Michael Rappaport's 'Bill Russell Was Overrated' Comment Shot Down By Smart People

http://nesn.com/2014/10/michael-rapaports-bill-russell-overrated-claims-shot-down-by-smart-people-video/




Michael Rapaport’s Bill Russell ‘Overrated’ Claims Shot Down By Smart People (Video) by Mike Cole on Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 11:36AM


Michael Rapaport has a basketball theory, and it’s not a very good one.

The actor/filmmaker/New York Knicks fan recently directed “When The Garden Was Eden” for ESPN’s “30 for 30″ series. Apparently, that experience empowered Rapaport to formulate some pretty scorching hot takes about Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell.

During the film-making process, Rapaport floated the idea that Russell might have been overrated. According to Rapaport’s logic, Russell played in an era where the competition wasn’t good, which made an all-world talent like Russell even better.

He shared those thoughts with longtime Boston Globe writer Bob Ryan and former New York Knicks player Dick Barnett, and well, he was quickly shot down.

“Is this to initiate some type of reaction from me?” Barnett asked him. “Michael, you’re crazy. Bill Russell was not overrated.” Ryan added: “He is the greatest winner in the history of American team sport. Period.”

Rapaport went on ESPN2’s “Numbers Never Lie” to defend his claim, and he did so by saying Brian Scalabrine would be one of the greatest players of Russell’s era.








bob
MY NOTE: No comment.



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...and this is why people should not do drugs...

Rapaport: "Bill Russell was the best of his era but in the Seventies he'd be Lonnie Shelton." There's a quote for ya.

Wow. That's quite a statement. And actually hysterically funny for its stupidity. Somehow I don't think Sam would agree. Or anyone else for that matter. The ignorance in Rapaport's rant is beyond belief. But I gotta admit I got a kick out that line. It's still cracking me up.

Rappaport was born in 1970, which means he wasn't yet soiling his panties when Russ played 48 in his last game to burst the Lakers' balloons and earn a well deserved rest.  The very fact that Rappaport is pontificating (about someone he never saw play) as an individual rather than as a leader of the team proves he has zero conception of what Russ or the Russell Celtics were all about.

I'm pretty sure I know how Russ would respond:  "He's right.  And the more overrrated I got, the more we seemed to win.  Excuse me.  I have to go home now.  It takes me a lot longer nowadays to get these damn rings off my fingers and another important member of my body."  (insert cackle here.)

Just another loony who doesn't realize that comparing players as they were in the primitive days with today's players as they are now is ridiculous.  Truly ridiculous.

All that's accomplished by people with opinions like his is to applaud the passage of time and the advances of genetics, training, conditioning, nutrition and strategies that have occurred over time.  In terms of knowing how to play the game of basketball and applying that knowledge almost seamlessly to dealing with the bodies they were given, the conditions under which they played, and the best competition that existed in the times when they played, the Russell Celtics were the best who have played the game.  Bring them up to date with respect to all of those factors, and chances are they'd whip any later team and step on their tongues to boot.  And now, this know-nothing wants to apply today's showtime, stat-ruled, star deified criteria to Russ' game.

Notice what I've done?  I've responded to his criticism of Russ as an individual with comments about the Russell's teams.  Anyone who's not a basketball cypher realizes that you simply can't evaluate Russell as an individual.  Put him on another team in another era with its attendant egos, and watch him dominate in whatever statistical category he might choose (except free throw shooting), including scoring.

There's only one criterion on which Bill Russell deserves to be evaluated as an individual player.  More than any other player in the NBA, he came closest to a perfect record of absolutely refusing to lose that last game each year.  And he didn't talk his way through a career; he focused solely on doing whatever had to be done in order for his team to win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win.  That's 11 wins in 13 years, bonehead.

The roles I've seen Rappaport play tended to depict his characters as somewhat off-kilter.  I never realized he wasn't acting.  An absolutely unimportant species.

This is one time I wish I weren't a moderator so I'd feel free to say what I really feel on the matter.

Time to go on vacation now.

Sam