Hypothetical Sports Contest #2

[samsdmf]

There was an interesting book I read by English author Tony Hawks; It started by him watching the Elgland football team beating Moldova- his friend said that they would all be naturaly gifted sportsmen and at least one could beat Tony at tennis (he was an average British club player)
Cutting it short- he goes to Moldova, tracks down the football team and beats them all at tennis- however Im sure if tennis was a national sport of Moldova things would have been different

[hasugopher]

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90 MPH means nothing when it never gets near the strike zone.

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I promise it's easy enough for a world class athlete to throw a fastball for strikes.

A 6'7" super strong and coordinated guy is gonna have no problem shutting down high school hitters.

Hitting is a problem, but I assume most of these guys are incredibly fast, and just beating out ground balls or even bunting would probably be enough to score a few runs.

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This is hilarious.

Throwing a 90 MPH fastball regardless of who you are takes many months of practice.

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months?

[orangepeel]

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The odds of the NBA players winning are approximately equal to the odds of them having at least one guy on their team that can throw strikes.

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word. Takes a lot of practice. I'd go with the high school team

[tolbiny]

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Agreed, but remember that only 6 or 7 guys from a 25-man MLB roster would need to compete. I don't think it would be difficult to find that many guys that would have the stamina to last through a single basketball game.

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6 or 7? Basketball teams have 10 or 12 players, for the very reason that no one has the stamina to last through a whole game.

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the thing is Basketball stamina isn't unique, baseball players who work out in the offseason could play a full game of basketball (and some do as has already been mentioned). Your shortstop, second baseman and center fielder are all going to workout in some way to mitigate this. On the other hand pitching requires a totally unique staminina, you can't just go out and heave 40-50 fastballswithout your shoulder throobbing, and there aren't basketball players who do anything that will remotely get them accustomed to this (except the rare guy who might play baseball for fun, but thats going to be much rarer than baseball players who play basketball).

[Justin A]

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Why isn't he a pitcher instead of a basketball player then? There's no way it's "easy" for a NBA player to throw a 90 MPH fastball for strikes. Baseball has a completely different skill set than most sports. I wouldn't be surprised if most NBA players couldn't throw a baseball 75 MPH, since they don't know the proper mechanics.

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Lol. do you know how slow 75 mph is? I was throwing 75 mph when I was a 140 pound 14 year old kid with very little strength.

I'm not saying it'd be easy for a random NBA player to throw 90, I'm just saying it'd be very likely that one guy on the team would be able to do it.

[UMTerp]

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I'm not saying it'd be easy for a random NBA player to throw 90, I'm just saying it'd be very likely that one guy on the team would be able to do it.

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No chance. Probably a quarter of major league pitchers can't hit 90. There's no way that it's "likely" a guy from a random NBA team could.

[orangepeel]

if this bet ever happens im giving sklansky 10:3

[34TheTruth34]

to all those who think the NBA team has no chance:

what if they had a year to train plus access to MLB-quality coaching staffs?

[Yads]

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No, 11-year olds are far too good skaters for the NBAs. There is no way the NBA-players would be able to stop them without getting a penalty. However, it will be hard for the 11-year olds to get the puck from the NBAs but they are probably so crappy that they will fall and lose the puck enough times for the youngsters to win. The NBAs wouldn't win a single faceoff either which is a big factor.

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I'm laughing my ass off on this analysis. I'm guessing it assumes the NBA team is somehow able to not simultaneously fall over when they step onto the ice.

[Michael Davis]

The NBA players would be messing things up.

First off, they are somewhat unlikely to find a competent pitcher. However, each team has a few guys who can play baseball, and most of those guys probably pitched when they were Little Leaguers at the latest and can find the plate.

But balls are going to be put into play. Fielding/defensive positioning is going to be a disaster. No matter what you do in three days of practice, the NBA players are going to surrender stolen bases all day, are going to commit probably 10+ errors, will frequently mishandle and misjudge common baserunning situations (if they can even get on base).

It's unlikely that any of the high school players will be automatic outs against whatever pitcher the NBA team can come up with, for even if they are able to come up with a guy who can pitch reasonably, he's been out of practice forever and his control will surely suffer so that if he throws pitches of any speed at all they will often miss the plate. The NBA team, however, will be loaded with automatic outs; even if they have three or four guys that have a chance of getting a hit, these guys can be walked or dealt with conservatively while the high schoolers mow down the five or so guys that just flat out can't hit. I'm fairly certain that taking a group of NBA players to a batting cage will provide sufficient evidence that the NBA-supporters are wrong.

This isn't 1950, there are tons of guys in the NBA who never played baseball. Like at all. Anybody who imagines these guys getting anything but an occasional fluke hit is snorting duck.

-Michael