Every day I listen to the Tony Kornheiser Show on 3WT radio broad casted out of our nation’s capital (or you can download it as a podcast from iTunes). As you all know Tony is a co host of the ESPN show PTI. He’s much older, wiser, sport educated, and humerus than myself. Despite his fairly liberal views I’m a huge fan of Tony K. However there is one recent comment I disagreed with fully, and thought I would bring it to the table.
A few days ago Jeff Van Gundy made a comment during the Mavericks Lakers game. He said that Kobe’s 81 points on January 22, 2006 was more impressive that Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 points, scored on March 2, 1962. Tony completely disagreed with Jeff basically saying you would have to be a moron to think this. They then went on in an objective manner saying it’s simple: Kobe had 81, Wilt had 100, Wilt’s record is more impressive.
Do you honestly think that Wilt Chamberlain could score 100 points in the past 10 years? There’s no chance. In 1962 nobody had ever heard of double teaming someone, the lane was much smaller, zone defense didn’t exist, and the level of play has increased tremendously. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge Kobe fan but can you imagine if during that game in 2006, the defense could only put one man on him? He’d have 346 points. True during Wilt’s time there was no 3 point line. Kobe hit 7 threes during that game against the Mavericks, obviously giving him 7 more points than he might have had in 1962. It doesn’t matter. Rumor has it during the final minutes of Wilt’s record setting game, the opposing team was intentionally fouling in order to give Wilt more chances at a record setting score. Too bad this game was before the glory of video cameras at sporting events. Now that I think about it I bet everyone in the stadium made it up. I bet they all have sworn themselves to secrecy and the whole thing could be thought of as a conspiracy like JFK and the moon landing.
I will continue to listen to Tony’s show for as long as it’s on the air. His clever dialog and destructive rants will always having me come back for more. However I think his old age could be starting to get to him.