Instances when a great individual performance has not been backed up by the team.

[Hulk Hogan's Brother]

It happens all the times to the best of sportspersons playing a team sport. He goes out on the park and give a great performance but the rest of the team is unable to perform well and the team succumbs to a defeat. That is one of the most maddening things to happen to any sports person as his great performance goes unrewarded and any fan of that particular team.

So I want you to list down those instances when an individual sportsperson performed exceedingly well for his team but the rest of the team were unable to back up his fantastic performances.

My first instance is from Test Cricket and it is the first test between India and Pakistan at Chennai in January 1999. In the fourth innings of the match India were set a target of 271 and soon lost half their side with less than a hundred runs on the board. Their batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar battled extreme back pain to play a classy innings of 136 against a world class bowling unit but was out with the required target within touching distance. The rest of the Indian team could not get the job done and India lost the Test Match by 12 runs.

My second instance is that of a Davis Cup Tennis match between Russia and Switzerland in 2002. Roger Federer representing New Zealand won his two singles matches in straight sets but those were the only two victories for the Swiss team as Michel Kratolvich lost both his singles matches and the team of Roger Federer and Marc Rossert went down in doubles as the Swiss team lost the match 3-2.

You can talk about such performances from any sport be it American or International. So lets start discussing!

 

[Davi323]

ummm, about 9/10ths of Barry Sanders' career can be described by the words "great individual performance not backed up by the team". Really, can any athlete better sum up this concept than Barry? He was a human highlight reel, surrounded by ineptitude most of the time.

 

[I Suck Ass]

1 player that came to mind instantly was Kevin Garnett when he was with the Timberwolves. Year after year, he worked his butt off, and only got to the playoffs once (not sure on that). He was a great player then, and he is a great player now.

 

[WindyCityWreckingCrew]

This immediately brought to mind Pedro Martinez.

I had to google it, but in 1995 Pedro Martinez actually threw 9 innings of perfect baseball while his team - the Expos - scored nothing.

The Expos were at home, and finally scored in the top of the 10th. The 28th batter Pedro faced got a double. They yanked him and won the game.

There's only been 18 perfect games since 1900(19 if you count the one the ump blew this past summer). Pedro could've gotten one, but his team absolutely failed him.

 

[Big Sexy]

ummm, about 9/10ths of Barry Sanders' career can be described by the words "great individual performance not backed up by the team". Really, can any athlete better sum up this concept than Barry? He was a human highlight reel, surrounded by ineptitude most of the time.

This x1000000. Barry Sanders for his entire career was surrounded by average teams. He is the greatest running back in NFL history yet doesn't always get the recognition he deserves because of the teams he played on.

1 player that came to mind instantly was Kevin Garnett when he was with the Timberwolves. Year after year, he worked his butt off, and only got to the playoffs once (not sure on that). He was a great player then, and he is a great player now.

Kevin Garnett made it to the playoffs 8 times while in Minnesota.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I am going to look at the English Premier League for 2 examples of this.

Alan Shearer is the only man in premier league history to score more than 200 goals. He became the all-time highest scorer for Newcastle Utd, his hometown team where he was an idol to the fans. For around 10 years, Shearer was consistently banging the goals in and playing at a level far above those around him. The team simply let him down, and he eventually retired without having won a single trophy with the team.

Another example is Steven Gerrard. Time and again the Liverpool captain dragged his under-performing team back from the jaws of defeat, leading them to trophies. However, he could not always do it by himself, as some of his team mates were so poor. If Gerrard didnt put out a superb performance, the team didn't win. Never has a top-4 Premier league side been such a 1 man team. It must still drive Gerrard to despair how much he does for the team and how little his team mates back him up. He is likely to be another who will never win the league title unless he leaves his hometown club.

 

[Megatron]

Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XLII. Yes, he had the momentum-changing pick-6 thrown to James Harrison, but other then that, he was RIDICULOUS. With absolutely NO running game (an over the hill Edgerrin James had 9 carries for 33 yards) Warner lead the Cards to a 16 point 4th quarter and were 2 minutes away from being Super Bowl champions, only for the poor defense to let Big Ben go right down the field and score the game winner with less than 40 seconds left.

With absolutely no running game and a porous defense (which was 28th in points allowed) Warner had the 2nd most passing yards in a Super Bowl (behind his own), a 72 completion percentage, and was responsible for all 3 touchdowns. He got the Cards within 2 and a half minutes of becoming the most unlikely champions ever. And had they won, I think people would have thought of this game as one of the top 5 best QB performances ever in a Super Bowl.

 

[CleverName51]

I'm going to go with another football example:

Dan Marino: he owned many NFL records, some now broken, but because the Dolphins had no defence, he never won a Super Bowl

 

[ROCKY VS CENA OMG]

Golden Tate
In his final year at Notre Dame Golden Tate carried ND and had the best WR season at ND. 93 catches 1496 yds and 15 tds he won the biletnikoff award for the best WR in the country. Had ND had a defense or a running game that year they would have won 10-11 games. They only won 6 and Golden showed up every game and delivered every game.

 

[ITurnGirlsGay]

Aside from the obvious answer of Barry Sanders, I'm curious as to what the criteria for this thread is.

People have mentioned names like Marino, Garnett, Federer, and Golden Tate. Here's my problem with those.

Marino was on good teams. Really good teams, actually. They just couldn't get the job done. I would absolutely disagree that nobody else on those teams showed up and Marino merely carried them. He reached the post season 10 times with the Dolphins including a Super Bowl where he was beaten by Joe Montana. Clayton and Duper were both really good players. Maybe not by today's receiving standards, but they were all-pro in their days. They also had the Killer B's defense.

Garnett: He had really good teams around him, but the T-Wolves had a series of disasters that prevented them from being great. Front office ineptitude cause the Joe Smith acquisition to be ruled illegal. This wound up costing the T-Wolves 3 first round picks. Sealy was killed by a drunk driver. Cassell kept getting injured, etc...As Big Sexy mentioned, he made the playoffs 8 times with the T-Wolves.

Federer: This one is sort of odd to me because Tennis isn't a team sport. You can bring up doubles matches all you want, but the best doubles players in the world are people who have been playing together their whole lives. Federer is and always has been a singles competitor. I think the Davis Cup is sort of a stupid team sport, because the team concept isn't there. It's like the Ryder Cup. You grab the best singles players you possibly can and hope they win their match-ups. The difference between the Davis Cup and the Ryder Cup, however, is that the Davis Cup is by country. So, if Sweden doesn't have a great crop of singles players, they're not going to win.

Golden Tate: He was just a good receiver. His numbers aren't actually all that good for a collegiate wide receiver. He had a good season and an above average season, but you're making it sound as if he was Cam Newton out there and Notre Dame lost in-spite of him.