First of all, thanks for your recent posts on this thread. You were dead-on in everything you said. About the jackass thing, though, I didn't say Strickland was a jackass (and I understand that you didn't say that I did, either). I simply said that the stunt he pulled...at the time he did it...was a jackass stunt. And it was. As I also said earlier in this thread, that was example of how the game today has become like a circus sideshow where showboating overrules fundamentals.
PH should look at some film of Oscar Robertson and Bill Russell sometime, if he thinks those guys couldn't play with today's players. I think that, inch for inch, Oscar Robertson may be the greatest college basketball player in the history of the game....especially considering what he had to endure while being a black player in a predominantly white game in the late 1950s. There is a reason why they call the award given each year to the Collegiate National Player of the Year the Oscar Robertson Trophy.
And for Bill Russell, he was the epitome of a winner and a team player...who went about his business with no fanfare and a single-minded purpose: to win games & championships. As a matter of fact, there is no better example of the difference between winning fundamentals and individual showboating today than when you compare how Bill Russell blocked shots....which he did, often....and the way many players today try to block shots. Russell's block would often become the first pass in a fast break going the other way for his team. Rather than swatting the ball ten rows up into the stands to get a reaction from the crowd...which he could have done many times....Russell would simply deflect the shot to a nearby teammate to begin a fast break for his team.
Everyone wants to be entertained in sports today with showboat moves and trash talk.....boring fundamentals be damned. In the NFL we have seen touchdowns on breakaway wide open runs lost because the player started showing off and lost control of the ball before he reached the goal line....or sustained completely unnecessary injuries by doing showboat somersault flips into the end zone. In MLB, outfielders will miss their cutoff man on throws and hitters will swing at 3-0 pitches in the 8th inning with the bases empty and their team trailing by 4 runs.
Everything has to be a show. As I said, going to a sports event today is more like going to the circus than going to a game.