on the 2015 WNBA Champion Minnesota Lynx who'd even been born yet was Ashja Jones; all but five of them still hadn't been born, when Cooper completed her eligibility at USC. The science, the training, the coaching, everything that we've learned about developing women athletes... hell, just from the beginning of the WNBA until now, none of that was available to Cynthia Cooper, or Janeth Arcain, or Sheryl Swoopes, or even Tina Thompson (the "baby" of that team, who is three months older than me). Not a single player on that 2015 team was drafted before 2002, which means that all of them had, at an absolute minimum, one year of high school, and their entire college careers, with the benefit of everything that had been learned about making better women basketball players, since the start of the WNBA.
So, to borrow an expression that I recently learned (and discovered I liked), to say that that Comets team couldn't compete against the teams of today is accurate, but also not really true. There's simply no counterfactual: there's no way to know what those women's respective games would look like, had they had, from birth, access to all of the same advances that these women have had. Like, if Sheryl Swoopes was the same age in 2018 that she was in 1998, she would have been born in, like, the early nineties, instead of the early seventies. You can't really assume that a player with Swoopes' talent, born in 1991, would play exactly the same way that the actual Swoopes did.
_________________
Professional Hater. The Baron of #HateHard
My team no longer exists, so I'll have to settle for hating yours.
|
|
Randy
Joined: 08 Oct 2011
Posts: 10911
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 11:25 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| I always wonder about those sorts of things. Would Wilt be just another big guy today, or would he be the same guy and make these young guys today look foolish? I had the chance to ask Michael Cooper once how he would do in today's NBA. His answer surprised me, but made a really interesting point. He said he didn't know because what was called a foul has changed a lot. He suggested what he saw as good defense might get called a foul today. So it is not only training, etc that changed, but the game has changed in every dimension.
|
|
justintyme
Joined: 08 Jul 2012
Posts: 8407
Location: Northfield, MN
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 11:41 am ::: Re: Swoopes Reminding Her Classic Nemesis Of the Ring Count |
Reply |
|
| Genero36 wrote: |
| Okay. Then I'll stop posting about Swoopes and the Comets. |
Don't you dare! I love these posts. It is so important to remember the history of the league and how everything has come to be. Especially a great franchise that was lost.
_________________
↑↑↓↓←→←→BA
|
|
Iluvacc
Joined: 11 Jun 2005
Posts: 4167
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 12:05 pm ::: Re: Swoopes Reminding Her Classic Nemesis Of the Ring Count |
Reply |
|
| justintyme wrote: |
| Genero36 wrote: |
| Okay. Then I'll stop posting about Swoopes and the Comets. |
Don't you dare! I love these posts. It is so important to remember the history of the league and how everything has come to be. Especially a great franchise that was lost. |
x_____
|
|
Luuuc
#NATC
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 21924
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 1:24 pm ::: Re: Swoopes Reminding Her Classic Nemesis Of the Ring Count |
Reply |
|
| Iluvacc wrote: |
| justintyme wrote: |
| Genero36 wrote: |
| Okay. Then I'll stop posting about Swoopes and the Comets. |
Don't you dare! I love these posts. It is so important to remember the history of the league and how everything has come to be. Especially a great franchise that was lost. |
x_____ |
x____
I'd say just ignore the super-salty replies and keep at it.
Just because the Comets had half the league's top talent in a single team doesn't make SS any less of a great player.
_________________
Thanks for calling. I wait all night for calls like these.
|
|
GlennMacGrady
Joined: 03 Jan 2005
Posts: 8225
Location: Heisenberg
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 1:24 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
Genero, don't stop posting about any of your favorite teams (or any other subject) just because others have different opinions.
I'm puzzled about which one is the "nemesis". I'm having difficulty identifying these aging ingenues: T-Spoon, Sue Wicks and _____ ?
Silky makes some good points, but I don't agree about nutrition. I think diets were better prior to 1980 than now, in societal generality, but that's a whole other subject way beyond basketball. |
|
Genero36
Joined: 24 Apr 2005
Posts: 11188
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 2:09 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| I'm puzzled about which one is the "nemesis". I'm having difficulty identifying these aging ingenues: T-Spoon, Sue Wicks and _____ ? |
Kym Hampton.
_________________
I'm all for the separation of church and hate.
|
|
Silky Johnson
Joined: 29 Sep 2014
Posts: 3315
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/26/18 3:04 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| Silky makes some good points, but I don't agree about nutrition. I think diets were better prior to 1980 than now, in societal generality, but that's a whole other subject way beyond basketball. |
I don't believe that for a second. I'll stipulate that there may have been less processed food 50+ years ago, but I don't think it follows that diets and nutrition were better. My mom, for example, is a decade older than Cynthia Cooper, and was raised in the rural south: they ate a lot of food that they raised and/or grew themselves. They also ate that food covered in salt, and sugar, and cheese, and fried (in lard!) and covered in gravy. "Fresh" vegetables were boiled until all of the actual nutrients were in the water they were cooked in. MSG was in everything. We know more about health and metabolism now than we did in 1963: of course it stands to reason that we know more about diet and nutrition, too.
Hell, I'll take it a step further and say that advances in agriculture, refrigeration technology and transportation have even made it easier for people in non-rural areas to eat healthy. My dad grew up in a major city in the forties: he's old enough to remember having an actual icebox. People in urban areas have easier access to fresh food than they did three score years ago: we have access to safer nutritional supplements. We have access to better vaccinations and immunizations. We know more about health and fitness, in general. I don't know how anybody can objectively say that our diets have gotten worse. I mean, I guess that you can make the argument that the "Average Joe's" diet was better in 1968 than it is in 2018, but we're not talking about "Average Joes," we're talking about professional athletes, and the kids who aspire to be so. I don't think that a kid aspiring to become a professional athlete is eating like an "Average Joe," do you?
_________________
Professional Hater. The Baron of #HateHard
My team no longer exists, so I'll have to settle for hating yours.
|
|
ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 11132
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/27/18 9:13 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| Silky Johnson wrote: |
| GlennMacGrady wrote: |
| Silky makes some good points, but I don't agree about nutrition. I think diets were better prior to 1980 than now, in societal generality, but that's a whole other subject way beyond basketball. |
I don't believe that for a second. I'll stipulate that there may have been less processed food 50+ years ago, but I don't think it follows that diets and nutrition were better. My mom, for example, is a decade older than Cynthia Cooper, and was raised in the rural south: they ate a lot of food that they raised and/or grew themselves. They also ate that food covered in salt, and sugar, and cheese, and fried (in lard!) and covered in gravy. "Fresh" vegetables were boiled until all of the actual nutrients were in the water they were cooked in. MSG was in everything. We know more about health and metabolism now than we did in 1963: of course it stands to reason that we know more about diet and nutrition, too.
Hell, I'll take it a step further and say that advances in agriculture, refrigeration technology and transportation have even made it easier for people in non-rural areas to eat healthy. My dad grew up in a major city in the forties: he's old enough to remember having an actual icebox. People in urban areas have easier access to fresh food than they did three score years ago: we have access to safer nutritional supplements. We have access to better vaccinations and immunizations. We know more about health and fitness, in general. I don't know how anybody can objectively say that our diets have gotten worse. I mean, I guess that you can make the argument that the "Average Joe's" diet was better in 1968 than it is in 2018, but we're not talking about "Average Joes," we're talking about professional athletes, and the kids who aspire to be so. I don't think that a kid aspiring to become a professional athlete is eating like an "Average Joe," do you? |
Professional athletes eat so much better and take care of themselves so much better than in the past. Baseball players used to smoke in the dugout, and no one thought about nutrition ...
And that's just one reason you can't compare across eras, absolutely, though I don't doubt that Swoopes, Thompson, Arcain and Cooper could compete at a high level at any point in history. I wonder a lot more about the rest of the roster ...
_________________
Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
|
|
zune69
Joined: 27 May 2010
Posts: 8183
Back to top |
|
Iluvacc
Joined: 11 Jun 2005
Posts: 4167
Back to top |
|
hangtyme24
Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 2441
Back to top |
|
ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 11132
Back to top |
|
Silky Johnson
Joined: 29 Sep 2014
Posts: 3315
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/28/18 10:52 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| ClayK wrote: |
| Agree ... I just don't think that team would win four straight titles in a more competitive situation. One or two? Sure. A tough out every year? Absolutely. |
Wait, hold up: I don't remember that being the argument. Of course, they wouldn't win four in a row. Nobody's even won two in a row in sixteen years. But, to me, that's a whole different conversation, for a whole different thread.
This thread, or so it seems to me, was started for the same reason all the other nostalgia threads get started around here: for some weekly feel-good. "Remember the Comets? Weren't they dope!" "Remember Sheryl Swoopes? Wasn't she dope!" The reason why this thread went so far off-topic is because some jackass said that the Comets teams would be "lucky to even make the playoffs." Saying that they couldn't win four championships in a row in the modern WNBA seems to be arguing against a point that nobody was trying to make in the first place.
_________________
Professional Hater. The Baron of #HateHard
My team no longer exists, so I'll have to settle for hating yours.
|
|
ClayK
Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 11132
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/28/18 11:08 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| Silky Johnson wrote: |
| ClayK wrote: |
| Agree ... I just don't think that team would win four straight titles in a more competitive situation. One or two? Sure. A tough out every year? Absolutely. |
Wait, hold up: I don't remember that being the argument. Of course, they wouldn't win four in a row. Nobody's even won two in a row in sixteen years. But, to me, that's a whole different conversation, for a whole different thread.
This thread, or so it seems to me, was started for the same reason all the other nostalgia threads get started around here: for some weekly feel-good. "Remember the Comets? Weren't they dope!" "Remember Sheryl Swoopes? Wasn't she dope!" The reason why this thread went so far off-topic is because some jackass said that the Comets teams would be "lucky to even make the playoffs." Saying that they couldn't win four championships in a row in the modern WNBA seems to be arguing against a point that nobody was trying to make in the first place. |
Good point ... didn't mean to overreact.
_________________
Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā
|
|
suemar
Joined: 17 Mar 2005
Posts: 3729
Location: Norfolk Va
Back to top |
| Posted: 09/29/18 5:18 pm ::: |
Reply |
|
Don't care ?? I care about the WNBA history. I care about its current state and I care and hope for its future. Without history you have no beginnings.
Could the past teams compete now? Probably not. Whats something I could care less about. Its that they competed at all that matters.
_________________
The Beat Goes On...
LifeTour 1952 -
|
|
FrozenLVFan
Joined: 08 Jul 2014
Posts: 3510
Back to top |
| Posted: 10/01/18 10:54 am ::: |
Reply |
|
| ClayK wrote: |
| Ay Mate wrote: |
Swoopes is old news that no one really cares about anymore. Same goes with the Comets. Swoopes won 4 rings against a WNBA with only 7 other teams that had little to no talent on them. Brunson won 5 rings when the WNBA was bigger, faster, stronger and bursting with talent across all 12 teams.
The Comets winning the first 4 championships is NOT at all impressive. If you took the Comets, when they were at their peak in the WNBA, and put them in the WNBA today, they’d be lucky to even make the playoffs. |
Typical hyperbole, but also, in this case, pretty accurate. The Comets were great in their time, and had four superb players, but it would be very difficult for those four to carry a team to a WNBA title in this era.
And though many on this board have fond -- or not so fond -- memories of Swoopes, Cooper, Thompson and Arcain, it is getting to be ancient history. For example, depending on what other sports you follow, which teams won titles in 1998 in MLB, NFL and NCAA women's basketball? |
Bad examples, there, Clay. Without even thinking about it, I know that the '98 Yankees were arguably one of the greatest MLB teams of all time and won the Series title, and Tenn with the 3 Meeks and Kellie Jolly went 39-0 and won their third consecutive title. (Sorry, I don't know anything about football.) To compare the Comets to those teams is elevating the Comets' accomplishments rather than disparaging them.
|
|
|
|
...Some of you are delusional.