Is Crosby/Ovechkin the best player rivalry in big 4 sports leagues in the 21st century?

[AvroArrow]

Wade has never been close to being the #2 player in the world. Stern gifted him a title because he hated Mark Cuban’s guts and then LeBron delivered him a couple more. Wade was a top ten or so player of his era but never in the same realm as many of the guys he played with and against.

Did you actually watch the NBA ? Lmao, Wade is widely regarded as the 3rd greatest shooting guard of all time, behind only Jordan and Kobe. Kobe was slightly declining when LBJ joined Miami, it was undisputed Lebron/Wade as the 1/2 in the NBA.

Curry wasn't Curry yet, Durant was extremely young and couldn't even ball handle properly at that point in his career (they exposed him in the finals). Who were the other top dogs in the NBA at that point ? Dirk/Duncan were way out of their prime, Melo was 1 dimensional.

Wade was a top 10 player since he entered the league and only went up from there.

 

[AhosDatsyukian]

This is a made up requirement.

Everything when it comes to sports comparisons and analysis is completely made up. It's my personal point of view. Feel free to disagree if you like but I find it absurd to compare QBs or say they have a rivalry against each other when they never actually compete against each other and the teams consist of 53 players.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

Did you actually watch the NBA ? Lmao, Wade is widely regarded as the 3rd greatest shooting guard of all time, behind only Jordan and Kobe. Kobe was slightly declining when LBJ joined Miami, it was undisputed Lebron/Wade as the 1/2 in the NBA.

Curry wasn't Curry yet, Durant was extremely young and couldn't even ball handle properly at that point in his career (they exposed him in the finals). Who were the other top dogs in the NBA at that point ? Dirk/Duncan were way out of their prime, Melo was 1 dimensional.

Wade was a top 10 player since he entered the league and only went up from there.

Dwight Howard was considered the second best player in the NBA at the time, not Wade.

 

[wintersej]

Everything when it comes to sports comparisons and analysis is completely made up. It's my personal point of view. Feel free to disagree if you like but I find it absurd to compare QBs or say they have a rivalry against each other when they never actually compete against each other and the teams consist of 53 players.

Sure, it just seems silly to me that the 15-20 seconds a game Ovi and Crosby are actually competing against each other means much. Maybe if they were both centers and were actually matching up it would have more meaning, but those few times Crosby rotates over to defend Ovi doesn’t hold that much weight to me.

 

[AhosDatsyukian]

Sure, it just seems silly to me that the 15-20 seconds a game Ovi and Crosby are actually competing against each other means much. Maybe if they were both centers and were actually matching up it would have more meaning, but those few times Crosby rotates over to defend Ovi doesn’t hold that much weight to me.

I would not disagree with you there. Team sports have team rivalries. There are some occasional exceptions where players do matchup directly with each other like a WR/CB in football or some NBA players who do basically shadow each other on the court. The less players on a team in a sport the closer you get to individual rivalries, but to me true player to player rivalries to me only really exist in individual sports where success is entirely dependent on the 2 players against each other head to head. Tennis big 3 is definitely the best example of a player rivalry recently. And Alcaraz Sinner now. Further in the past there were of course a ton of epic boxing rivalries.

Again, I know many will disagree but that's just how I see it. An example of why is that in team sports the outcome depends on so many more things than just players who are competing directly against each other. A WR could dominate a CB shadowing him to the tune of 250 yards and his team still loses the game. In tennis, boxing, etc. the outcome is 100% dependent on the players against each other.