One_and_Done wrote:Someone who was a pioneer should still get credit for something. That's what we have things like the HoF for. It doesn't mean we should blindly ignore the context they achieved something in. Sometimes the ability they had translates to a superior era, sometimes it doesn't. We all make this adjust already, unless you have George Mikan as the basketball GOAT; I just do it consistently. If Mikan played today he would not be anything like as dominant as in his own time, no matter how generous you are in your assumptions (personally I am not sure he'd even make the league).
A genius like Newton or Einstein can come and learn modern physics and apply their genius to new facts. They remain a genius. A caveman can't. Modern physics is too outside his abilities. You'd have to imagine him growing up in the modern era and learning things as a child like reading and math; and at that point it's too speculative because you're not talking about a caveman anymore, you're inventing a person who never existed.
I mean yes and no. Once again you're ignoring important external variables. It doesn't mean we should blindly ignore the context they achieved something in is absolutely correct but you're interpreting it backwards.
Firstly, I would agree actual caveman vs modern PhD physicist is an absurd comparison, and it would be the equivalent of random people playing the first ever games of basketball in a field in the 1890s vs today. Nobody is saying James Naismith would be the GOAT point guard at 5'10 with infinite basketball IQ because he invented the game. You agree to what I alluded to on people like Newton and Einstein (which are more applicable examples to a lot of great players who are constantly brought up, such as Wilt and Bird).
The grey area period is 50s-70s to me (though much of it is still transferrable, such as Bill Russell's athleticism, hustle, work ethic and defensive IQ), but once you get to the 80s with the 3-point line and more competition post-merger, the transferrable skillsets become a lot clearer even if the game is still vastly different. The 80s are already very comfortably into the Einstein era, per your analogy.
And finally, you also seem to fail to consider things like information advantage (which manifests in everything including coaching, video access, fitness/conditioning, skills training and more), so you only apply your logic one way.
You suggest the league today is better than the past, which it is for the most part in absolute terms, but that is only possible because of building upon knowledge from the past (one-way information advantage). Take players today and put them in the past, with all that knowledge and information erased, then where is the advantage? How can you know they will do well? You cannot. You can only look at their fundamental skills, coordination, athleticism, competitiveness, make inferences from how they approach the game and rise above the competition with technique or IQ, etc. and adjust it for coaching/league norms at the time because that's all the information they would have.
You do not seem to understand that you are inherently baking in modern information advantage into your era comparisons, which means you are just stacking the deck in the modern player's favor from the start. It's up to you how to look at things, it's all entertainment at the end of the day, but you should realize that not properly accounting for information advantage makes your analysis pretty pointless. Looking at everything from an era-relative perspective is imperfect, but it's better than the approach you seem to advocate for.
