Bill Belichick and the Eagles (remember that?), LeBron and Wilt, and other thoughts

First and final thoughts …

Imagine if Bill Belichick were the Eagles’ head coach.

It’s easy to cast that possibility out of mind now, to stick your index fingers in your ears and say, “La la la la” very loudly and fire up YouTube to watch the highlights of Super Bowl LIX for the 400th time since early February. But it was a possibility in January 2024, back when the Eagles had embarrassed themselves in a playoff game in Tampa, when Nick Sirianni was clinging to his job, and when Jeffrey Lurie was weighing what to do about a team that had lost six of its previous seven games and was emitting bad vibes even before that collapse.

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Turning the franchise over to Belichick would have been wild enough, and make no mistake, that’s what it would have been. Hiring him would have required a near-total relinquishing of control and direction — perhaps not immediately, but eventually. And as much respect as Lurie and Howie Roseman have for Belichick, they weren’t ready to acquiesce to the reality of life with Belichick: You do things his way, and if you’re not prepared to do that, you shouldn’t consider hiring him in the first place.

Lately, though, it appears that bringing The Hoodie on board means taking orders not from him but from his girlfriend and manager, Jordon Hudson. Belichick is 73. Hudson is 24. It’s quite a pairing, on multiple levels.

She’s interrupting interviews and demanding that she be consulted and involved in just about everything he does at the University of North Carolina. And he’s behaving in ways that once would have been unthinkable for him, including hoisting her into the air, as if she were Jennifer Grey and he were Patrick Swayze, for all of social media to see. Her presence and influence have transformed Belichick from maybe the best esteemed and accomplished coach in his sport to the subject of speculation and concern and mockery.

North Carolina so far is more than willing to tolerate all this weirdness, this apparent late-life crisis from Belichick. The university has rarely excelled in football and its leaders want it to excel in football so it can make the kind of money that a university can make only by excelling in football. NFL franchises generally try to minimize such “distractions,” and given that the New England Patriots were 29-38 over Belichick’s final four Brady-less seasons with them, there was no assurance that hiring Belichick would effect some great turnaround.

The Eagles probably would have had to go 18-3 and win a championship to make it worth it for Lurie to put up with this new Belichick, with a disastrous book tour and the daily talk-show discussion. This much is certain: The understandable complaints back in October about Sirianni jawing at fans and bringing his children to a postgame news conference now feel quaint compared with this alternative.

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Ed Van Impe won two Stanley Cups as one of the soundest defensemen the Flyers have ever had, and he spent five years alongside Gene Hart and Bobby Taylor in the early 1980s as an excellent broadcast analyst. He also delivered, and will be most remembered for, the most devastating and important bodycheck in hockey history, leveling Valeri Kharlamov on Jan. 11, 1976, setting the stage for the Soviet Red Army’s infamous boycott attempt and a 4-1 Flyers victory that certified they were the best team in the world. He died Tuesday at 84. RIP.

Now that LeBron James has completed his 22nd NBA season, it might be time to use a new point of comparison for him. Whenever a “Who’s the greatest player of all time” debate breaks out, James is often held up against Michael Jordan, and Jordan’s six NBA championships (with no losses in the Finals) serve as a kind of trump card. And the longer James keeps on piling up individual statistical records without winning another title, the more he resembles another all-timer who predated him.

LeBron: 22 years, 10 NBA Finals appearances, four NBA championships.

Wilt Chamberlain: 14 years, six NBA Finals appearances, two NBA championships.

Proportionally, their careers are pretty similar. If Chamberlain, whose name comes up in these discussions usually in an oh-by-the-way nod, is going to be judged so harshly for failing to win more frequently, then James should be evaluated by that same standard.