Not sure I agree with this. Actually underrated athletes are baseball players. Most think football players are great athletes anyway.
Look at the combine results. NFL combine results for vertical jump are WAY above NBA combine results.
So if football players are much better jumpers, which is the one athletic skill that's more important in the NBA than the NFL, then how are they not going to be FAR better on 40-yard sprinting and upper-body strength, which enormously important in the NFL and barely relevant in the NBA?
Basketball players play both offense and defense though. Endurance is high. My goat MJ ran a 4.2-4.3 40 yd dash and had a 48" vertical being 6'6. Not to mention oversized hands, he'd have been randy moss before randy moss.
But endurance isn't measured in the combine, so how does that help an NBA player have a better combine?
Not that you're right. People who haven't played underestimate the degree of endurance required for football, because you go all-out so hard on every play. For 90% of players, a large % of your time on offense and defense both, you're not moving much, and even when you're moving you're not moving at top speed. The only guys who really get completely wasted in a basketball game are high-usage stars or really intense defense-focused players who play 40+ minutes. But in a football game, for a lot of players you're doing nearly every play at top speed or top power, and you have to do it for the whole play. After a football game, pretty much every starter is wiped out.
And no, Jordan did not have a 4.2 forty.
Dean Smith claimed a 4.3 forty for Jordan once but he was obviously bullshytting for his own player and that was not a real time. Jordan never, ever demonstrated anything like 4.3 forty speed at any point in his career. Maybe 4.5-4.6, at the most, but I'd have to see it to be convinced he hit even that. And MJ's vertical was never 48", otherwise he would have had most of his head above the rim when he dunked. He at best would have been somewhere around a 42" run-up vertical, something significantly less than that in a real, standing-measured vertical.
