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Message: [QUOTE="and one, post: 3436903, member: 10475"] I like a lot of the posts to this thread - thoughtful and well reasoned. Defining a "generational" talent leads down the road of what constitutes a generation, and how long that might be. There is also at least an implication that there is for each generation one and only one talent that rises above the rest in that generation. It seems clear to me that super-duper talents come along randomly, sometimes spaced apart and sometimes clustered into a short time period. In tennis, Federer, Nedal and Djoko all clearly meet any reasonable definition of a generational talent, yet largely share the same timeline. For discussion purposes I like "transcendent" talent better. It eliminates the artificial time constraint implied by "generational" and puts the focus on the player talent level where it belongs. Transcendent players are, to pick a number, one in 10,000. Not just an A player, but an A+++ player. There is no reason why you can't separately look at who is transcendent at various age/competition levels - high school, college, pro. There is no direct line from being A+++ at one level to maintaining that at the next level. For me, adding high school players into the transcendent player discussion doesn't have much value unless it is only a discussion of who are/were great high school players. A lot of criteria for what goes into making a player transcendent have been brought up and most seem reasonable to me, with the exception of winning championships. More often than not great, great players do end up on teams that win championships, but not necessarily. EDD (who is at least in the conversation as an A+++ player) had no shot at taking Delaware to a national championship and that doesn't obviate her very high skill level. In the end, transcendent players stand out so easily from the rank and file that what ever your criteria, if you have to think about if someone is one of that rare breed they probably aren't. [/QUOTE]

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