Name That Player

 

Last month I surprised even myself when I took inventory of the number of athletes I could recognize and it was barely 50 total across all sports. This is a stunning development for someone who could rattle off entire baseball team rosters and stats in my adolescence. Truly it is out of sight, out of mind.

But, I offered a caveat: I was excluding basketball and football, which relatively speaking I tend to follow more than all other sports combined. Although that's not saying much: I maybe watch 1 game a season, and hardly have time even to catch highlights or review box scores. Even so, surely my count will be higher for these two sports, right? 

Well let's find out. To wit, I looked at every team roster and jotted down the name of every player who I knew they were on that team (it's all the trades that throw me off!) and I could recognize their face (a consequence of not watching any actual games or coverage is that I vaguely know some names but couldn't tell you what they look like, and with football I may have actually seen them play but have never seen their face). Here we go:

 

NBA (68, barely 2 per team on average, and 4 whole teams where I know absolutely no one!)

ATL - Young

BOS - Brown, Horford, Smart, Tatum

BKN - Curry, Drummond, Durant, Irving, Simmons 

CHA - Ball, Hayward

CHI - Caruso, DeRozan, LaVine

CLE - Love

DAL - Brunson, Doncic

DEN - Gordon, Jokic, Murray, Porter Jr.

DET - 0

GSW - Curry, Green, Payton II, Poole, Thompson, Wiggins

HOU - Wall

IND - 0

LAC - George, Leonard

LAL - Anthony, Davis, James, Westbrook

MEM - Morant

MIA - Adebayo, Butler, Herro, Lowry

MIL - Antetokounmpo, Lopez, Middleton

MIN - Edwards, Russell, Towns 

NOP - Ingram, Williamson

NYK - Randle

OKC - Gilgeous-Alexander

ORL - Fultz

PHI - Embiid, Green, Harden, Harris, Jordan, Maxey, Niang, Thybulle

PHO - Ayton, Booker, Paul

POR - Lillard

SAC - 0

SAS - 0

TOR - Siakim, VanVleet

UTA - Gobert, Mitchell

WAS - Beal

 

NFL (47, almost half QBs!)

ARI - Hopkins, Murray, Watt

ATL - 0

BAL - Jackson, Tucker

BUF - Allen

CAR - McCaffrey

CHI - 0

CIN - Burrow

CLE - Mayfield, Watson

DAL - Elliott, Prescott

DEN - Wilson

DET - Goff

GB - Rodgers

HOU - 0

IND - 0

JAX - Lawrence

KC - Kelce, Mahomes

LV - Adams, Carr, Jacobs

LAC - Herbert

LAR - Donald, Kupp, Stafford

MIA - Hill, Tagovailoa

MIN - Cousins

NE - Jones

NO - Winston

NYG - Barkley

NYJ - 0

PHI - Cox, Elliott, Graham, Hurts, Kelce, Mailata, Minshew II, Smith

PIT - Watt

SF - Garappolo, Samuel

SEA - Metcalf

TB - Brady

TEN - Henry, Tannehill

WAS - Young 

 

NBA is such a star's league, so I'm not surprised I knew so many names. NFL on the other hand...I used to watch at least a portion of a game or two a week, plus a steady diet of highlights, but now I go entire months without knowing who's good and who's who. Between that and the helmets, I literally drew a blank reviewing entire team rosters trying to imagine a face. Get me to a TV and get me a scorecard, stat!