Pick a professional team sport. American football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and association football (soccer) of course, but also any other pro team sport you may be knowledgeable about, like lacrosse or Canadian football or cricket or rugby or field hockey or whatever; if they’ve got a professional league and you know a lot about the players, you’re welcome to participate.
Build your all-time greatest team. Starters and one backup for each position only. All players who have ever played professionally are eligible.
Players must be in their primary position (or “one of” if a player regularly played multiple positions professionally, e.g. Chris Davis pitched in an MLB game once in a pinch, but that doesn’t make him as a pitcher, but he’s played first base, third, and center field regularly and those do count), and each starting position must be represented, so no teams of like 9 center fielders or 22 QBs, not that I think anyone would want to do that.
For baseball specifically, we’ll specify one right-handed and one left-handed starting pitcher, 3 relief pitchers, and a DH.
You may include a head coach/manager if you like.
I hope that all makes sense. Seems like it should be simple enough, but I always forget at least one important thing when I do this, so feel free to point that out. Everyone always does.
Center: 1976 Kareem, 2000 Shaq
Power Forward: 2003 Tim Duncan, 1993 Charles Barkley
Small Forward: 2007 LeBron, 1986 Larry Bird
Shooting Guard: 1992 Jordan, 2002 Kobe Bryant (or 2006 D-Wade. I could go either way on this one.)
Point Guard: 2015 Steph Curry, 1987 Magic Johnson (I thought really long and hard about this one - 5, 10 seconds, easy).
Coach: Popovich. Or Auerbach. I’d be happy either way.
GM: Jerry West
International Test Cricket (slight wrinkle - the alternates will only be I have actually seen, otherwise you’d likely just run down a stats sheet to select these sides)
1 Jack Hobbs (Matthew Hayden)
2 WG Grace (Alastair Cook)
3 Don Bradman (Ricky Ponting)
4 Sachin Tendulkar (Brian Lara)
5 Viv Richards (Kumar Sangakkara)
6 Garfield Sobers (Jacques Kallis)
7 Alan Knott (Adam Gilchrist) - both to keep wicket
8 Wasim Akram (Imran Khan)
9 Shane Warne (Curtly Ambrose)
10 Malcolm Marshall (Waqar Younis)
11 Glenn McGrath (Muttiah Muralitharan)
My NFL team (will skew heavily from the 80s forward because I’m not old enough to have ever seen, say, Jim Brown play; and I like the 4-3 defense):
QB Joe Montana (Dan Marino)
FB Franco Harris (John Riggins)
HB Barry Sanders (Walter Payton)
WR1 Jerry Rice (Randy Moss)
WR2 Art Monk (Calvin Johnson)
TE Tony Gonzalez (Antonio Gates)
LT Jonathan Ogden (Orlando Pace)
LG Larry Allen (Steve Hutchinson)
C Dwight Stephenson (Dermontti Dawson)
RG Russ Grimm (Gene Upshaw)
RT Walter Jones (Anthony Munoz)
DE Reggie White (Bruce Smith)
DT Warren Sapp (Geno Atkins)
DT John Randle (Aaron Donald)
DE Deacon Jones (J.J. Watt)
OLB1 Lawrence Taylor (Dick Butkus)
MLB Ray Lewis (Mike Singletary)
OLB2 Derrick Thomas (Derrick Brooks)
CB1 Deion Sanders (Champ Bailey)
CB2 Rod Woodson (Charles Woodson)
FS Ken Houston (Sean Taylor)
SS Ed Reed (Rodney Harrison)
K Morten Andersen (Adam Vinatieri)
P Sammy Baugh (Shane Lechler)
PR Devin Hester (Dante Hall)
KR Deion Sanders (Brian Mitchell)
I decided to build a team to compete against this one. So no duplicates.
Center: 1962 Wilt Chamberlain; 1995 Hakeem Olajuwon
Power Forward: 1990 Karl Malone; 2004 Kevin Garnett
Small Forward: 2014 Kevin Durant; 1973 Julius Erving
Shooting Guard: 1995 Reggie Miller; 1969 John Havlicek
Point Guard: 1962 Oscar Robertson; 1991 John Stockton
Coach: Phil Jackson
GM: Jerry Reinsdorf
I still think my team would lose, but it’d be a good game.
It would be. However, I got a center with the most unstoppable 2-pt shot ever and I have a guard who is the greatest shooter ever, as well as another guard who is the greatest competitor ever. I like my chances.
I also think you have too many 60s guys who won’t have the training or athleticism of the modern guys, and the only 3-pt specialist you have is Reggie Miller… and he’s no Steph.
Are we playing with a 3pt shot?
I’d love to see prime Hakeem vs prime Shaq.
Biggest defensive liabilities: Curry and Erving. You’d kill me on screens, with Stockton/Malone teaming up again, but I have 2 legitimate 3-point threats, as well as Jordan who once hit 6 threes in a Finals game (the Shrug game). And LeBron.
Great idea for threads though - 2 posters do a draft of the best players of each “league”*, then another thread with a poll on which team would win. NBA would be easy to do… want to try?
*Could even be done via PM, but what the fun is that?
If we’re playing with current rules, then against Shaq, don’t you want a modern center, who’s strong enough to at least slow Shaq down, but can knock down threes well enough to force him out of the paint on defense (and make all the other defenders worry about the pop as well as the roll)?
If Shaq hits 60% of his post-ups against Al Horford (probably not the first choice, but first to come to mind), but Horford hits 40% of his threes, that’s even.
Likewise, either move Durant to the 4, or consider bringing in a modern 3-and-D guy. It’s not like you need an unstoppable one-on-one power forward, with Durant and Reggie Miller on your team, right?
Roger Federer
Novak Djokovic
The Bryan Brothers
Nadal is definitely an option, but I have come around the last few years to the opinion that Novak may actually be the better player.
These guys could give your’s a tough series maybe:
C - Yogi Berra, Pudge Rodriguez
1b - Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial
2b - Eddie Collins, Rogers Hornsby
3b - George Brett, Eddie Mathews
SS - Cal Ripken Jr, Ozzie Smith
LF - Ricky Henderson, Tim Raines
CF - Tris Speaker, Mickey Mantle
RF - Barry Bonds, Roberto Clemente
DH - Mike Trout, Joe DiMaggio
SP -R - Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens
SP -L - Warren Spahn, Steve Carlton
RP - Dennis Eckersley, Trevor Hoffman
If you get first pick, then I get the steriod guys.
I loved Shaquille O’Neal being both an LSU grad and Lakers fan, but I felt then and now that Hakeen Olajuwon was a better center. And in today’s game, he’d be much better.
Just figured I’d point out that Sandy Koufax was a triple crown pitcher 3 times. He was, in my opinion, for a 3-5 year window, the best pitcher who ever lived.
While this is true, Olajuwon was a better overall player, Shaq would have done fine in any era, IMO.
Offensively, his game was more or less “be bigger than everyone else, and be quicker and faster than anyone that big has ever been.” I know that’s an extremely simplistic interpretation of his play, but it pretty much boils down to that, doesn’t it? He was a freak of nature, and nobody else had another comparable freak of nature to put up against him.
Defensively, he was an elite rim defender, and at the time, on those teams, that was enough, but otherwise he was mostly just a physical obstacle, and was useless in transition (not to mention I remember reading that Phil Jackson, and most of his other coaches for that matter, basically told him to focus on offense and just try not to foul anyone on defense).
Regarding no one else having a comparable freak, there was one name that popped into my head, that being Yao Ming. I’m not sure if he was supposed to be the second coming of Shaq and he just never panned out, or if his skill set was fundamentally different.
Screw it I’m gonna staff a whole 25-man baseball team but you can assume the first name is the starter, meeting the OP’s rule.
C - Josh Gibson, Yogi Berra
1B - Lou Gehrig
2B - Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins
SS - Honus Wagner, Alex Rodriguez
3B - Mike Schmidt, George Brett
LF - Barry Bonds
CF - Willie Mays, Oscar Charleston
RF - Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron
DH - David Ortiz
SP - Walter Johnson, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Satchel Paige, Lefty Grove
RP - Mariano Rivera, Hoyt Wilhelm, Goose Gossage, Dan Quisenberry, Trevor Hoffman
Had Yao Ming played in today’s era and had he not been brutalized by his Chinese basketball handlers, he could have been an elite player for the ages. He was truly gifted.
