Quote:
Originally posted by Oz Referee
3. Regardless of whether the NBA is the strongest competition in the world or not, the NBA Champions are NOT World Champions. By definition World Champions are those that have defeated teams that represent other nations.
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Maybe I'm taking myself a little too seriously
but exactly which definition might you be citing here? Where is it written that a World Champion must defeat teams that represent other nations?
Suppose no other nation fields a team that participates in a certain sport. Then wouldn't the champion of whatever nation holds the competition be considered the World Champion? This would be the situation in the earliest days of baseball when the "World Series" was born. The winner was the World Champion simply b/c there were no other participants.
Or again, suppose that they come up with a format for the World Championships that pits the NBA Champions against the Olympic champions (and just for the illustration, suppose that the Toronto Raptors don't exist). The Lakers win the NBA playoffs and the US team wins the Olympics. The Lakers beat up on the Olympic team. Wouldn't the Lakers then be entitled to call themselves World Champions, even tho they never played a team from a foreign country?
I agree that in our day and age, it may be presumptuous to refer to any American champion as the "World Champion". However, it's not wrong "by definition" as you claim.
Remember, I stuck up for you earlier in this thread!!!
Chuck
[Edited by ChuckElias on May 5th, 2002 at 06:33 PM]