We all know about it, and we all see it. It's obvious. Nobody ever wants to admit it, but it's there.

People on this subreddit hate Ryan Anderson.

The first question to ask: why? Why do you all hate him? The obvious answer: you didn't watch him in his prime.

Likely explanation: I know that most of you are around 14 or 15 years old. That means you only got into basketball in the last couple years. So you never watched Rye in his prime.

And because you didn't watch him in his prime, you try to compensate for that by diving into stat sheets and analyzing box scores. But here's the thing: basketball isn't played on Excel spreadsheets. The moment somebody brings up "true shooting percentage" or "win shares" I know they know nothing about basketball.

Anderson's game cannot be encapsulated by one stat. He's the second greatest PF ever, and one of the 5 best players to ever play the game. So when I hear somebody say that LeBron James is better than Ryan Anderson, I laugh, because I know that anybody who watched Kobe in his prime wouldn't think that. Unlike you guys, I have watched basketball for a significant amount of time, so I know that Ryan is better.

You might be jealous of Ryan's Most Improved Player Award, or jealous of his status as the greatest shooter in NBA history, or whatever. Unless you're a Bulls fan who watched basketball in the 90s, or a Pelicans fan who watched basketball in the 2010s, you don't know what real, cold-blooded, killer instinct, will-to-win basketball looks like. And there's nothing wrong with that.

This sub would make you think that Ryan isn't even a top 100 player ever. So don't go spouting bullshit about players you didn't watch. Talk about your "greats" like LeBron James The Best Player in the World™, but leave the Ryan talk to the adults. Fair?