Quote:
Originally Posted by Murphy3
Great point bring up Sabonis….
He's one of the great sports "what if's" of my lifetime.. I would have loved to have seen him in his prime in the NBA. A healthy Sabonis from the age of 21 in the NBA could have possibly been one of the greatest to ever play the game.. but by the time he made it to the US, his knees were shot and he had suffered a torn achilles. By the time he came over to the US, I have always heard that his legs/knees were in such bad shape that he could qualify for handicapped parking but he still put up 16 points and 10 rebounds one year..
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I've looked and looked for footage of Sabonis in his prime, and there's only a precious few minutes on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06usV6451ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DabiGsl168
You can see flashes of his passing skills, and you can see that he's really quick and agile for a guy that huge. Still, I'd give anything to actually see a real sample of that guy at his peak. Everyone who ever saw him or played against him said he was the greatest they'd ever seen. Bill Walton said he was a 7 ft 3 Larry Bird.
"What if" indeed. For my money, prime Sabonis is one of the two greatest "what ifs" in NBA history- the other one being Len Bias.
I haven't been to nearly as many NBA games as some, but I've been to my share, and I take a little bit of pride in the list of great players that I've seen play in person at least once. One of my earliest Mavs games was a playoff game against the Blazers in '03. He retired for good after that series, so I was damn lucky to see him play at least once, even if he was only a shell of himself by then. Incidentally, that game also allowed me to cross Scottie Pippen's name off my list.