Best Line in the History of Basketball
If you love the language of sports, this is for you
The funniest guy I know is a former college basketball player named Chris Barber who is, like me, from a small town in Tennessee.
Quick quips bonded our friendship, and one of his lines — delivered years ago in a pickup basketball game — has had real staying power for me:
“Ran out of talent.”
During NBA games, the line comes to mind anytime I see a player try a move he can’t finish. The bigger the gap between intention and execution, the funnier it is:
Whoops! He ran out of talent. 😂
NBA swingman Corey Brewer — another guy from a small Tennessee town (the very town in which my father-in-law grew up1) — brought that line to the wider basketball world via an ESPN feature on legendary coach Mike D’Antoni, written by Tim Keown:
[T]here's nothing D'Antoni loves more than a good story, which is why ex-Rocket Corey Brewer will forever have a place in D'Antoni lore. Early this season, Brewer, who was traded to the Lakers in late February, took a pass on the baseline, drove, spun, shook two defenders with a 360 and missed a point-blank shot at the rim. "Coach, I did my thing," he told D'Antoni, "but then I got to the rim and just ran out of talent."
"Ran out of talent," D'Antoni repeats. "Best line in the history of basketball."
I love it. What better line to capture the essence of sports — particularly athletic ambition — in four words?
One of the things I’m doing at 🏀 5x5 is looking at how we talk about basketball — all the funny and serious ways we connect with the game.
Forgive this obsession of mine, but I am a lapsed PhD candidate in Rhetorical Studies who dropped out of school to publish an online magazine.
So, at the risk of running out of talent myself, I decided to try to figure out where the line came from. And the journey has been a lot richer than expected, from Grantland Rice to NASCAR to LeBron James.
Here goes … hope you enjoy.
Grantland Rice says Yankees ‘ran out of talent’
Let’s go back 107 years2 to Grantland Rice:3
Rice’s 1916 reference to a team’s collective talent is the way “ran out of talent” would be used on sports pages for several decades by both writers and coaches.4
It lacks the comedic edge of more recent references to “ran out of talent,”5 but, hey, Grantland Rice is no Corey Brewer.
The helicopter mechanic who ‘ran out of talent’
Did a Marine commander come up with this line on his own in 1969?
Probably not. It was probably in circulation in his world.
But if we want to note the first printed usage that matches the way Brewer meant it, we might have to credit Col. John V. Hanes in ‘69.
Racers run out of talent, too
This is an NBA site, so I’d like to report that basketball is where “ran out of talent” matters most.
But no, it’s racing.
Popular stock car racer and commentator Buddy Baker is often credited, as in this article on the best quotes in NASCAR history. Baker’s dozen: “He ran out of talent about halfway through the corner."
But as early as the 1940s, references to cars and/or their drivers running out of talent can be found,6 and there have been hundreds of similar references since.
K. Lee Davis, the former motorsports editor at ESPN.com, tells me the phrase still comes up pretty often, especially when older drivers are knocking younger drivers who engage in dangerous maneuvers beyond their ability.
And it’s not just auto racing:
It also pops up in horse racing: “Parisella’s horse ran out of talent at the eighth pole …” (Philadelphia Daily News, April 1, 1985).
And if you want to go deep into rc racing (radio-controlled car racing), you can check out the “Ran Out of Talent” podcast.
LeBron: Cavs ‘ran out of talent’
Leave it to LeBron James to find a way to pull together many of the ways that athletes and writers use “ran out of talent.”
When his Cleveland Cavaliers lost the 2015 NBA Finals to Golden State, LeBron lamented: “We ran out of talent tonight. We gave everything we had. The guys played as hard as they could as long as we could.”
In a sentence or three, LeBron found a way to tacitly credit the Warriors for their first championship of the Steph Curry era, talk about the Cavs’ lack of collective talent a la Grantland Rice (in the wake of key injuries to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love), and acknowledge the Cavs’ shortcomings a la Corey Brewer. Now that’s talent.
To LeBron’s and the Cavs’ credit, a year later they upset the 73-win Warriors, who themselves ran out of talent in Game 7 and immediately recruited Kevin Durant to ensure talent wouldn’t be an issue again anytime soon.
So that’s it.
I tried to come up with a clever way to conclude this piece. But instead I got over my skis, flew too close to the sun, outpunted the coverage, and bit off more than I could chew.
Sorry about that!
Portland, TN, a landlocked town near Nashville that would require some serious tectonic plate movement to become a “port.”
I found a snarky 19th-century reference — in an obituary! — to an artist whose “talent ran out.” So, if you want, you can go back 125 years and credit the “best line in the history of basketball” to an unsigned obit in The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) from March 19, 1898.
The namesake of ESPN’s late, lamented site Grantland, founded by Bill Simmons and the former writing home of Zach Lowe.
The first such usage actually appears to be in The San Francisco Call on November 03, 1907, referring to a boxing manager who “ran out of available talent” (i.e. fighters).
One reason for this is that it is likely that the roster proposal was connected to World War I, which had begun two years earlier and would soon see the United States join. Although I found no other evidence of the Yankees’ proposal, World War I and World War II each forced the expansion of baseball rosters.
Including a reference in Hot Rod magazine.
Well researched, well written, and entertaining as hell. Good take! Good finish!
Hey, Royce! I loved “ran out of talent” so much I featured it as the Story of the Week in my little newsletter: https://cornysports.substack.com/p/be-thankful-for-your-health
Thanks, brother!