I been preachin to yall about these 60s players for a while now - they aint no joke they played a different style of ball with a lot less "dramatic" flair so it's hard for young fans to recognize how good they were. Back then if you made a guy look bad just so the crowd would think your awesome they called it hotdogging, and it was percieved by fans and players alike as something negative that takes away from the game and every team had an enforcer or two that would retaliate and try to hurt you on the floor if you did that. Y'all know what kinda plays I'm talkin about, it's the Blake Griffin mean mugging after a dunk - he'd be layed out in the 60's for that so nobody in the 60's played like him. A lot of their athleticism is masked by neat and tidy efficient plays using the least amount of movement possible, they all kind of play like Tim Duncan in that sense. So when I read articles about how Wilt was superhuman and Bill Russell was basically an Olympic World Class high jumper (ranked
#7 on the planet in 1956, better at it even than Wilt), and Oscar was the most complete and capable all around player ever, (arguably up until MJ) I think; damn - there's gotta be footage out there where these guys are just opening up the throttle even if only for a brief moment, just to verify their descriptions and put a hold on the condescending questions like "do you think he could (merely)
play today". Those types of questions are an insult to these guys - Russell won 11 rings and retired with a championship against Wilt/West/Baylor the season before Jabbar was in the league - in 1 season the talent didn't just explode and make Russell outdated. The question is not "could he play today" it's rather; "who in the league today, is good enough to play against
him!?"
Russell does a layup and holds 90% of the internet in awe. He didn't even dunk it. If his athleticism is that obvious on a layup think how good he'd look if he were on ESPN in the modern era where everyone now loves and embraces "hotdogging" - in the modern era he might have tomahawked that play. He'd be awesome in this era, and his impact on defense and games would be hard to ignore.
these nikkas wasn't even ballin in the lebrons/kobes/jordans
but could you do it while picking up your dribble at the three point line?
