Every sports fan loves to argue about who they think is the best ever.
Enter the latest Twitter poll: Who is the greatest college basketball player of all-time? A 64-person bracket was created by SportsCenter to try and answer that question. It turned into more of a popularity contest; Michael Jordan and Larry Bird made it all the way to the finals, with His Airness edging out Larry Legend by a slim margin.
But the debate rages on.
Renowned sportscaster and radio personality, Dan Patrick, told Dan Dakich what he thought about the bracket on Thursday’s edition of The Dan Dakich Show.
“Oh, there’s no argument. It’s Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar),” Patrick said. “It’s not even close. He did everything you would want. He lost 2 games. He won three titles. He was Most Outstanding Player those three years. This was when freshman weren’t eligible, or he would’ve won a fourth because his freshman team beat the varsity team that won the National Title the previous year.”
Patrick acknowledged Jordan’s impact on the college game, but he doesn’t consider him to be in the conversation.
“The college basketball version of Michael Jordan was a wonderful player,” Patrick told Dakich. “He wasn’t even Patrick Ewing, who to me, was far more impactful. People feared Patrick Ewing. There was a year where Jordan wasn’t even the best player on his own team. James Worthy was. It’s about what you did when you were playing in college, not what you did or didn’t do in the NBA.”
Dakich agreed that Alcindor or Bill Walton deserved the top honor, then pivoted to the 13-seed from the East Region on the bracket, Pete Maravich.
“I think the guy who had the best college career was Pete Maravich. To me, if you’re gonna take a guy’s career and what he did, it’s hard to not have Pistol Pete in there. But I’m Serbian and I’m biased,” Dakich joked.
Patrick touched on impactful women’s players as well, namely Breanna Stewart (UConn) and Cheryl Miller (USC).
On Stewart:
“You can’t do anything more than what she did for UConn. She went 4 for 4 – National Titles and being the Most Outstanding Player. Nobody will ever top that.”
On Miller:
“She was to women’s basketball what Martina (Navratilova) was to women’s tennis. You saw a different athlete there.”
Patrick concluded:
“You have to understand what happened in the time these players played, and I don’t think the ESPN brackets factored that in.”
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