I was thinking the very same thing last night. The number of bad passes is shocking. Watching some U20 the other day the quality of their play is way above anything in the WWC.
Hayley Wickenheiser played for a couple of third-tier professional hockey teams in Finland and Sweden (note that the first tier leagues are a pretty large step below the NHL as well). She ended up leaving one of the teams after it was promoted to the second tier.
No, it doesn’t prove anything, but your position is equivalent to “Sure, the Golden State Warrior regularly beat that High School Junior Varsity team by 90 pts, but that doesn’t mean Little Joey couldn’t play in the NBA.” Technically right, but you’re not really convincing either.
The minimum salary for an NBA player is just over $500,000. The maximum salary for the WNBA is $101,000. If Maya Moore coupld play in the NBA, why doesn’t she try out and quadruple her salary? If she made it the endorsement $$ would be outrageous. If she washed out, her WNBA team would take her back in an instant. Yet she doesn’t even try. I wonder why?
Probably because she makes more than $500K to play for Shanxi in China, and she actually gets to play.
bows down You’re the man, boss.
I’ll put it to you like this, I guarantee you that there’s at least one guy on the Blue Devils good enough to play in the NBA, even though they’d get stomped by the worst team in the league. Am I willing to “guarantee” that there’s a woman on the Mercury good enough to play in the NBA, even though the team would get stomped? Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I wouldn’t bet my life that there isn’t one, either.
FWIW, I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything: I don’t want to see women playing men’s sports. I like women’s basketball, just like it is.
Maybe the greatest female athlete ever
Given the fact that Sports Illustrated had a bridge column for years and even published some bridge books under its imprint I will argue that bridge is a sport. The first woman to play in an otherwise all-male team in a National Championship was Sally Young who was also the first woman selected for the Bridge Hall of Fame. However the woman who competed most frequently and most successfully among the men in both U.S. National Championships and Bermuda Bowl (World) Championships was Helen Martin Smith (Sobel) a one-time chorus girl who appeared in the stage version of Animal Crackers. She later became so adept at bridge that she became the partner of Charles Goren.
She won 11 North American team championships at a time when those “open” team events were almost entirely composed of men. She was runner up 11 other times and was runner up once in the World Championship. She also won at least 20 other National Championship events and the McKenney trophy for most Master Points accumulated in one year, three times, probably also the first woman ever to achieve this.
Once when she was partnering Mr. Goren one of his female fans was fawning over him and asked Ms. Smith what it was like to play with such a great expert. She quickly responded that she had no idea and the question would be more reasonably directed to Mr. Goren. She was referred to by the editor of Bridge World as the only woman of his era who was ever considered the best bridge player in the world. Her style of play was so aggressive that some of her male companions were said to have felt like they were the female half of a mixed pair when partnering her.
She unfortunately died at 59 from cancer or her record would be even more unbelievable.
I think a sport has to have an athletic/hand-eye/physical manipulation component to it. I don’t think board or card games really count
Otherwise some Goth DnD player out there might be the greatest athlete ever. :dubious:
Likewise, watching the Switzerland-Cameroon game. Some good ball-handling by a few players but otherwise a lot of shockingly bad passes and a much slower pace than the men’s game.
Still better than me, though.
I remember watching the famous US-Brazil from the last cup. Exciting stuff, but made possible by some pretty poor play you would never see in the men’s game. The loss of possession after clearance, the unmarked woman in the box and some poor quality of goalkeeping.
I’m imagining the medal ceremony as we speak, there’s a comedy sketch in there somewhere.
No one is arguing against that, so we’re all in agreement.
The problem is that when women have played on men’s teams they haven’t stood a chance. They are hopeless out matched in speed and strength, which are HUGE parts of the NBA game. No one is asking you to bet your life, but you have to show some evidence that a woman can compete with men at some significant level of the game. Right now all you have is your gut feel. Can you provide any evidence beyond that?
You’ve put forward an unsupported assertion. If you want to say it’s your opinion and leave it at that, fine. But you’re engaging in a discussion and not responding to legitimate criticisms of your argument. And remember, the question isn’t whether you could put the best WNBA on an NBA team and still win. The question is whether the team would be better with her versus the same team with some other available male player.
Remember the Brazil v Italy final from The Rose Bowl at WC 1994? 
No evidence exists, at least not in the post-WNBA era, because no woman has tried to do it. I’m 99 percent sure that it’s because they’d get smoked, but I feel like it could just as well be an “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” situation. It’s not like, in the nearly two decades that the WNBA was launched that a woman has tried out for the NBA and failed.
Well, then, I guess I read the OP wrong. My bad.
The Professional Bowlers Association has long been dominated by men. However, Kelly Kulick cracked open that shell in 2010.
Because those women are starting on Championship teams for UConn or Notre Dame or Maryland or Tennessee?
That’s completely understandable. The evidence doesn’t have to come from the NBA, however. In all the leagues around the world, at college, semi-pro, even club leagues, are there any women playing significant minutes and holding their own? I’m just asking for any evidence beyond your gut feel (which may be accurate, I’m not discounting that) that supports your case.
If there isn’t any evidence, what do you base your position on? You could be a serious student of the game and your gut feel is valid, I’m open to that. But everyone else who seems to be knowledgeable says no.
Here’s a quote from Geno Auriemma, head coach of the UConn Women’s team and one of the most successful coaches in women’s basketball:
Here’s another article from ESPNW - espnW -- No woman, not Brittney Griner or any other, could play in NBA - ESPN
To be fair, here’s someone expressing your side of the argument but he admits that he’s pretty much alone with it - 2013 NBA Draft: Brittney Griner Can Play in the NBA, If Given Right Opportunity | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report
The vaunted UConn women’s team scrimmages against random male students who are not on sports teams at the school. The article doesn’t want to come out and say it, but they never win.
The US women’s Olympic hockey team scrimmaged against several boys’ high school teams before winning a silver medal in 2014. They went 2-2.