concordtom;842835947 said:
No, I did not.
But I am disrespecting his era, sorry to say.
Concord Tom,
You are disrespecting Imhoff’s era. Just like you always seem to do.
You may not know this but you, and a few others like you, who disrespect Imhoff’s era, are the sole reason I began posting on the Bear Insider. You and the few others have an agenda, and that ranges from only promoting the modern game and its players over past eras, to overlooking evidence, to ridiculing, denigrating, and insulting those players and their game, their coaches and even their fans. You are not the worst offender. That would be “concerned parent”, who not long ago stated “any high school team today would blow the Cal ’59 team out of the gym”, or something like that. You are, however, the most persistent, periodically starting “best all time team” threads, so you can put down players of long ago, by not even considering them, because they are too small, too unathletic, and now, not experienced enough. I finally felt I had had enough, and had to say something in defense of the old players’ reputations, so I started posting, mostly in vain, because there is no changing your mind about something you never saw. You watch a 56 second video of cherry-picked moments from the 1959 NCAA Final, and then you think you know everything about those players, the team, the coach, and the era.
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The pool of players these days is much bigger,......
The pool of recruits and transfers today does include some foreign players, I’ll give you that, but the pool of players was bigger in Imhoff’s era than it is today. There are so few kids playing basketball today compared to Imhoff’s day. Back then, most or every high school in Bay Area cities had five boys’ basketball teams all with 15 or more players each: a 110 lb team, a 120 lb team, a 130 lb team, a junior varsity team, and a varsity team. As players matured, they usually moved up the ranks to the varsity. At the same time, Cal had a frosh team, a junior varsity team, and a varsity team, with a total of 45-50 players on scholarship each year, and most PCC schools had similar programs.
Kids today have so many distractions to take them away from basketball: They have much more homework to do, plus extra-curricular activities to help them get into college, extra tutoring, skateboards, computers, video games, and the big culprit: cell phones. I go to just about any playground, baseball diamond, gymnasium, anywhere in the Bay Area, and I see very little basketball being played. When I was a kid, the high school and middle school gyms were all open at night for games, and the playgrounds were all filled with kids trying to get into a basketball game. I never ever see a kid on the street now, coming home from school, dribbling a basketball. That kid today is always on his phone.
The distraction for kids in my day was other sports. Most kids played at least 2 sports. At Cal, many great athletes played 2 or 3 sports: Grover Klemmer set the world track record at 400 meters, and played football and basketball at Cal. Jackie Jensen was a Major League baseball star, and played baseball and was All-American at football. Cliff Mayne was a fine tennis player and basketball player as well. Bob Albo started on the Cal basketball team and was the catcher on the baseball team. Joe Kapp was an All-American in football and played on the basketball team as well. Today, two-sport athletes are rare. More and more kids are playing soccer, while the basketball pool is dwindling. Black kids are not playing baseball much now, and their ranks in the Major Leagues are decreasing.
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(the pool) includes all races,
The pool in Imhoff’s day did include all races, except at some schools, like Cal. In 1955 and 1956, USF started 3 blacks on their NCAA Championship teams, and had more on the bench. When Cal faced Seattle in the Western Regional in 1958, Seattle started 3 blacks as I remember. When Cal faced St Marys in the NCAA Western Regional in 1959, St Marys started 3 blacks. In 1963, a black friend of mine, Steve Gray, was an All-American at St Marys. Cal’s admission standards were high, but Cal’s administration did nothing to help blacks gain admission, and many alumni did not want black players. Pete Newell recruited three black players, but two flunked out and one, Earl Robinson, made All-Conference. He also played baseball and was signed by the Orioles. In San Francisco, all the high schools and middle schools schools had both black and asian players. Basketball beyond high school has always discriminated against the short player, and as a result, not many Asians play college basketball. Years ago, before Pete Newell, Cal had a 145 lb team, where many good asian players found a place to play the sport they loved.
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....and have played way more games before getting to college than anyone did way back then, not to mention the amount of ball played DURING college in the off season and such. Therefore, guys today are usually taller, better athletes, and more experienced.
I doubt this as well. In high school, in the off season, I played for four different teams. I had a game nearly every other night somewhere, and sometimes two games in the same day. And by the way, playing more games does not mean you automatically are becoming a better player. It is the level you play at, the coaching you get, and how determined you are that makes you try and get better. Quality, not quantity, is what matters. You can practice a faulty free throw stroke until you are blue in the face, but that will not make you better. You need to learn a better stroke.