One of the longest-standing conversations/debates around professional sports is whether one athlete could transition to another sport and actually be good.
I’ve thought about this a lot watching the US get throttled in the World Cup and wondering if Allen Iverson could have been a great striker. Ditto with Barry Sanders and rugby, though I am happy he didn't make that choice.
We haven’t seen real two-sport athletes in a while and you’d have to go back to the days of Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders to find guys who made a big impact in two major professional sports.
There is a reason for that and we saw it when Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, tried to play pro baseball. He wasn’t the worst, but he was far from making any major-league level team.
Baseball players would have an even tougher time trying to go the other way, as NBA players are elite athletes, among the best in the world, and many of them happen to be physical giants the likes of which you don’t see in other sports.
The same would go for the NFL, whose players might be big compared to normal humans, but not when measuring against NBA players, which is why one NFL player’s recent claim is just silly.
Puka Nacua could not play for the Pistons
I haven’t watched the NFL in a LONG time, so to be honest, I have no idea who Puka Nacua is, but he’s got a great name and a quick look at the stats shows he’s a very good football player already.
He made the pro-bowl in his rookie season, so this dude is a good wide receiver, of that, there is no doubt, but Nacua also rates his basketball skills, saying he thinks he could play in the NBA, specifically mentioning the Pistons. Why does it always have to be the Pistons?
Puka Nacua if he played in the NBA
“I truly believe I could transition to play PG or SG. Like if we go to the Detroit Pistons if I know that’s where I’m going you’re gonna play me 15 minutes” pic.twitter.com/eOB3jBEDoV
— Pistons Talk (@Pistons__Talk) December 9, 2024
I get this was a bit tongue-and-cheek, and I have no idea of Nacua can play basketball. He’s a great athlete, so I am sure he’s probably good at just about every sport.
But good and “NBA good” are two very different things.
Nacua is big for a wide receiver and I am sure he can physically dominate a lot of corners, but he’s basically the size of Marcus Sasser, who is on the short end of the NBA height scale. It's funny that Sasser, who looks tiny in an NBA game, would tower over many NFL cornerbacks and safeties.
Height isn’t everything, but it helps, ask Sasser, who has to have an array of offensive moves and step backs just to get his shot off. You have to be extremely skilled when you are under 6-foot-5, which takes work and practice that Nacua has been putting in on the football field.
I am 100 percent biased towards the NBA, but feel it would be much easier for an NBA player to go the other way than to see an NFL player compete in the NBA.
There has been an exception to this, Charlie Ward, who won the Heisman in college and then had a successful NBA career, but he also played college basketball at a high level.
Ward was the same size as Nacua, so who knows, maybe he is right, but my guess is that Sasser, who is the 10th or 11th guy for the Pistons, would not be losing his spot to an NFL player.