CelticsBlog · Sep 22, 2016
How and why basketball does not respect its past nearly enough
Why is it that the casual sports fan knows a lot about Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Johnny Unitas, Jim Brown, Dick Butkus and Gordie Howe but very little if anything about NBA greats Bob Pettit or Bill Sharman?
These players were all contemporaries - Williams, Howe and Pettit even shared the jersey number nine - but even though Pettit retired in 1965, before Mays and Mantle, he was the NBA's all-time leader in points and rebounds. That's like being the all-time baseball leader in home runs and batting average or runs batted in.