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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   40043 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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ESPN just released an article on the top athletes of the 21st century. The list is…interesting.

Shocking Phelps is ranked No 1. This is contra evidence against culture war fodder. He is white, male, and I assume straight. But then, their No 2 is Serena. The list is allegedly about how great they were at their sport. There is no good argument where Serena had a better career than Novak Djokovic. Novak has more slams, masters, career grand slams, only golden master, calendar slam, weeks at No 1. And Novak did it against the two other greatest tennis players of all time. Serena’s field was weaker. And of course, Serena wouldn’t last on the ATP whereas Novak wouldn’t lose a set on the WTA.

But Serena became famous for being good at a white sport while being black. And Novak (who shocking is ranked lower than Roger Fed despite clearly being better) is famous for refusing to take the covid vaxx.

So culture war? But then how do I explain Phelps at No 1? Maybe ESPN is just bad at its job? After all Brady is at five. On the other hand, ESPN has a ton of WNBA players on the list. Which is funny. The WNBA is not a good league and doesn’t generate (at least historically) a lot of money. There is no way the three of the top 34 athletes of the 21st century are WNBA players. Yet shockingly no female soccer players that high. What am I missing?

ETA: 8 of the top 100 athletes of the 21st century happen to be WNBA players per ESPN. And that is out of all Olympic sports, soccer, cricket, football, hockey, MMA, etc. Why so many WNBA players — a minor league that wouldn’t generate sufficient revenue to attract this alleged level of talent.

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/40446224/top-100-athletes-21st-century

There's no way Brady isn't #1 on the objectively-correct version of that list. Maybe some soccer player if it's the international version, but in that case who cares.

In the also objectively-correct '90s-sensibilities version of that list, you could maybe throw Serena in there in the 20s, and another two or three at 70+.

But it's ridiculous to even try to object-level argue about the membership of a list that has 8 WNBA players on it. In Dath Ilan, we're arguing about pervasive disrespect of the O-line and how Joe Thomas should have been higher.

So culture war? But then how do I explain Phelps at No 1?

Good question. One possibility is that the list was compiled from the top 100 (or some other number) from several different journalists: you make your list; I'll make mine, he'll make his, and we'll agglomerate them in some way. In that case, each woke writer would feel the need to put a few of WNBA players on the list -- but the WNBA is not an A-list sports league and hasn't been discussed enough to reach convergence on the GOAT's. Some of those journalists may never even have watched a full WNBA game (most feminists haven't). So, there would be less convergence on the various lists, which would show up as lots of WNBA players in the agglomerated top 100. Just a guess off the top of my head.

Phelps at #1 seems like a CYA move: almost 10% of the top athletes are from a single obscure sports league -- but that's our honest opinion, and it can't be sheer wokeness, because look who we put at #1. Also, Phelps has the all-time record in the most salient metric (total Olympic medals in head-to-head worldwide competition), so any other choice would look woke.

Experts in individual sports were asked to vote to rank the top athletes in their sport since Jan. 1, 2000 (no accomplishments before this date were to be considered). Those votes pared down pools in each sport to lists of 10 to 25 athletes each, which constituted the overall candidate pool for the top athletes of the 21st century so far. Each voter was presented two randomly selected names and asked to pick which one has had the better career in the 21st century. Across repeated, randomized head-to-head matchups, more than 70,000 votes were cast at this stage, and using an Elo rating system, the list was pared down from 262 to 100. That list was then evaluated by a panel of experts for any inconsistencies or oversights, resulting in the top 100 ranking seen here.

Not the process I described, but I think it allows for the same mechanism (lack of attention to the WNBA => lack of convergence on opinions about the greats) via this step:

Each voter was presented two randomly selected names and asked to pick which one has had the better career in the 21st century.

Hot take but in my mind Federer is still the “better” player, at least from an aesthetic and “legacy” perspective.

I think decades from now people will still be reading about Federer’s forehand and watching his highlights, whereas they’ll just read about Novak’s insane trophy case but not actually watch him play.

Perhaps and there is some Floyd money mayweather aspect to Novak’s game. Novak is technically awesome. Very few weaknesses. He will find your weakness and make you win with that. He doesn’t hit so many winners but plays a lot of 60-40 balls.

FMM is like that. Doesn’t knock people out. But is just so damn technically perfect that he wins every match. But some people like the Manny Paq of the world who whilst not as good a boxer is a better entertainer.

Eh, I was never as impressed by Mayweather as others were. He was a one trick pony in an era of one trick ponies, his trick just happened to be better than everyone else's. He wasn't technically perfect. He had blazing speed but he couldn't, or at least wouldn't, do anything else. This was most prominent in his fight against Zab Judah, whom he shouldn't have let go the distance. All Floyd could do was dance around and throw combinations when the other guy made a mistake. What he couldn't do was take control of a fight and force the other guy to fight it his way.

While "take what the other guy gives you" may be good strategy in certain contexts, it has its limitations. To use an analogy from football, if a team is facing an opponent with good pass coverage the offense will try to run the ball as much as possible, give them looks that they think will create favorable matchups, and try to exploit weaknesses whenever they can. What Mayweather did was the equivalent of going out in shotgun on every down and hoping that the cornerback blew his assignment.

Theyre probably slanting towards sports that are topically relevant. Right now that means the wnba and olympic swimming. Edit- tennis is also topical with Wimbledon just ending now. Theyre also slanting for relatively recent athletes. Anything that can farm clicks for current news.

As a Red Sox fan, I decided to search the list for Pedro Martinez, and I was shocked and appalled to find that the first hit in Ctrl+F for "Pedro" was for Dustin Pedroia in the description for David Ortiz, listed as number 45 (Pedro's jersey number at Boston, coincidentally enough), with Pedro Martinez being listed all the way down at 92. David Ortiz is deservedly a legend for his almost supernatural ability to get the right hit at the right time, but the notion that he belongs anywhere above Pedro, much less 47 spots ahead of him, is a complete absurdity. As much as I love Ortiz, I'm not even sure his career warrants his HOF induction. On the other hand, Pedro is correctly talked about as possibly the best pitcher ever (probably most wouldn't place him as 1, but any conversation about a top 3 would at least mention him), despite his injury-filled shortened career, due in large part of his ridiculous 1998-2000 seasons during the steroid era. And I don't know if it counts for anything, but he did it all while being under 6 feet tall (by like half an inch, but still), which is almost unheard of for a Major League pitcher.

I think this is just a bad, stupid, clickbait-focused list, and any CW-related stuff are just apophenia. Well, they were probably subconsciously inserted by the voters and journalists, to be fair, but I'd guess that's the extent of it.

The baseball picks were largely weird. Adrian Beltre and Derek Jeter and David Ortiz?

Adrian Beltre actually was great. Amazingly so. He generated about 80 WAR in the 2000s. About 1/3 of HoF are at 70 or below.

In contrast during the same post 1999 period Jeter “only” had 53.6 WAR. Ortiz only had 50.9 (note Ortiz’s entire career amounted only to 51 WAR — he is one of the most overrated ball players of all time).

There is a giant gap between Beltre and the other two 2000 and onward

To be clear I don't think any of those three belong. I say this as someone who had a Derek Jeter poster on my wall as a kid and read and reread his autobiography. Jeter has a reputation entirely built on the 1997-2000 run, take that away as this list purports to do and he's merely a very good shortstop. Jeter absolutely belongs on a list for the last thirty years, but not the last 25.

Ortiz was a career DH and simply didn't do enough to make it, he's all personality and no stats. Beltre arguably has the stats, but lacks the impact or personality.

In my mind greatest athlete is about impact on the game, statistical achievements, accomplishments (ie championships etc), and impact on culture. Not necessarily in that order, but you need at least a dose of all three to make it into the list.

TBH, I don't find a list where Jokavic, Federer, and Nadal aren't tightly grouped to be one that is all that informed about tennis. Ditto one that doesn't have Messi and Ronaldo tightly grouped.

The whole list has far too many basketball players on it, and when they appear, far too highly. Of the high ranks, IMO Bolt got a bit jobbed. I'd have him in the top 5 with Brady & Phelps as other locks. Jon Jones probably got severely underrated on this list as well.

But Serena became famous for being good at a white sport while being black. And Novak (who shocking is ranked lower than Roger Fed despite clearly being better) is famous for refusing to take the covid vaxx.

Yeah, in any sort of mainstream Western sports discourse—or mainstream Western discourse in general—simpery for blacks and women is omnipresent.

To Serena’s credit, I believe she once unhesistantly admitted on some talk show interview that Andy Murray would bagel her 6-0, 6-0, 6-0.

“Top” athlete leaves a lot of subjectivity. Of course, in terms of actual ability, there’d be no women anywhere near the top 100 of a given widely played sport (likely more like 1,000 or more), much less top 100 across sports. Well, no legacy women at least. I’m rooting for the Lia Thomases of the world.

There was a hilarious Federer Rolex commercial about greatness not being defined by titles and Grand Slams when Nadal and Djokovic were surpassing him in Grand Slams. It felt like an SNL skit; the cringey copium had tennis enjoyers dying at the time.

It's crass, but the simplest heuristic for 'greatness', if taken to mean the person with the most athletic prowess, is money. Fame also counts for something.

The top badminton player this year won about $650,000, approximately on par with the 460th player in the NBA. NBA (or UEFA, or NFL) money attracts far more competition than swimming, track and field, or gymnastics. It is also a measure of popularity and therefore the size of the starting pool of players.

I wouldn't say that Lebron James is superior to Lionel Messi simply because his net worth is twice as high - but I also wouldn't dismiss the notion offhand. But the US is a richer economy than most, and US sports are overpaid. And, again, Messi gets global fame and recognition as the pinnacle of the world's most popular sport. Once you're getting $500 million, you can afford to value those things more than another $500 million.

In short, I don't think most of the olympians have come through as intense a field as the professionals, and are not nearly as much of talent outliers.

The best heuristic for any general GOAT tier list on Popular Website is popularity. Michael Phelps is not nearly as popular as Lionel Messi. But, he exists in the same realm for people who read and write ESPN editorials. Which are primarily non-soccer watching Americans.

My mother would recognize all the top 10 names on this list. Once you get to Novak Djokovic her would knowledge drops off. (She would recognize 5 of the 9 names that follow Djokovic.) Michael Phelps is not as famous as Messi, but in terms of Olympic gold medals he can't be beat. Americans like gold medals. They're great, because we're great. Someone who gets all the gold medals at the Olympics should be top of the list. Any list will do, but especially GOAT lists.

Also, Olympians definitely do not have to prove themselves the same as world class spectator sport athletes. That's what makes the Olympics cool. Highly dedicated non-pros -- that now receive oodles of money from their respective countries to train -- get one or two shots in a lifetime to get the glory. Messi goes out there every week for 20 years.

Now, who the hell is Diana Taurasi?

Editor's note: Badminton is as fun as fun gets. We need to close the #wagegap between badminton players and other people playing more difficult, popular sports. The top 30 badminton pros should make as much as starters on the USWNT.

That’s why it is really funny that so many wnba players are listed…

The list in general seems to have a huge Olympics bias with Biles being in the top 10 the most questionable given her 2020 withdrawal.

However I think the worst pick in the top 20 is easily Lewis Hamilton. The car is responsible for way too much in F1 for any driver to be ranked that high.

I didn’t read any further than top 20 so might get worse after that.

I wouldn't read too much into Phelps being ahead of Serena Williams. That's probably Murica, Fuck Yeah! talking. I would read a lot into Serena Williams being ahead Tom Brady. Much as I may hate him, he's clearly a better athlete than literally any woman. Palate cleanser from typing that.

It's clearly a woke list, but lists can be biased in more than one way. The WNBA is a joke of a league, but it's a woke hobby horse. The reason Phelps is ahead of Messi, Mbappe, Usain Bolt, etc is the same reason he's ranked ahead of Serena Williams and that black woman gymnast who took a mental health break in the middle of the olympics- he gave America an unbeatable edge on the world stage.

Again, I'm not saying there's no liberal biases. Connor McGregor and Harrison Butker probably aren't being evaluated entirely fairly. But there's a clear bias towards athletes that let America vanquish other countries internationally.

probably Murica, Fuck Yeah! talking.

They are both Americans.

Yes, but even if he isn't on a true national team, Phelps competes (or, given the nature of uniforms in his sport, sits poolside waiting to compete) in a red, white and blue uniform and The Star-Spangled Banner is played when he wins. The right to dress Serena Williams on court is for sale to the highest bidder.

Serena does have four Olympic Gold medals for the US, but Phelps has something like 28 total medals. There is something patriotic I can't quite pin down to getting the national anthem played so many times.

On the other hand, the 1980 US Hockey team gets lots of press and movies, and comparatively little goes to Eric Heiden who won the other five American gold medals that year. Sometimes I can't explain the zeitgeist well.

Heiden's medals were a big deal at the time, too.

It's a bad list, and it keeps getting worse as you go on.

It is an American list meant to make American sports and sportspeople look great. Ah yes, 56/100 are American and 17/100 are from Baseball, a sport that is played by Americans and Dominicans, and the 30x smaller country is somehow better.

From a competitiveness perspective, Tennis and Swimming are nowhere close to (real) Football. Messi is by far the greatest player to have every played football, and also the greatest sportsperson of all time. (not just the 21st century). Unlike every other sports person, Messi was the best player in the world when most players start their careers (~20) and stayed the very best for the next 15 years. Messi (not unlike Gretsky) could be 2 players, and they would be the #1 and #2 greatest players of all time.

When one nation uniformly dominates a sport, then you know that it isn't THAT competitive. Swimming is one such example. I can speak about swimming because I personally know family members who were nationally (one of them was in the US) ranked top-10 swimmers for their age. Either my family is uniquely suited for swimming. Or, they have the 1 trait all my family members share, which is ruthless ladder climbing (Tier 0 tiger moms in my family). Swimming as a sport uniquely rewards hard-work. Which tells you that it is not competitive enough. You can't work hard at soccer and get good. You need to be insanely gifted, then work hard, and that gets you into the 4th tier of English football. Now Phelps' dominance of swimming was large enough, that I'd still give him #2. But, Messi is #1. Speaking of swimming, Ledecky deserves as shoutout for the top 20.

Djokovic - Federer & Nadal having close head-to-heads helps none of them. I wouldn't put any of them on the top 10.

Sports I think shouldn't qualify for more than 1 name:

  • F1 & Golf - Billionaires sports. It's like when the Ashes (Cricket) used to be played between lords in England and Australia.
  • Winter sports - sorry, it doesn't snow in most of the world or most of the year.

tldr:

  • Messi is #1
  • Ronaldo in top 10
  • Brady, Phelps, Bolt in top 5
  • Biles in top 10, Serena wasn't anywhere close to dominating her sport
  • Magnus Carlsen should be in top 10, and Chess should be counted as a sport
  • WNBA is a joke and shouldn't have a single name.
  • Andy Murray is a good lad, but he ain't in the top 100 discussion. Come on
  • Heavy weight MMA is likely the hardest sport to stay at the top of. Fedor deserves a top 50 just for that.

I would completely agree on Messi being the best footballer of the 21st century, and even the best athlete of the period. But as a Brazillian, I must defend Pelé's claim to the GOAT. He was far more successful on the national team compared to Messi, took Santos from a small team that nobody knew to one of the most acclaimed clubs ever, and became an international sensation. He may never have played in Europe outside of exhibition, but back then, the leveling field was much more even.

Serena wasn't anywhere close to dominating her sport

You may want to look into this. She has numerous career and individual superlatives, and won nearly half of all grand slams for 10 years straight.

Serena is gonna get a ton of shit on here because she's the best example on the list, Lewis Hamilton being the other, of everyone chasing the Jackie Robinson high. But there was only one 42. You can't just pretend it happened that way.

I meant dominating in the sense that others in the top 5 did.

Messi was simultaneously the best scorer, free kick taker, dribbler, passer and orchestrator in the footballing world. For a while, fans would confer a MOTMOTM (man of the match other than messi) award, because Messi was always the best. Phelps, Biles and Bolt won 100% of all serious competitions they entered in the prime of their careers.

Serena dominated her sport in the way that the rest of the top 30 did. Not enough for #2.

I just can’t see Biles anywhere near the top after the 2020 games. I get that she’s dominated everything else, but in one of the biggest moments she didn’t perform.

Michael Jordan dropped out of the NBA for two entire seasons to putter around playing minor league baseball - and many have speculated that he did so as a result of his considerable gambling addiction - abandoning his teammates and likely costing them at least one championship. Do you believe this should disqualify him from discussion as the NBA’s GOAT? I think Simone Biles is certainly on Jordan’s level for her respective sport, and her dropping out of those Olympics doesn’t seem to have impacted her teammates to quite the extent that Jordan’s dropping out did, since the U.S. still won 6 gymnastics medals at those Olympics.

I don’t see it. Jordan allegedly quit because his dad was murdered. That is a bit different from “I felt pressure whilst performing.” And Jordan was actually starting to turn into an okay MILB player (probably never would’ve been good enough to be in the majors).

Jordan’s probably most iconic game was the flu game. Biles quit over anxiety. Jordan dropped 40+

Biles didn’t just drop out because of “anxiety”. She was, allegedly, experiencing something gymnasts call “the twisties”, wherein she was literally losing her sense of spatial orientation during aerial twisting events. When an NBA player of Jordan’s caliber has a bad day, it means scoring 15 points instead of 40. When an Olympic gymnast has a bad day, it can mean landing the wrong way and ending up with a career-altering injury. Like, I get why people shit on Biles at the time, especially because the morons in the feminized sports media decided to use it as an opportunity to celebrate her bravery rather than just recognizing it as a somewhat unfortunate and embarrassing setback in what has otherwise been an incredible, historic career. Still, if we’re talking about greatest athletes, very few have had the sustained level of dominance in a particular sport that Biles has.

It's like when the Ashes (Cricket) used to be played between lords in England and Australia.

I'm pretty sure the 'Lords' you've heard referred to in cricket is the cricket ground. Cricket isn't played by literal lords, it's a middle class sport in England and Australia and a working man's sport in the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent.

Aristocrats play (or played) badminton, croquet and polo.

This has no bearing at all on Messi's greatness, because that must be judged relatively to all other soccer players, but as a tangent, I can never get into soccer because to me it seems to be fundamentally broken. Penalty kicks have way too much influence on game results. A penalty kick has an ~80% chance of going in, in games that end about 2-2 on average, and about one in four games have at least one penalty kick.

It would be like if the NBA had a type of foul such that at least one of this type was awarded about once in four games, and the resulting free throw was worth 50 points if the player shooting the free throw made it.

It just makes soccer really hard to watch for me, I keep getting into soccer games and enjoying them but then when there's a penalty kick it just sucks all the excitement out of it and makes me feel like "why did I just spend all that time watching this?".

My American problem with European football leagues is that the national level season is so boring to me. What's the point of a league where only four teams have won a championship this century?

La Liga trophies literally count, to me, in a comparative ranking like this somewhere between Brady's AFC east division wins and Lebron's Eastern conference wins. It's just not really a competitive league outside of Barca and Real.

I feel a lot of sports would not get any traction if they were debuting for the first time ever now in this media and attention environment.

National tournaments have more penalties than usual club football. The worldcup is wnotionally important, but tactically, it is pretty bad football.

In most club competitions, there are very clear guidelines on what qualifies for penalities. In those cases, penalties are only given when a goal is near guaranteed.

National level refereeing is too erratic.

I've always suspected that the fictional sport of Quidditch is based on JK Rowling just not liking football and inventing the stupidest sport imaginable to express that dislike.

From her annotated version of Philsopher's Stone:

"[Quidditch] was invented in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend. I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport.

It infuriates men...which is quite satisfying given my state of mind when I invented it."

I’m down with Magnus being included. Anand too. OTOH, there’s a case to be made for e-sports. Flash and maybe Jaedong should be up there.

Faker over Jaedong imo

ESPN should know this https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/13035450/league-legends-prodigy-faker-carries-country-shoulders

Faker for sure.

17/100 are from Baseball, a sport that is played by Americans and Dominicans, and the 30x smaller country is somehow better.

Japan, Korea, and a good chunk of Southeast Asia might like a word. Ditto the rest of the Caribean.

If you are talking about careers, then Barry Bonds. He had two inner circle HoF careers. He is just absurd. Mahomes likely will get there.

But I would say Mario is the GOAT. Dude got chemo. Later that day he suited up and scored a goal on his first shift. Just absurd stuff. Most naturally gifted player ever.

Chess isn’t a sport but Magnus is awesome.

Murray I agree. Great tennis player but he is clearly far behind the big three and probably even Alcaraz. He is more Stanimal territory. Agree re WNBA as well.

A huge chunk of Bonds' career predates 2000.

Totally. Other poster broadened the discussion to all time.

Bonds even before he got (rightly) upset over the attention McGwire & Sosa got and started taking roids was a HOF player.

Especially since he was going up against plenty of roided up pitchers himself, I'd argue 2001-2004 Barry Bonds is the among the scariest athletes when it comes to ability to take over a game, and it's in a sport where he only gets 5 chances to do so.

From 2001-2004 Bonds didnt have a single season with an OBP below .500. That’s utterly insane. In 2004 his OBP was above .600. The numbers are hard to fathom.

If you are talking about careers, then Barry Bonds.

Anyone who cheated (steroids in his case) doesn't belong on a list of greatest athletes. And if that means the list is empty, then so be it. Great athleticism requires doing it the honest way.

Yeah but realistically most of the candidates here would be using something.

Usain Bolt an outlier upon outliers in a very simple/easily-optimized sport in which most of his contemporaries popped for doping at some point? Either he's like 3-4 levels of outlier from the fastest people ever, or he was doing approximately the same stuff and was only a tier ahead.

This just seems like typical American bias to me. Room for dozens of baseball, football and basketball stars - no room for Ronnie O'Sullivan, Magnus Carlssen, or literally any rugby player. Federer and Williams over Nadal and Djokovic. Simone Biles in the top five and Kohei Uchimura in the 80s.

ITT: Messi mentioned once or twice, but well down the list.

I don't even like football, but when you consider it's the world's most widely played and competitive sport - Messi is so obviously at the top of any global athlete list that any suggestion to the contrary is pure parochialism.

FWIW, Cricket is second, but given the split across three formats - there's no clear standout, giving room for Phelps or somebody at #2 ig.

Cricket's problem is that the 2000s didn't produce Cricket GOATs. Sachin Tendulkar is still viewed as the modern GOAT, and he's more so a late-90s figure. Then you have Don Bradman, whose records put him so far above every Cricket player, that modern cricketers struggle to stand out.

Yeah, you could maybe make a case for Kohli somewhere on the list, but he's not the kind of standout that a Warne or a Tendulkar were and of course no one holds a candle to Bradman.

Magnus is awesome but chess isn’t a sport.

Blitz Chess and Quarter back aren't THAT different from each other.

The way some of these guys sweat, and I mean in very particular ways, you could be misled...

Why are we all doing Top 100s of the 21st century this week? Seems like weird timing. Not a slow news week, in sports or in general. Not the end of the year, when it would hit the 1/4 mark. No one died who makes us assess legacies. So...what gives?

Anyway, the answer is either Steph Curry or GSP at #1. Until those guys nobody played like those guys.

Steph revolutionized the game of basketball in a way comparable only to Babe Ruth in baseball. The 3 point game has never been the same since Steph burst onto the scene. Lebron might be great but he is great in the same way that MJ was great, Steph is great in a whole new way. From the year he first got MVP votes (2012-2013) the number of Three Point Attempts per game in the NBA has increased 75%, from what was previously more or less flat for years.

GSP did something similar in MMA. Before GSP it was mostly still in a style v style mode, a wrestler against a boxer or a BJJ guy against a brawler. GSP came in and did everything, and he did it better than anyone else. Jon Jones is probably better P4P, and Anderson Silva at his peak was a legend, but GSP did it first, and the attitude problems that Silva and Jones have had mar their legacies in my mind.

Brady in my mind comes next, then Woods, then Federer, then Bolt, then Djoker and Nadal and Lebron and Jon Jones and Mike Trout and Messi. Then all the minor sports gods: Phelps and White and the other Olympic guys, the auto racers, the cyclists.

Anyway, the answer is either Steph Curry or GSP at #1. Until those guys nobody played like those guys. Brady in my mind comes next, then Woods, then Federer, then Bolt, then Djoker and Nadal and Lebron and Jon Jones and Mike Trout and Messi.

Steph Curry's playstyle reinvented the game because others could copy it; he demonstrated that shooting the 3 could be viable. Messi couldn't reinvent the game because nobody could replicate what he could do. Its a bit unfair to rank Steph Curry higher than Messi, just because his style could be replicated and Messi's couldn't.

Also what raises the question of what is greatness?

Steph Curry optimized the hell out of middling (by NBA standards) physical gifts and redefined the game. A Lebron has way better hardware but arguably achieved more as an individual. Also how do you calibrate a Shaquille O'Neal (absolutely absurd frame, middling work ethic, great career) or a Wilt Chamberlain (S+++++++ athleticism relative to peers but noted asshole and not particularly winning)?

Well he won the “sleeping with a lot of women” trophy.

I wouldn't put any basketball players on any list extolling greatest athletes. Basketball has a huge height filter. Be seven feet tall and have any athletic inclination and you have a shot of being in the NBA. MJ could maybe make the lists just for being in two different professional sports. But his mediocre baseball career shows how much the NBA is a joke in terms of athletic prowess.

Being smart and strategizing is cool, but I don't see why that matters for athleticism.

Phelps deserves greatest athlete. His superpower was basically ADHD and a willingness to monotonously spend five hours a day swimming.

Usain Bolt should probably be second on a list of greatest athletes.

In terms of sheer physical ability they crushed their competition in sports with almost zero barriers to entry.

I wouldn't put any basketball players on any list extolling greatest athletes. Basketball has a huge height filter. Be seven feet tall and have any athletic inclination and you have a shot of being in the NBA.

Steph is 6'3". Which is still really tall, but is another reason I put him above Lebron and Duncan and Jokic. He's an incredible physical specimen, but he's not just coasting on raw physicality.

No he's playing against lazy tall players. I just don't know how good he is as an athlete. Kinda the same problem as babe Ruth vs modern day hitters. Babe Ruth was hitting against shittier pitchers than there are today. I bet there is a player or two on every professional baseball team that might have beaten babe Ruth's record had they the opportunity to hit against the same caliber of pitchers.

For what it's worth this is a discussion that even professional athletes have and argue over. The New Heights podcast (Jason and Travis Kelce) had a number of bits discussing athleticism of basketball players and NFL players and how they'd do in each others sports. IIRC it ended up most leaning towards "the basketball players are total athletic freaks but it's easy to miss that because of the way the sport is."

Some things to keep in mind: LOTS of games. Moving around that much body is fucking hard. Handfighting, pushing each other, etc doesn't always come across on broadcasts, but if you've ever had court side seats you can see how much extracurricular athletic activity is going on.

Modern NBA's actually cut down quite a bit on the slow moving, lazy tall players, largely as a result of the 3 point revolution that Steph Curry was a large part of.

I find it bizarre that you consider basketball players to be unimpressive athletes because their sport requires a specific set of physical attributes (height, long limbs) while celebrating Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, whose extreme and atypical genetically-determined physical attributes (both men look as though they were designed in a lab to excel at their respective sports) were absolutely vital to their success.

Why is LeBron James’ incredible success at basketball invalid because he couldn’t have achieved the same feat if his height had maxed out at 5’7”, but Usain Bolt is an incredible athlete even though he couldn’t have achieved what he did if his leg length had maxed out two inches shorter? At the top level of most sports, no amount of obsessive work ethic is enough to put one over the top without prodigious God-given physical traits. Sprinting is one of the most genetically-based sports - far more than basketball, where a great many of the all-time greats are on the lower end of the league’s height distribution. There is no sprinting equivalent of a Steve Nash, a player with limited physical tools who excelled due to hard work, intelligence, and savvy.

They won the lottery on athletic related traits. Basketball players won the genetic lottery on height. I don't consider height to be a key component of athleticism.

I also don't consider hard work, intelligence, or savvy to be part of athleticism. Apes are better athletes than humans in most respects.

To me the only IQ related aspect of athleticism is hand eye coordination / reaction times.

So wait I guess the better question is, what do you consider to be "part of athleticism"? Sounds like your getting on the hard determinist train. Welcome.

Athleticism: strength, agility, and speed at physical tasks (those words come up in lots of definitions, I'm not sure if power or toughness should also be included). I thought basketball allowed height as a partial substitute for these characteristics. You didn't have to be speedy and agile to get a rebound, you just need to be taller. You don't have to fight over the ball if you can literally just hold it over your opponents head. I say thought past tense, because after thinking about it, @Mottizen seems right that my opinions about basketball are outdated. A shift to shooting three pointers has apparently heavily evened the playing field in terms of height advantage.

There are some sports where injuries tend to take out promising athletes, fighting and gymnastics are two good examples. The people that do end up dominating these sports are still very athletic, but I just wouldn't be certain they are the most athletic. I just tend to feel that swimming and running have some of the least amount of blockers or gates on the sport. You can certainly still get injured doing both, but humans are designed for running, and swimming is low impact. Height gives a bit of an advantage, but it can still be overcome, the shortest gold medalist swimmer was 5ft 3in. Su Bingtian is a runner in the 2020 olympics, he is 5ft 7in. Su apparently holds the fastest 60m split time in the 100m dash (faster than Usain bolt). Those are below average heights for men in their country.

I'm not sure I'm not a determinist, so much as I think the determinism question is useless. Whether the universe is determinist or not does not change how I interact with it or how I think other people should interact with it.

But all those traits are basically genetically determined, especially when you get to the top end of any sport, the silver medalist isn't silver instead of gold because they didn't try hard enough or something. They studied top swimmers and found long arms compared to torso length is very important.

I don't think I ever expressed any problem with genetics, or the winners of sports being determined by genes. Perhaps you have me confused with some other commentor.

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NBA players are still massive by ordinary person standards but there's less rewards for assembling stationary 7-footers.

A huge part of Phelps was his frame, though. Guy is 193CM tall, 200CM wingspan and would not have been anywhere near as dominant without those two things. Usain Bolt 195CM and had probably the highest topspeed ever as a result of it.

Phelps deserves greatest athlete. His superpower was basically ADHD and a willingness to monotonously spend five hours a day swimming.

But somehow:

I also don't consider hard work, intelligence, or savvy to be part of athleticism.

Usain Bolt is 6'5", Michael Jordan 6'6". Bolt could presumably have made much more money in the NBA than the olympics if he were the athletic equivalent of Jordan. Basketball filters on height but also many other athletic traits, much less unidimensionally than sprinting.

Phelps used his superpower of hard work to turn himself into the ultimate athletic specimen. If Phelps has worked hard at learning spreadsheets I wouldn't call him a good athlete. He worked hard at being an athlete. Possibly harder than anyone has ever worked.

Usain was born with muscle traits that made him an amazing athletic specimen.

Jordan played in a sports league with a bunch of lazy tall players that he could look impressive against. Steph Curry is doing the same thing.

Imagine a different world where basketball has a maximum height restriction, and that height restriction just happens to be the height of whatever basketball player you think is really good. I'd wager that we would fine better athletes who are a few inches shorter than the star players of today. But those few inches of height against Jordan would make them useless against the 7 foot centers of the sport. So they get weeded out early. I think there are 6'0" guys that could be to Curry and Jordan what they were to the rest of the league. Watch a bit of that weird trampoline basketball sport and you'll see how much talent is being left fallow in that sport cuz of height.

What you're describing is essentially the modern NBA, though. Curry brought an era that made spacing and mobility more important than pure height for various reasons. NBA height & weight peaked in 2013, just before the Warriors and Rockets made the 3 pointer so much of a pivotal part of the game. We're now starting to see true ridiculous freak 7-footers like Wembanyama who have the ability to shoot 3's/move dynamically whilst still being gigantic, but you're essentially criticizing a NBA product that hasn't existed since Jordan's era.

https://www.thehoopsgeek.com/average-nba-height/

"I don't consider height to be a key component of athleticism"....why?

Would you consider plunging for distance to be a great test of athleticism? Thats a "sport" that rewards being extremely fat (plus i guess some amount of training and discipline).

Alternatively, what if they raised the basketball hoop so that you really have to be super tall to compete? That would be ridiculous.

Because my learned friend in argument rejects obvious genetic gifts in favor of celebrating less obvious ones.

Just use a measuring tape if you want a height competition.

This is all very confusing for me. So you think height is different from every other genetic advantage?

Yes and no. There are theoretically other genetics that might heavily gate a sport behind a non-athletic characteristic. I just don't know if any actual examples.

Gymnastics is sort of gated behind being short, so I'd sort of discount the abilities of those athletes as well. But that's just the other side of the coin with height.

I don't consider IQ to be athleticism related so if there were any sports that were heavily gated by it I'd apply the same discount to the athletes within that sport. But I don't know of any sports that are like that. Maybe chess boxing? Or maybe Esports which no one really looks to for examples of supreme athleticism. Even though most Esports players are in relatively good shape.

That’s one way of defining greatness. I like the guys who have to reinvent their games. So take a guy like Novak. He came onto the tour bring an incredible defensive baseline player. Overtime, he changed into a guy who was more mixed from the baseline. Late in his career he reinvted himself as someone who plays a lot more serve and volley.

Crosby is another guy who fits this category. When he came on the scene, he was a fast high flying guy who could see the entire ice. After an ankle sprain, he wasn’t the same speed. So he worked on his slap shot and worked on his grinding game and was going streaking until Steckel gave him a concussion he almost had to retire from the sport. He came back and while still great wasn’t quite the offensive force he was. So he became more of a two way player.

Interesting way of looking at it. Both those guys definitely deserve spots on the list.

Brady is clearly better than either of them. Winning big at a sport a small percent of people play isn’t the same thing as winning big at the sport the best athletes in every American high school plays.

It should be filled with football, basketball, and baseball players. Soccer if we are doing global.

Track is also good to include. Everyone knows who the fastest kid in the school is.

That and swimming leads to absurd overinflated medal counts. Each race results in a medal.

I would only knock Brady because his team cheated numerous times.

Brady was also able to coast on the abilities of his team.

Dont get me wrong, he totally earned his Superbowl Rings, but it's a lot easier to rack up an absurd win-count when you spend the bulk of your career standing behind one of the best O-lines in the league.

Brady had absurd work ethic and determination. Obvious things like studying the game, but also stuff like totally changing his diet, reinventing his exercise regimen multiple times.

Some aspects of freak athleticism aren't strength and endurance related - hand/eye coordination, quick decision making, low heart rate under pressure.

He also had a frightening lack of pride when it came to reinventing his game, in game decision making, and so on that let him do things everyone else could but never did.

Don't discount those things, and while Mahomes peak may be more athletic, longevity is its own value.

I completely agree with you regarding his work ethic and lack of pride/ego which I believe is the secret of his longevity, and the reason that he totally deserves each and every one of those Superbowl Rings.

At the same time I can think of multiple QBs off the top of my head who I would rank above him in terms of raw talent and athleticism.

I don't think we're all that far off from eachother.

Is decision making under pressure an athletic skill? He's the best of all time at that. Is over riding your body's sympathetic activation athleticism? He's gotta be one of the best at that. Skilled scuba divers who force their bodies to do things that don't make sense are athletic in my mind.

It's just not speed/strength/the strongest arm in the world.

Separate to that is the longevity. And instead of a Lebron longevity vs. MJ argument, Brady is 100% of Lebron and 90% of MJ.

Is decision making under pressure an athletic skill?

I would say "no" but can also see where and/or why others might disagree.

Quick feet and a strong arm are one thing, grace under pressure and a readiness to adapt are another

What moves the needle for me on this is the physical aspects of this like low heart rate. Additionally special forces type guys have similar skills sets and response, and are also athletic freaks in other ways, which makes me think some of this is tied together.

Brady at minimum should be above LeBron and probably Messi. LeBron won less in a league where individual talent matters more.

Agreed on LeBron, I'd rank either Kobe or Shaq' over him but Messi probably deserves a spot near the top.

This list was not created by one person or a small group, it was created based on a vote of more than 70000 people. In a vote of tens of thousands of people, people are going to vote for all kinds of reasons that do not necessarily have to do with pure athletic dominance.

Even noting the limitations theory talks about before, I bet you if you asked 100 random people they ten might be able to name one of the WNBa players on this list.

If you asked the same 100 people probably 80 could name Brady (assuming US).

vote of more than 70000 people.

From the article:

Experts in individual sports were asked to vote to rank the top athletes in their sport since Jan. 1, 2000 (no accomplishments before this date were to be considered). Those votes pared down pools in each sport to lists of 10 to 25 athletes each, which constituted the overall candidate pool for the top athletes of the 21st century so far. Each voter was presented two randomly selected names and asked to pick which one has had the better career in the 21st century. Across repeated, randomized head-to-head matchups, more than 70,000 votes were cast at this stage, and using an Elo rating system, the list was pared down from 262 to 100.

And:

That list was then evaluated by a panel of experts for any inconsistencies or oversights, resulting in the top 100 ranking seen here.

70000 votes, not voters. The number of intial voters is unknown. The number of members of and influence of the veto comittee is also unknown.

people are going to vote for all kinds of reasons that do not necessarily have to do with pure athletic dominance.

The people voting are described as "Experts in individual sports", and not the general public, I would hope they took this title seriously enough as to vote for who truly is better and not who is better looking. But even if a small minority derelict this duty, under a proper preference combining system, the majority whose ranking isn't idiosyncratic should exert decisive influence

Oh, I see. Oops, I should have read it in more detail.

Yeah, a lot of the voting is probably the result of a bad voting system. In my mind when ranking across non-competing fields (different sports, leagues, weight classes) you give a ton of extra credit to number one. So the #1 Women's Tennis Player (Serena) gets a huge bonus over the more complicated men's scene where the vote gets split up more. If you rank Novak higher than Fed and I flip them, we probably give each fewer points than Serena gets.

I started to write something up and then realized that this is a classic example of something that's bad on purpose to make you click. I admit it, they got me, I clicked. The list is very bad indeed because there is no coherent criteria to rank any of this. I can quibble about my favorites (cyclists are obviously better athletes than guys that rely heavily on the amazing skill of being very tall, swimming is stupid and boring, golf and driving are just not even sports), but none of that is objective in any meaningful way and the whole point is to get people to give those takes and send it to their buds.

Whenever I smell something like that (and some entire outlets), I just default to throwing the link in archive. If it's not there, the internet is telling me that I should skip it.

Simple explanation: clickbait listicle is clickbait listicle. They're optimizing for attention, not accuracy. This is an American publication with a primarily American audience. They're incentivized to prioritize names the median American would recognize. I haven't looked through the whole list in detail, but I imagine sports that are bigger worldwide than in the US (e.g., soccer, cricket, rugby) will be underrepresented while something like the NFL might be overrepresented.

Also, side note hot-take since I don't get to talk tennis much: I'd take Federer over Djokovic. Djokovic has the bigger resume, but he's a lot luckier on his age timing. I don't think 2011-2016 Djokovic would have been as dominant as Federer was in 2004-2009 (e.g., I highly doubt he goes 8-0 vs Roddick at hard/grass slams). I also think 2004-2009 Federer would have done better than Djokovic did in 2011-2016 (e.g., he'd go way better than 4-4 vs Wawrinka at hard/clay slams). Late career (post 30s) they'd probably have similar results as each other if age adjusted.

The field when Federer was early prime was very weak. I would certainly say that Alcaraz, Sinner, and Medvedev are all better than any guy during the time you referenced (excluding Fed and clay Nadal). And a 36 y/o Novak won 3/4 against the three I mentioned last year plus ATP finals and some masters.

I think Andy Murray and Stan were much better than Roddick and Hewitt.

Don’t know if there are analytics to back it up, but at least as a meme there’s pretty much compass unity among Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and other fans that Stannis the Mannis has achieved some of the highest single-tournament peaks.

Wawrinka does catch some hate from time to time from Reddit types for banging then 19-year-old Donna Vekic when he was 30, shortly after divorcing his wife. She was only 19, that sick fuck.

For unrelated reasons, Kyrgios hilariously shit-talked to him during a match that The Kokk hit it first: “Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate.”

Which of course was/is another massive source of seethe for those who espouse that a woman’s Wonderfulness is not compromised by number of cocks or Kokks taken.

You can be rich and one of the most esteemed tennis players of all time, and still get intertemporally cucked by your girl’s past thottery. Even by 19 she’s likely had some mileage.

I would say the biggest difference is Novak was able to develop and expand his game. Fed never really solved the ball going high to his backhand.

You are pointing to Novak 2011-15 but that isn’t his only insane peak.

I think again wildly overstating the talent level early 2000s. Elo seems to prove that out.

I think you are also wildly understating Novak’s serve and volley (go back and look at his US open against Meddy last year). Also Novak’s forehand every day against Fed. Fed’s was more explosive. But Novak has better placement and is more consistent. Fed’s will hit more winners; Novak’s will win more points.

Then of course you get into fitness levels and intangibles (eg mental toughness).

Finally looking at the stats, it isn’t like they were kind of close. Novak blows Federer out of the water and it isn’t that close. Masters, slams, variety of slams, weeks at No 1, ATP finals, YE finals, etc etc.

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I dont really follow tennis, but i do have a thing for sports analysis so if you did feel like doing a deep dive id be interested in reading it.

As long as we can all agree: both are easily above Nadal.

No disagreements here. To me, he's always been on a lower tier than the other two.

Dominating clay is a stupid gimmick.

He won on grass, too. He'll always have Wimbledon 2008.

Devastating loss for Federer, but a worthy sacrifice for later winning Wimbledon in 2019.

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