Wow think you are lost in real good basketball instincts, good skills defensively and offensively with "athleticism".........you can be a great athlete without being a great basketball player. I'm guessing 98% of the people believe that while you are thinking a bit differently and quite honestly you are wrong.
For instance Doron Sheffer and Nadav Henefeld never got "caught flat footed defensively" but people did get by them..........were they great athletes then? NO.............Rashad Anderson didn't rely "heavily on a back to the basket turn" nor did Travis Knight....were they great athletes? NO............please rethink your position here and call it miscommunication because you are so far off from reality here it's ridiculous.....and we know you're an intelligent poster....
Sticks was a tremendous 6'8" athlete with superb hops which led to "acrobatic displays of ability", very good quickness for his size but wasn't quite gifted with in all areas.
For a big guy, Travis Knight was actually a very good athlete by college standards. He could catch and shoot or finish in transition, and usually beat his guy down the court on the break.
Great athletes are almost always very good defenders unless they are dogging it. Sticks was not lazy on the court, but he was also not a good defensive player. He had slow feet. He didn't blow by people down the court. He had good ups and a few memorable dunks.
One of the most athletic plays I have ever seen in a college game was Edmund Saunders grabbing an Elton Brand thunder dunk in mid-air and slamming it down on top of Brand, then cocking his head while staring Brand right in the face. Saunders got called for a foul, but pretty much everyone on the court, in the stands, and across the nation knew that Saunders had just stuffed Brand's s***. Think about that play. Brand would go on to have a 13+ year NBA career and make 2 NBA all-star teams. He would be the #1 pick of the draft within just over 2 months from that game. And Saunders, at full speed, caught a ball Brand was slamming into the basket, stopped the momentum of the dunk cold, and then turned it back on Brand, all within the space of a second. I don't consider Saunders a great athlete by Big East standards, but he was capable of very athletic plays, including one like that one which was a combination of speed, vertical leap, strength and coordination. Sticks couldn't have made a play like that against a guy like Brand if they played each other every day.
People remember Sticks throwing it down on some guard or uncontested. What did he do in traffic, while getting bumped, against top competition?
If you are calling Brand a GREAT athlete, you are putting him in the same class as Rudy Gay, Scott Burrell, Donyell Marshall or Richard Hamilton. That is ridiculous.
