Finally Watching The Duke '91-'92 Documentary...

Discussion in 'Sports' started by hatvol96, Mar 20, 2012.

  1. hatvol96

    hatvol96 Well-Known Member

    Yeah, I was just talking the other day about all the first team All American squads Fred Brown made. Also, pretty sure that's one play. LJ managed to screw up five coming down the stretch.
     
  2. hatvol96

    hatvol96 Well-Known Member

    Larry Johnson was the Mike Tyson of college basketball. As long as he was hammering overmatched opponents, he looked like an all time great. Then, someone hit him in the mouth and exposed him as a halfwit bully with no guts.
     
  3. kidbourbon

    kidbourbon Well-Known Member

    Okay....the statement about Tyson is completely false. Tyson got exposed because the support system and consequent structure that Cus-D-Amato had put in place for him (because he knew he didn't have much more time) fell apart after Jim Jacobs died. Bill Cayton didn't have enough of a personal relationship with Tyson to do anything to prevent him from going with Don King when Don King was courting him. And so he signed on with Don King and fired Kevin Rooney. Firing Kevin Rooney was the end of Tyson as a great fighter. Period. End of story. Note that he fired Kevin Rooney after the Michael Spinks fight. In each of his fights after that fight, Tyson became less disciplined. Tyson was an extremely good defensive fighter at his best. This was how Cus taught him to fight. He was constantly pouncing forward, but he was never getting hit because he was always bobbing, weaving, bending, slipping, roling. Like a much better and more athletic Joe Frazier. Again, this is how Cus taught him to fight, and it was this style that was constantly drilled into him at first by Kevin Rooney through Cus-d-amato when cuss was alive, and then just by Kevin Rooney.

    Kevin Rooney was the only link back to the man who taught him how to fight and made him great. That constant bobbing, weaving, bending, slipping, rolling, ducking as you move forward is not an intuitive way for the human body to move. This has to be drilled into a fighter with hours and hours of drills establishing muscle memory, and it has to be done before every fight.

    Tyson's story is somewhat tragic, in my opinion, because he was a train wreck and Cus knew he was a train wreck and so that's why he put in place people that would provide structure to his life and prevent him from self-destructing. And he had good people in place. But then Jim Jacobs died, and it began to unravel, and Tyson was a train wreck, and he fired the one man -- Kevin Rooney -- that he absolutely unequivocally needed. He went through tons of "yes-men" trainers after the Spinks fight. None of them could properly train him. If any of them could properly train him he probaby would have fired him because they woudl have talked to him as an authority figure, and told his fatass to get in shape. Rooney could talk to him like that. Rooney wasn't a yes man. He'd been with him since the kid was 13.

    I realize I'm going off on a tangent here, bu the common refrain that Tyson got exposed because soembody stood up to him is something that hits a nerve with me. It isn't true. Tyson got exposed because he was [uck fay]ing 5-9 and if he didn't employ the defensive techniques and the punching in flurries that he was taught his whole life, he would be vulnerable against any tall fighter with a long reach that wa worth his weight in dog shit and able to keep sticking jabs in his face. After he fired Kevin Rooney, it was simply a matter of time before he was going to get exposed.

    The idea that Buster Douglas beat him because he was the first person to "stand up to" Tyson is just utter ridiculousness. If Tyson still had Rooney he would have dispatched Douglas in 3 rounds max. And if he woudl have kept Rooney throughout his career (and also not gone to jail) he would be viewed differently historically. He woudl be in the conversation as one of the top fghters of all time. He might not have lost until he fought Lennox Lewis, at which point he would have slowed down a good bit anyway and Lewis mgith have just been too much for him to overcome. Tyson v. Holyfield, with Tyson as he was in 1988 wouldn't have been a competitive fight. Holyfield would have taken a bad beating and lasted no more than 5 rounds.

    I'm only stopping because I have to do other stuff. I could write on this topic for many many pages.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2012
  4. kidbourbon

    kidbourbon Well-Known Member

    And I think your statement about LJ is way overblown. The last play was sort of a disorganized cluster-[uck fay]. i wish I could find it as a youtube video and I would post it. I have it at home, but I'm not there to watch it right now. Anyway, it was basically a busted play and LJ hesitated -- likely because he was a bad outside shooter -- and didn't take a 3. Nobody hit him in the mouth. Or exposed him as a halfwit bully. And the guy hesitated because he was a hesitant shooter...calling him a coward with no guts takes a logical hop, skip, and jump....and it sounds like you just don't like Larry Johnson.
     
  5. volfanjo

    volfanjo Chieftain

    Maybe halfwit bully is excessive but it isn't far off. Obviously Cus made the orphan boy what he was. And obviously getting rid of Rooney was a big mistake. But Tyson got some money, got lazy and wouldn't listen to anyone. He went to Japan and basically refused to train. He hired a cutman who forgot to bring an enswell to the ring! Come on. It's hard for me to take the guy seriously at all after that -- and subsequent -- debacles.
     
  6. kidbourbon

    kidbourbon Well-Known Member

    What do you mean by "take him seriously"?

    It seems like you're agreeing with me. I actually agree with everything you wrote. Tyson needed an authority figure (for lack of a better phrase) to keep him from going off the rails. But he didn't know that. I think part of being a train wreck is not being aware that you're a train wreck.

    And so once he got some money and had people in his ear telling him that he's invincible, he probably convinced himself that he was invincible and didn't need Rooney telling him what to do....or anybody telling him what to do for that matter. Without authority figures to provide structure in his life, he did train wreck things that train wreck people do. Things like run around Japan having lots of sex, which caused him to catch a venereal disease*, instead of training for a fight. Or hiring a cornerman who was so unprepared that he was using a condom filled with ice instead of an enswell.**

    Anyway, call the above lunacy, call it halfwittedness, call it whatever. We're saying the same thing: the guy was a freaking ticking time bomb when left to his own devices. The early demise of Tyson was due to choices that he made outside the ring because, again, he was just completely self-destructive. I think we agree on this. It definitely definitely was *not* because someone "finally stood up to him".

    ______________________________
    *He had the venereal disease when he fought Douglas. Chlamydia, most likely.
    **I'm not joking. Chat: Chat with Bert Sugar - SportsNation - ESPN
     
  7. hatvol96

    hatvol96 Well-Known Member

    Every fighter that every hit Tyson beat him. Period. The greatness of Tyson is the biggest myth in the history of American sports. He beat not a single good fighter, except for a lightheavy fighting out of his class, in his entire career. On his best day, he was an Odd Lots quality knockoff of Joe Frazier.
     
  8. droski

    droski Traffic Criminal

    patrick ewing?
     
  9. hatvol96

    hatvol96 Well-Known Member

    Patrick Ewing outplayed Hakeem Olajuwon in an NCAA final. Johnson has no such moment on his resume. Ewing also never shied away from taking big shots. He just wasn't good at making them.
     
  10. kidbourbon

    kidbourbon Well-Known Member

    You're wrong. You're completely wrong. Every fighter that hit Ali from 1965-1967 also beat him....except that nobody could....so nobody did. Like Ali, Tyson was a speed fighter. He was a speed fighter who had power and not the opposite. He rarely got hit in his prime because he was impeccably sound technically and as fast as a cat. And it's really easy for you to say he didn't beat a great fighter. The same can be said for Ali from 1965-1967. Funny how there never seem to be any great fighters when there is one dominant one. When one guy is miles ahead of everybody else, they make everybody else look bad, which leads to the conclusion that they didn't fight anybody. Hmmm. Let me guess: Floyd Mayweather hasn't fought anybody either? Roy Jones hadn't fought anybody until he got old and started losing?

    Tyson was technically better than Frazier, he was way way faster than Frazier with both hands and feet, he was stronger than Frazier, and he outweighed Frazier by 12-15 pounds. Frazier was a poor man's Mike Tyson on his very best day.

    Look at the way Frazier moves:

    [video=youtube;KcmMPBT8NAY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmMPBT8NAY[/video]


    And compare it with the way Tyson moves:

    [video=youtube;uYZzMPsm6c4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYZzMPsm6c4&feature=related[/video]


    Tyson was more naturally gifted, better technically, and had a more ruthless mentality. Joe Frazier == poor man's Mike Tyson...and I think I'm being generous.
     
  11. kidbourbon

    kidbourbon Well-Known Member

    Larry Johnson went 8-12 from the field, had 22 points and 11 rebounds in 30 minutes of play in the 1990 NCAA final. I just added that to his resume.
     
  12. hardwoodfanatic

    hardwoodfanatic New Member

    I gotta go with 92 Duke, just some big time shot makers on that team. Bobby Hurley was a tough little bastard, and could make the clutch 3 as well. Johnson was a physical bully, Hill was the better player. FWIW I would take both Duke (92) and UK (96) before that UNLV team.
     
  13. JT5

    JT5 Super Moderator

    96 UK is the best college team I've ever seen. Remember the 92 Duke squad, but too young to appreciate them.
     

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