Randy Moss had one superlative year. Yes, he was great in his first stint with the Vikings, and he was a pro-bowler in his last two years with the Patriots. Moss is a future hall of famer on the strength of his entire career, but it was only 2007 when every Sunday felt like there wasn't a man on earth, much less the opposing sideline, who could stop Randy Moss from catching the football. He caught 23 touchdowns in 2007, more than anyone has ever caught. His team scored 589 points in 2007, more than any team has ever scored. Images of Moss from 2007 stick in the memory. Catching a touchdown between two Dolphins in the end zone. The coverage couldn't have been better, Tom Brady threw a jump ball, and Randy Moss was bigger, stronger, and a better leaper than the two men guarding him. He wanted the ball more and he was more equipped to get it, so he did. Streaking down the sideline agianst the Giants in the last game of the regular season, Tom Brady could have thrown the ball a mile, and Randy Moss would have run under it. And the first game of the 2007 season, against the Jets. Moss was running a post down the right sideline and Brady heaved it towards the left corner of the end zone. Moss blazed across the field, leaving three Jets struggling futilely in his wake, chasing like Keystone Cops. Of course Moss ran under the pass for a touchdown. In 2007 you could not overthrow Randy Moss. The man was a gazelle. No one ever looked more majestic on a football field than Randy Moss at full speed.
Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine a man acting smaller than Moss did on Friday, allegedly berating a caterer. Moss' boorish rant led to his dismissal by the Vikings. It's the fourth time a team has cut ties to Moss, each time his team received nothing approaching fair value for one of the greatest receivers of all time.
Allen Iverson had one superlative year. Yes, he's won four scoring titles, but in 2000-01 he captivated, he mesmerized. He's always been the smallest and the fastest man on the court. He's always been relentless, fearless in driving to the basket, irrepressible in attacking men a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than himself. In 2001 Iverson willed a very flawed team, with no other great players, to the NBA Finals. Once there, he scored 48 points to win game one, giving the much vaunted LA Lakers their only loss of the 2001 postseason. In that game's most memorable sequence, all of Iverson, for better and worse, is on display: His breathtaking quickness and skill in crossing up and shooting over the Lakers' quickest player, Tyronn Lue; and his self assurance, cockiness, and bravado in stepping right over a prostrate Lue in front of an animated Lakers' bench and screaming LA crowd.
Much like Moss, who famously "plays when he wants to play," Iverson's brilliance always came with a self-assurance that flirted with self-righteousness, a confidence that blended with arrogance. And, much like Moss, Iverson has now parted ways with four teams, a disporportionately large number for two men with such prodigious talents. Iverson, far from washed up, but unwilling to play a lesser role than he once did, was passed over by all 32 NBA teams this off-season. Just last week, he signed a contract to play basketball in Turkey, and seems unlikely to ever play in the NBA again; a belittling end for an all time great.
"He was very black, very articulate, very political, a strong and independent man sprung from circumstances that could also create great insecurity. There was about him a constant sense of challenge; everything was a struggle, and everything was a potential confrontation, a struggle for turf and position. It was in part what had made him at his best so exceptional an athlete. He liked the clash of will. He was at once an intensely proud black man, justifiably angry about the injustice around him, and a superb and subtle con artist, a man who had in effect invented himself and his persona."
These words seem as if they were written about Moss or Iverson (both were involved in racially charged brawls in high school). They were, in fact, written about another man who had one superlative season. The preceding paragraph is from David Halberstam's 1981 book, The Breaks of the Game and is describing Maurice Lucas who died on Sunday, far too young at 58, of bladder cancer. In 1976-77 Lucas led the Portland Trailblazers in scoring, and along with Bill Walton, led Portland to the NBA title. That team, although it would fall apart after just one year, is an iconic one in NBA lore. Halberstam writes, "It was a wonderful moment...It was not just that they had won, but the way that they had won, unselfish in a selfish world and a selfish profession. It had been not just a matter of scoring baskets, but of scoring baskets off the perfect pass." Two years later, Walton (who loved Lucas so much he named his son after him) was gone to San Diego and Lucas was hampered by injuries and unhappy about his contract. He would play the next 12 years of his career with six different teams, never coming close to recapturing the magic of 1977, just as Moss and Iverson have never been able to duplicate the magic of 2007 and 2001, respectively.
Who knows what factors converged to make just one year so great for these three men. Greatness is fleeting, ephemeral, hard to pin down. Moss has played with great quarterbacks--Randall Cuningham, Daunte Culpepper (both in their primes), Tom Brady, and Brett Favre--almost his entire career, but never quite reached the take your breath away greatness that he did in 2007. He's about to join his fifth team, and his third this year. For much of his career, Iverson played on teams built around him, tailored to his strengths, but his swagger and talent never coalesced into team greatness quite like they did in 2001. He'll likely spend the rest of his career playing in a basketball backwater. Maurice Lucas was a brooding physical presence. Nicknamed, the Enforcer, he was an enormously powerful man with exceptional quickness and skill for his size. An all-NBA player, he should have been an asset to every team he was on. But his career never quite reached the same heights as it did in his first year in the NBA, 1976-77.
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