When you get right down to it, all Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan were doing the other night was taking a couple of swings in the Greatest Sports Argument of all. Not specifically which assemblage of basketball’s privileged class was best — 1992 or 2012 — although that certainly is a branch in this debate.
The Who’s Better/Who’s Best argument has been going on since the beginning of time. It is the quintessential Sports Argument, because there is no way of rendering a right answer or a wrong answer. It is pure, unadulterated, unfiltered opinions, and since everyone has them, everyone can take part.
WBWB is so much more satisfying than the other popular sports conversation: trivia. Yes, yes, we get it: You can recite, chronologically, every losing team in every World Series. Yes, we see how smart you are: Vida Blue was the last American League switch-hitter to win the MVP. (Full disclosure: I’ve dropped that one myself a time or three along the way. I never claimed to be anything but a full-blown sports nerd, sorry).
Trivia is interesting, but all trivia questions have answers.
WBWB has none. It can go on forever. It has gone on forever. It can spill into other areas of life of course — Washington or Lincoln? “Cheers” or “Seinfeld?” “Godfather” or “Goodfellas”? Yorktown or Appomattox? “Abbey Road” or “Nevermind”? — and it’s all pretty entertaining.
It’s just that arguing the relative merits of Paul McCartney vs. Mozart rarely tends to inflame passions. But if you start asking who would win a showdown between Babe Ruth and Greg Maddux … now that’s something that can get the whole room involved. Or, when the two men testing their Lincoln-Douglas skills are well-known folks like Bryant and Jordan …
“It’d be a tough one,” Kobe said the other day, asked who would win between the original Dream Team and the 2012 model, “but I think we’d pull it out.”
To which Jordan inevitably retorted: “To me, it’s not even a question which team was better … remember, they learned from us. We didn’t learn from them.”
Beautiful. If only the two would agree to meet at Foley’s or McSorley’s or some other appropriate neutral site, maybe we could pour a couple of pints and see how far along the road this could take us. There would never be a resolution, of course, because there never is. And while they’re at it, they could take on some other of the best unanswerable WBWB questions of our time …
’27 Yankees, ’61 Yankees or ’98 Yankees?
Louis or Marciano or Ali?
’72 Lakers or ’86 Celtics or ’96 Bulls? And hell, why not, since we’re having the debate on our home turf … what about the ’70 Knicks?
Secretariat or Citation?
’72 Dolphins or ’85 Bears?
1970 Bonnies vs. 1970 UCLA Bruins? (Come on, throw me a bone, even John Wooden told me that if Bob Lanier hadn’t gotten hurt, the Bonnies would’ve won once if they had played 10 times …)
One game for your life, who’s coaching: Lombardi, Knight, Parcells or Krzyzewski?
Who’s taking the final shot? Jordan or Kobe?
Who’s getting you the out with the bases loaded: Mariano or Koufax or Feller?
’94 Rangers, ’00 Devils or ’82 Islanders?
Who do you want having your back in a back room, Marvin Miller or Scott Boras?
Cannon, Merchant or Mushnick?
Discuss.
Whack Back at Vac
Tom Wertheimer: You say Joe Paterno was the “blocking back” defending Penn State’s reputation when in fact he was both the quarterback and the coach of the whole thing.
Vac: I’m not sure we yet fullly understand how grand a fall from grace this really is. It’s incredible and gets more so by the day.
@ProudlyWeHail: Joe Paterno and Penn State’s administration were, in effect, pimping out boys to keep their former assistant coach satisfied. I say strip them of their victories.
@MikeVacc: I think that punish-ment gets to the heart of it more than even shutting the program down would. We always seem eager to ban Barry Bonds from the record book. Why not Paterno?
Stewart Summers: With Hal Steinbrenner on record stating that he will cut payroll, why not start with Reggie Jackson’s salary? Take the $700,000 he’s paid annually as a “special adviser”… and put it toward part of a Cole Hamels contract, perhaps. Jackson went way over the line when he listed Hall of Famers who should never have been voted in.
Vac: Reggie always has said there should be a regular Hall and a “super” Hall for the no-brainers. I have news for Reggie: Mays and Aaron and Babe Ruth and Satchel Paige are at the big table in that scenario. He’s at the kiddie table.
Chris Freeman: Uncomfortable as it was to watch my favorite player be the object of public venom, I have to admit, I admired Kansas City’s communal spirit. It was clear this was their moment to celebrate a popular player on the national stage. They have “Bill-ee But-ler” at the All-Star game; we have “Paul O-Nee-il” in Game 5 of the ’01 World Series.
Vac: Honestly, I like to think most Yankees fans are as reasonable as Chris is, and not the yahoo fringe who thought Robinson Cano was being publicly executed.
Vac’s whacks
When Jeremy Lin was crashing on Landry Fields’ couch last winter, do you think the two of them were thinking ahead enough to wonder how they were going to spend the $45 million or so they’re going to be making across the next few years? I want a couch like that.
* So my mother asks me the other day, “What is this ‘Breaking Bad’ you like so much?” And it was kind of hard to explain how a no-longer-dying-of-cancer science teacher who decides to cook the best meth in town and partner up with his stoner ex-student is the most compelling television character ever, and I wouldn’t even know how to start describing Gus. I doubt we’ll be bonding over Walter White anytime soon.
* A fond farewell to the retiring Jim Quinn, my JV coach at Chaminade High, who went on to coach 25 years of varsity ball for the Flyers and won 426 games at that level — every one of them, somehow, without me missing open corner J’s on his behalf.
* I understand how frustrating watching Miguel Batista pitch can be. But the Mets have so far balanced achievement and patience this year. Elevating Matt Harvey too soon seems like it would compromise one of those missions … or both of them.