Common sports narratives that aren't true (or are greatly exaggerated)

LeBron's hype coming into the NBA is overrated.

Looking at preseason odds of winning Rookie of the Year:

KD (#2 pick) was -200 (1st in RotY voting)

Wemby (#1 pick) was -145 (1st in RotY voting)

Wall (#1 pick) was +120 (2nd in RotY voting)
Blake (#1 pick) was +120 (1st in RotY voting)

Beasley (#2 pick) was +150 (7th in RotY voting)
LeBron (#1 pick) was +150 (1st in RotY voting)
 
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LeBron's hype coming into the NBA is overrated.

Looking at preseason odds of winning Rookie of the Year:

KD (#2 pick) was -200 (1st in RotY voting)

Wemby (#1 pick) was -145 (1st in RotY voting)

Wall (#1 pick) was +120 (2nd in RotY voting)
Blake (#1 pick) was +120 (1st in RotY voting)

Beasley (#2 pick) was +150 (7th in RotY voting)
LeBron (#1 pick) was +150 (1st in RotY voting)
Case #4,272,321,895 for why the internet makes some people retarded.
 
The big lie that growing up in poverty makes your tougher and more likely to succeed in mma or any other sport.

Meanwhile high school sports, college sports, and combat sports are being dominated by rich and upper middle class athletes whose parents spent massive amounts of money over years on club teams, private coaching, and travel expenses for competitions from a very young age.

Example: High school Hockey is gentrified to Hell and back right now.
Can confirm. Just getting your kid on a high school soccer team takes years of youth soccer. My kid was one of the only ones that didn't play on a traveling team, the only starter. On the other hand, I coached rec league soccer for 11 years and it was something we did together. It was a way for our building trust.

It's just like with the good universities and academics. If your parents can pay for various tutors and extra support chances are the kids will do better and get in to a better school.
 
Case #4,272,321,895 for why the internet makes some people retarded.

Obviously LeBron's draft class was considered unusually deep, and he was younger than most of his classmates, but he was still like 6 months older than Darko, who went 2nd, and only like 6 months younger than Melo, who went 3rd.

LeBron and Wemby both made their NBA regular season debut on ESPN, on the opening Wednesday of the season. LeBron averaged 3.03m viewers and Wemby averaged 2.99m; rounding to the nearest whole number, that's 99% of LeBron. In other words, their hype was practically equal.

Also, here's some GoogleTrends data from 2004. Bearing in mind, Phelps, Ronaldo and Rooney are all younger than LeBron, while Torres is only like 9 months older. Plus, Google usage in the US is/was much higher than the global average.
 
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