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No football player will ever be as important to his team as a star basketball player is to his

When considering the "best basketball player of all time", I can think of a few players from the 1980s like Bird and Johnson, and some from earlier days, like West, Cousy and Robertson, who were among the best when basketball was a team game, not 5 guys either slam dunking or shooting from 30' out.

Really? How about the year that Payton Manning was hurt for the Colts, and they went from Super Bowl champs to 1st draft pick in one season. Same could be said for the Broncos after Elway retired, until Manning was there for a year or two, and look where they are now.

Or the 49ers dynasty after Steve Young's career was ended due to concussion. There's no question that Hall-of-Fame QBs can carry offenses long past their primes, but Manning's last playing season with the Colts before his Indy career ended with a neck injury wasn't a Super Bowl season - they exited in the wild-card round with a loss to the Jets. They were already a team on the decline. And for most of Manning's career, the argument was whether he was even the best QB in the AFC (as opposed to Tom Brady). If he wasn't even the unanimous best in his own sport, I don't see how he can be in the running for best athlete.

By contrast, no one questions LeBron James' dominance of the NBA for the past decade - having him on a team meant that team could be inked in for the NBA Finals for the better part of a decade - his Miami and Cleveland teams made the Finals for eight straight years. Both teams collapsed the moment he left them.