Agreeing to be disagreeable

There’s a new book out, which should be great grist for discussion among local sports fans, what with all the international sporting events — headlined by the NBA conference finals — coming up. It’s opinionated, amusing, skewed, scores points, and is a little grating. Perfect for Filipino taste.

It’s called "The Mad Dog Hall of Fame: the Ultimate Top—Ten Rankings of the Best in Sports", a rather lofty title, but has a lot of bite to it. It’ s written by Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo, the other half of "Mike and the Mad Dog" on WFAN in New York. Though he does live up to his name with his rabid commentary, Russo is no slouch, having won the Marconi Award for Major Market Personality of the Year, radio’s most prestigious honor. He’s also been a favorite of nationwide talk shows in the US.

Anyway, Russo rates the greatest (in his opinion) sports personalities and events of all time, and he does manage to go way, way back to do so. The Mad Dog ranks The top ten NBA, baseball and NFL players of all time, as well as coaches, venues and moments of all time.

Obviously, Russo’s strengths are in basketball, baseball and football. He rates those three sports rather comprehensively, but then lumps everything else (including professional boxing) into "other sports". And he has no other continent covered, either. Still and all, what is emphasized is rather meaty.

He starts off with his list of greatest NBA players in history, which in itself is always a controversial issue. Where NBA TV stats man Elliott Kalb ranks Shaquille O’Neal number one, Russo places him at tenth, behind Jerry West (9th), Oscar Robertson (8th), Bob Cousy (a surprise 7th), Larry Bird (at 6th a slot behind Magic Johnson, as always), Kareem Abdul—Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and, of course, Michael Jordan. Ironically, Russo acknowledges that Bird and Magic saved basketball and Jordan only made it a marketing phenomenon.

His college basketball ratings are a little more agreeable. Christian Laettner’s pro career notwithstanding, he made a lot of big shots in college, and is tenth. Alex Groza, David Thompson, Bob Kurland, Pete Maravich, Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, Bill Russell and Bill Walton ascend the ladder, at the top of which is Lew Alcindor, aka Kareem Abdul—Jabbar. Russo places a premium on players who changed the rules of the game, or against whom rule changes were made, such as widening the lane, banning dunking, and so on. It’ s hard to disagree with that.

One thing I find hard to swallow is his analysis of the top ten "other sport" athletes of all time. From tenth to third, he lines up Rod Laver, Tiger Woods, Secretariat (yes, the horse), Billie Jean King, Jack Nicklaus, Babe Didirkson, Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky. Believe it or not, Muhammad Ali is number two, next to Jim Thorpe. Now, in other categories, he uses the lack of competition to pull down his rating of other athletes, yet he uses that to lionize Thorpe, who was wrongly stripped of two Olympic golds for playing semi—pro baseball when only amateurs were allowed in the Olympic Games. But Thorpe did not initiate any social change like Ali or even Jackie Robinson (who is egregiously omitted here). And he didn’t win as much as Mark Spitz (9 Olympic golds), or Carl Lewis (same number) for that matter. And why couldn’ t he separate the female athletes and race horses?

There are more obscure chapters on venues, events and another lumping together, this time of coaches. But overall, it is the stuff, which sustains talk radio in any country: spark for a disagreement. And in some cases, Russo can disagree without being disagreeable. But that is more the exception than the rule.

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Catch tomorrow’ s episode of The Basketball Show, 2 p.m. on RPN 9.

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The Metro Basketball Tournament — Bayantel Call Center Challenge Cup is now open to all call centers and affiliated companies. Play begins July 1, with the pre—tournament meeting on June 17. Interested teams may call Metro Basketball 636—7638 or 0917—9948408 or Ricky Liwanag at 449—2363.