The best athletes in sports or NFL DE and OLB. The size, strength, and speed combination is unmatched.
Your typical NBA guard if they have the aggression would be better than the skill positions except QB, because throwing is a unique skill. Usually QBs are also baseball players.
Vanessa was 17
I graduated in HS in 2002. I played basketball with two NBA players.
Even these guys worshiped LeBron.
These are guys if you asked about people like Amare, Bracey Wrights, Bosh, JJ, Shavlik Randolph, Zach Randolph, Marcus Taylor, Julius Hodge, TJ Ford, Eddy Curry, Shannon Brown, JR Giddens, or Charlie V they would say "oh they aren't that good, I'm better than him".
I started hearing about "some kid from Cleveland was going to be better than MJ" in 7th Grade. This is completely word of mouth pre-internet. This is when Streets and Smith, Tom Lemming, and Bob Gibbons basketball were the only guys covering HS at a national level. Obviously with the internet every year someone gets hyped.
I was officiating a MS Girls Basketball game 3 weeks ago. The guy working the table is the head Varsity Coach at a smaller HS. Well he is 28, and is a GYM Teacher. Well the site director, the AD, and me are all 37-45. We were talking about random players back in the day. And the Varsity coach was surprised we knew those guys like that. The news was covered differently. Detroit had two major newspapers and each Newspaper had literally 2 prep sports reports. Plus several other people in the newsroom. Every city was like that.
The Top HS players in a sport even in major cities were household names. Because you had NFL on Sunday, College Football.on Saturday. College Basketball was played mainly on Thursday through Sunday back then due.
Literally prep reporters based out of Detroit,Chicago, Louisville, Minnesota, etc were going to LeBron HS games his sophomore and junior year. Thats how he ended up on the cover of SI. By the time he was a Senior the national media was in a frenzy. The only comparable frenzy was Peyton Manning recruitment, Greg Oden was pretty nuts too, Terrelle Pryor, Fournette, Chris Simms, Anthony Munoz Jr, and Adrian Peterson. Meaning their recruitment, was covered at a national level, and their recruitment was making local news or even National News.
LeBron hype made those guys seem like covering a State Championship level game.
Klay is better than Reggie, honestly he is probably the improved version.
I love my Pistons. I love Tuss(look it up).
Klay and Steph are a better backcourt. One thing is the sustained excellence. Also Thompson's ability on offensive abilities relative to Dumars in their respective eras is stark.
Dumars was good. But he was always complimentary player. The 89 Finals he was lights out no doubt. But Dumars was more a steady reliable player. The Pistons couldn't depend on Dumars to carry the Pistons when say Thomas was out with a hand injury.
Dumars was excellent defensive guard, but the Jordan stopper lore was the help defense. To Dumars credit he understood the rotations and trusted the help to be there...until they were. But thats a whole different issue.
I was pushing Ben McLemore so much. I was sure he was 10 year starter and perennial All Star. I was thinking Ray Allen, Drexler levels.
Here in the USA a 20 year-old should not be interacting with 16-17 year old especially for a new relationship. There would more wiggle-room if say they had met while he was in HS.
But then you have people who believe any relationship with uneven power dynamics in a man's favor is problematic. But thats not this situation.