Athletes Who Changed Their Sports

Just a small post, thinking about athletes that changed their sports’ modern natures on what seems to me a permanent basis–so I don’t have Wilt listed and all the changes to basketball’s rules put in place because of him alone. I’ve defined modern as the past 20-30 years.

• Steph Curry – While the 3-pt shot has been around 40 years, it was really Curry who changed it from a secondary threat to a primary scoring option that changed the pace of the game, how defense is played, AND led to almost every player being able to hit 25%+ from beyond the arc. (See also: James Harden)

• Caitlin Clark – It isn’t her MJ Killer Attitude or her Curry-like range…it’s that she’s single-handedly put women’s basketball on the media map.

• Shohei Otani – For the first time in 100 years, someone who can hit AND pitch on a daily basis and dominate in either aspect of the game and then hit well-enough he can be an MVP without even playing the field.

• Patrick Mahomes – While there are other NFL QBs who scramble and improvise, Mahomes made it ok to throw sidearm and unconventionally in general–enough that now a growing majority of QBs do likewise.

• Tiger Woods – Woods massively increased golf’s popularity (by making it okay for non-white people to play regardless of personal wealth) but within the game, he’s really the first golfer to weightlift and take conditioning seriously. Now? Almost every great golfer does those things.

• Venus/Serena Williams – Much like Woods, they opened a sport to greater minority participation and did it through athleticism and conditioning. They were the first women tennis players to go beyond just being in ‘tennis-shape’ and using training to optimize their strength and stamina and extend careers.

• Wayne Gretzky – So good at scoring, a defense was created to slow him by using the rulebook…it didn’t stop The Great One but it stopped almost everyone else, so that they changed the rules of the game and ditched the red line.

• Wilt Chamberlain – The NCAA banned dunking and widened the lane. As a kid, I remember old grade-school level gyms that STILL had the narrow lanes (which made it more obvious why basketball has ‘the top of the key’)

I thought about adding Flo Hyman to this list but am putting her here instead. She changed volleyball but more from a societal standpoint than from changing the game itself. Without her, you don’t get the Odens, Danielle Scott on up through Foluke Atinuke and Chiaka Ogbogu, so insanely important on a level different than this post.