Comparison silliness

 Look, of course you can't compare Pete Maravich and Caitlin Clark. The Pistol had cooler hair, for one thing.

And socks?

Please. Those grungy old gray floppies vs. Caitlin's neat, clean whites? Caitlin in a walk, as it were.

As to the rest of the silliness zipping around the interwhatchamacallit the last couple days ... well, it's been a regular misogynist's ball, not to say an interesting exercise in denial. Take all the folks (mostly men, of course) saying Pete is still the alltime leading scorer in NCAA Division I history, because you can't compare the men's game to the women's game, and Clark played x-more games and had the 3-point shot, besides, and blah-blah-blah, yadda-yadda-yadda.

"Yeah, but she's still scored more points," you're compelled to point out.

"That doesn't matter!" the deniers respond. 

Um, well, yeah it does. In fact it's the only thing that matters.

Everything else is just a poorly veiled attempt to run down Clark because she's a woman and Pete was a man and men are better than women at sports, they just are. You can dress it up any way you like, but that's the underlying sentiment.

What I'll say is this: For all the talk from the run-down-Clark set about how you can't compare the men's game to the women's game, they sure are doing a lot of comparing. 

Yes, Pistol Pete stacked up his points in only three years, because freshman eligibility wasn't a thing yet. And, no, he didn't have the 3-point shot, which undoubtedly would have plumped up his total.

But he also put up a gazillion more shots than Clark, because his coach, daddy Press, let him shoot whenever he felt like it. So he was jacking it 40, 50 times a game a lot of nights.

Also, in the 38 years since the introduction of the three to college buckets, no one, man or woman, managed to catch Pete.

Clark did. And on a lot fewer shots. And with, by the way, more assists.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with anything. It's merely pointing out that you can play the comparison game both ways if you're of a mind to. But the only one that matters is this: In different ways, Pete and Caitlin both lifted their respective games.

Pete gave the men's game genius level inventiveness it had never seen, and you could see its influence in every no-look pass Larry Bird or Magic Johnson threw or Nikola Jokic throws now. What they all did later, Pete did first.

And Caitlin?

She didn't make the women's game, but she's made it must-see viewing. And like Pete, she's done it by injecting something into the game heretofore unseen -- in her case, seemingly unlimited shooting range that expands the area teams will be compelled to defend from this day forward.

The improvisational pass and creative shot were what Pete bequeathed to his game. The logo three is what Caitlin has bequeathed to hers.

There's your comparison, if you're so bent on making one. Me, I'll stop right here: Pete Maravich was a hell of a basketball player, and so is Caitlin Clark.

What else matters?