I wasn’t suggesting that it was remotely likely for a college team to beat a pro team, just that it was more likely in FB than in BB.
Why do you think that the disparity in the FB game would be more than in the BB game? (I have ideas, but I don’t want to have this debate with myself.) 
I disagree that size would be the main problem in basketball, although it is an obvious one. There’s a lot to be said for just being good. Even the worst NBA team is scoring 90-95 points per game against NBA defenses, and to do that you have to get shots and make them. Watching the tournament, sort of like what MOIDALIZE is talking about, it’s hard not to notice that these teams end up taking a lot of mediocre 22 footers or wild runners in the lane with the shot clock running down. In the NBA, even the lazy 22-footer is going to be seriously contested. You can’t just have your point guard give a little hesitation dribble and pull up from the top of the key with a decent look at the basket, because NBA teams defend out to 25 feet pretty consistently. Nobody on a college team is used to executing an offense against that kind of defense - why would they?
But an NBA team is used to actually working to exploit matchups and rotate the ball to shooters, just out of sheer necessity.
Read the thread Tom Scud linked to in post #3.
Basically because there is a MASSIVE talent disparity between a college team as a whole and an NFL team as a whole.
Look at the numbers: there are 119 Division 1-A NCAA football programs, each allowed to dress up to 70 players. That’s 8,330 players, only 224 of which get drafted any given year, plus a few dozen who sign as undrafted free agents. Let’s pretend that 300 college players a year make it into the NFL every year; that’s still only 3% of all college players that make it to the next level. The NFL is made up of the best of the best college players, and even the vast majority of the ones who make it to the NFL only last a couple of years.
So even if your college team is loaded with NFL-caliber players, like those Miami teams in the 90s, an NFL team’s entire roster is NFL-caliber players. The talent, strength, and most of all speed of any given NFL player is vastly superior to 99% of all college players.
Like I’ve said before, in 2004, I saw Syracuse – who were national champions the year before – play an exhibition game against the Harlem Globetrotters. The Trotters were playing seriously, and were made up entirely of players who were not quite good enough to make the NBA.
The Trotters wiped the floor with the Orange. They were never close to being in the game.
Now, the team had lost some players to graduation, but even so, here was a top Division I team playing pros and never having a chance.
The pros were faster, bigger, and more talented. They would grab a rebound at the Syracuse basket and just toss it down the court, even though there was no Trotter anywhere near the ball, trusting that someone on their team would outrun all of the Syracuse players, grab the ball before it went out of bounds, and go in for an easy basket. And it worked.
Carmelo Anthony didn’t play in that game. It’s completely irrelevant.
The globetrotters have lost to 6 win college teams in the past. I find it odd that you bring this up after basically being shot down the last time you said it. Perhaps you just never returned to that thread.
This is such a dumb argument that if you don’t think “This is a dumb argument” then you’re pretty dumb. In fact, if you think the college team would even be in the game 90% of the time, you’ll be doing everyone (plus you) a favor by not posting for a year or two. This is like “kindergartners vs eighth-graders in an ass-kicking contest: who wins?”
prr, this is insulting and you know it. I realize you’re trying to dance around the letter of the rules here, but any reasonable person knows you’re trying to insult. This is not appropriate for this forum and you should be quite familiar with the rules.
If you want to continue in this vein, go to the Pit. When you want to complain about this ruling, go to ATMB. In this forum, behave yourself.
Now that the majority says the worst NBA team would win every time, I have another question: Could the best high school basketball team in the country beat the worst college team? For worst college team, let’s say that it’s the worst team in the NAIA. (The NAIA is an alternative to the NCAA for small colleges.) I would guess that the high school team would win. I’d guess that the worst NAIA team is a ragtag group made up of a bunch of players who may not have even been starters on their high school teams. The best high school team in the country may have two (or more) NBA-caliber players.
Also, could the best high school football team beat the worst NAIA team?
Again, I’m not disputing the fact that a college team would have virtually no chance against a pro team. This is such a given that I felt that it was OK to hijack this thread with a related debate.
I’m not arguing that a college FB team would have a chance against a pro FB. I’m arguing that their changes, as miniscule as they are, are greater than a college basketball team vs. a pro BB team.
The arguments that you make regarding college vs. pro are just as valid for basketball. I’m saying that they are moreso in basketball than football.
I’m arguing football vs. basketball; not college vs. pro.
Then here is the reason: basketball is an offensive game. It’s a game of streaks and runs. It’s a relentless, back-and-forth affair. As long as your shots are dropping through the net, your team is still in it. All basketball teams have bad games. On any given day any given player can just go cold and not be able to buy a basket, or conversely get a hot hand and become virtually incapable of missing. In any single game, the potential for a college team to upset an NBA team is, at least theoretically, much greater than the potential for a college football team to upset an NFL team.
Lebron James as a high school senior would have been the best player in DI basketball. He’d have been able to win at least a couple games single handedly against bad NAIA teams. I’m not sure if his team was the best either. I imagine that the best high school team would be better than the worst college team, yes.
90-95 points in the NBA - they have an extra 8 minutes
NBA field goal % for the 10-11 season .457 a lot of college teams shoot a better percentage
Kevin Durant averaged 26 ppg at Texas as a freshman. As a rookie in the NBA, what would have been his sophomore year, he averaged 20. He second year in the NBA, what would have been his junior season, he was back to 25.
If the best college team faced the worst NBA team, the best player on the court would be on the college team. If you got the best player on the court you will have a chance.
Well, there you have it.
As for basketball, you don’t even need to drop down to the level of the NAIA. I can safely assure you that there are dozens of high school basketball teams that could beat, just for example, NCAA DIII Cal Tech. No offense intended, by the way, to any Beavers alums out there who might wish to take out their vengeance on me by crashing a satellite into my house.
But seriously, any team in the Top 25 rankings on ESPN has at least one player going to a top tier D1 school. Schools like Mater Dei or Oak Hill Academy send multiple guys to D1 schools seemingly every year. The guys at Cal Tech just won their first conference game since 1985!.
As most people here have already written, the NBA team is gonna win hands down pretty much every time. I think you also have to believe that the best teams in college basketball right now are nowhere near as good as the best teams from the 80s or early 90s. There is no team out there today anywhere near the quality of the Fab 5 at Michigan or the Laettner/Hurley/Hill Duke teams or the UNC team mentioned above.
But if I had to bet my house on any college team beating any NBA team in a 7 game series, I would head back to the spring of 1990 and take the Jerry Tarkanian led UNLV Runnin’ Rebels versus the expansion Orlando Magic (who, by a single win, were technically not the worst team in the NBA that year).
I firmly believe that that UNLV team was the greatest college basketball team of all time (as does that link, btw). Larry Johnson was the #1 overall pick and an instant NBA star (Rookie of the Year and an All-Star in year 2), and Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony were both lottery picks. The Magic, by contrast, were an expansion team who featured one of the worst defenses in NBA history, giving up nearly 120 points per game!
I can’t say for sure that Vegas would win that series. Bad as they were, the Magic still had a roster of older, entirely professional basketball players with a couple real talents in a young Nick Anderson and an aging Reggie Theus (from UNLV!) But in the end, I certainly believe that they’d win at least once.
I like this answer.
Incidentally, I think the sport that is the best answer to this is baseball. Of course, this is heavily contingent on the college team having a Strasburg-esque starting pitcher.
What bats would we be assuming? Wood vs. aluminum will make a huge difference, as will experience and practice with the appropriate material.
This was discussed in the other thread also (I think the one in post 3 of this thread). Not sure if bats were discussed, but baseball is one sport where one person (the pitcher) could dominate a game.
Steven Strassburg (spelling?) comes to mind. He could easily have a great game and mow down a pro team no matter what kind of bats were being used.
He’s an exceptional talent, but that’s all you need in baseball. A great pitcher with a serviceable defense and offense should be enough if the pitcher is on his game.
However, if the pitcher wasn’t top notch, a pro team with aluminum bats could be scary. I don’t think I’d want to be the pitcher if the pros were permitted to use aluminum. I can see a pitcher dying with a line shot from an aluminum bat.
Anthony would not have made a difference. Syracuse was completely blown out; adding him would only have reduced the margin of victory. The Trotters were completely in control in the game. I have never seen a greater mismatch.
No, but it’s still relevant – the Trotters were playing their A game with Syracuse, since they were the champions. In their losses they were not.
Sorry, I’m not getting this at all. Not to dispute what you saw that night, but it’s always dangerous to extrapolate based on one or even a handful of games. I once saw Steve Carlton tagged for about 9 runs in less than 2 innings, but that certainly doesn’t imply that he was a lousy pitcher. The Rockets beat the Celtics by 16 points on Friday night, after leading by 22 at the half…does that mean that Houston is clearly the better team? I don’t doubt that the Trotters looked great against Syracuse and that Syracuse seemed unable to do a thing, but that’s not evidence that the Trotters were on a whole nother plane.
Also, I looked the game up. (According to wikipedia it was '03 rather than '04, btw.) The Trotters won, 83-70–by 13 points. Thirteen points, but you make it sound like it was about 50. Now I know about putting in your scrubinis, coasting, letting the other guys get a little closer while still having the game firmly in hand, but still…13 points, and you’ve never seen a greater mismatch??? Halftime was 50-33–closer than the aforementioned Rockets-Celts game.
Seems like Syracuse was ranked 24th going into the season, anyway, so they obviously were perceived as being a much weaker team than they had been as national champs.
Also, according to wiki, the Globetrotters: 1) lost to NCAA champs Michigan State by 4 in 2000; 2) lost in 2002 to defending NCAA champs Maryland; 3) lost to Vanderbilt in 2002; and 4) as was alluded to earlier, lost to six-win-the-previous-year-UTEP in the same eight-game stretch where they beat Syracuse. As for the A game, well, according to the book “Slices of Orange” by Sal Maiorana, the Trotters played “serious basketball” against all 8 teams, nothing about getting up only for Syracuse. Did you see all 8 of the games, or just the Syracuse one?
And one more thing–the Globetrotters web site lists their 80+ greatest moments, ranked through history. The game against Syracuse is ranked #35. (see here: Globetrotter Nation News | Harlem Globetrotters) Don’t you find that strange, if the Globetrotters were THAT much better than a good college team? SOMEone at Globetrotter headquarters certainly felt that it was an impressive achievement, not exactly an example of the sixth grader beating all the third graders in the softball throw.
For the record: I agree that any NBA team would clobber any NCAA team over the long haul. I agree that the Globetrotters, even if a few notches below the NBA, were probably better than any NCAA team (they won 7 of those 8 games in '03, after all), and certainly agree that they were way better than Syracuse THAT NIGHT. But this game isn’t by any means evidence of the superiority of the pros over the NCAA.