We Get Questions
Occasionally, I get questions about various sports topics that seem interesting, but don’t seem to warrant a full post or essay. I figured I could make some comments about a few of those sports questions I’ve gotten during the last couple of days. Here are a few.
Do you think there were more concussions in the old NFL or now?
There were an absolute ton of concussions in the earlier days of football. Defensive players could pulverize quarterbacks and not even get penalized. They could hit running backs after they had gone out of bounds and not get called. You had to really do something excessive to get a penalty for unnecessary roughness and the league seemed to revel in their sport’s excitement upon seeing the tough hits in their weekly highlights packages. They really used to really HIT in those early days when you’d see announcers saying, “he really got his bell rung on that play.”
And yet, I think there are even more concussions now, even with all of the protection given to quarterbacks in the pocket, running backs going out of bounds, and “defenseless” wide receivers going over the middle and getting walloped as or after the ball arrived.
That is because of the football helmet. The modern day football helmet is made of a plastic that is as hard as a rock. Modern day football players use this helmet as a weapon to try to help them cause fumbles. The modern day game being taught now by coaches doesn’t emphasize normal tackling with arms wrapping up a ball carrier by their legs. It features the helmet being used like a missile to dislodge the ball from the ball carrier.
You see a player launching towards a wide receiver with his helmet, he sometimes hits the ball and causes an incomplete pass. He sometimes hits the wide receiver’s helmet and gets penalized 15 yards for a helmet to helmet hit. In doing this, though, there isn’t just the wide receiver’s “bell” that gets rung. There is also the tackler’s head. So there are two people who are potentially getting concussions on helmet initiated tackles, the tackler and the tackled one.
So there are a lot more types of tackles that involve the head that target the ball carrier and the tacklers have put themselves at risk by the way they are tackling. Yeah, I think there are more concussions now.
Why are the Golden State Warriors so good?
Everybody thinks the reason the Warriors are so good is because of the “Splash Brothers,” the great outside shooting duo of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, and they are the main reason. Great shooting backcourt duos that can get their shots off on their own dribble have been a strong component of some of the championship models of the past. A team that comes to mind that reminds me of this Warrior team is, of all teams, the late 1980’s, early 1990’s Detroit Pistons, a team that won two championships in between the great dynasties of the 1980’s L.A. Lakers and the 1990’s Chicago Bulls.
A good comp for Steph Curry is Isiah Thomas and Klay Thompson is a better shooting version of Joe Dumars. Furthermore, the all around offensive skills of Draymond Green are reminiscent of those of Mark Aguirre. The Pistons were the Bad Boys that grabbed and held and elbowed their way to success when the NBA allowed the league to be run by an overly aggressive, bordering on thuggery form of defensive play that allowed teams to bully their way to a championship.
The Warriors have a decent enough defense, but their main forte of course is a great offense. They hit three point shots as well as any team in the league. The NBA of today doesn’t allow a team to grab and hold like it did in the late 80’s and it seems to encourage a style of play that can be mastered by a team that can consistently hit the three ball. That’s the Warriors. All teams seem to win with a superstar and they have that too in Curry.
Why are the Warriors so good? They have that generational talent in Curry, one of the best pure shooters the league has ever had. They have his backcourt mate Thompson, who actually shot the ball BETTER than Curry during the All Star game’s three point contest. And more than anything else, they play a TEAM game that has that “FIFTH” gear (while everyone else only seems to have four) that they can shift into that gives them that extra advantage every time they need it in a close game. The Warriors have that same quality of having “the right stuff” that the Lakers, Bulls, Celtics teams of yesteryear all had to fall back on during close games in the fourth quarter, and for the near future, that is enough to put them at the head of the NBA class for quite some time.
Did Manny Pacquiao just piss away his career?
Pacquiao probably DID just piss away his career. In this day and age of the Internet world being there to pass judgment for every single word a person utters, Manny Pacquiao probably crossed the line when he made his anti-gay comments and caused the entire Politically Correct world to pounce on his case.
He should not be making comments slurring a large population segment for their beliefs or lifestyle. He is a BOXER. Boxers should box. Boxers, who need the public to pay for their boxing matches, should not alienate people who might turn out to be paying customers. ANY people for that matter. There is a freedom of speech to say things, but there is also a consequence that happens to people when they say certain things that piss people off.
Also, this is an age where EVERYTHING you say could, to coin a phrase, “get you in trouble.” People now remember you, not for what you did during your life, but rather for that last, dumb, politically incorrect thing you spouted out in public. He said stuff when he didn’t need to say it. He said inflammatory stuff that a smart person would not have said, no matter what he believed, simply because it WASN’T a smart thing to do.
Manny Pacquiao has probably pissed away what probably could have been one final great payday with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and he soon will retire and permanently be known, not for being a great boxer, but rather as “that guy who bashed gays.” And what did he gain by saying what he said? Absolutely nothing.
The bible he likes to quote has a phrase about there being “a time for every purpose under Heaven.” A time for war, a time for peace. A time to do this, a time to do that. There is also a time to “think before you talk.” A time to just shut up and keep your opinions to yourself.
