The GOAT Debate is Actively Hurting the NBA and Sports Media
Reported By: Sam Erickson
Illustrated By: Sydney Simmons
It seems to be a pinnacle question for any conversation about basketball now: “Who do you think is the GOAT?” But this constant debate over who has become the Greatest of All Time (GOAT) has become exhausting and trivial in today’s sports media landscape.
The search for answers has led many to long, almost spiritual questions about basketball. The debate typically settles on LeBron James and Micheal Jordan, and after James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabar for the NBA’s scoring title yesterday, the debate is ramping up again.
It would be a tiresome and overdone act to walk through their careers, plumbing for similarities and differences. Even if you properly examine every relevant statistic, there is the inevitable guilt of forgetting the ‘intangibles.’
The cries of old heads everywhere as they scream, “Jordan never took a rest day! LeBron is a pansy!” followed by the angst of 24-year-old frat boys saying, “LeBron has played for twenty years! And he had to play against harder teams than Jordan!”
The truth? It doesn’t matter.
Across sports media, as it becomes increasingly popular, the need for content has driven us to a point where it is standard practice to compare players from past and present generations to determine who is superior. The hunt for profit drives the producers, and the emotions behind the debate drive the audience to the conversation.
The debate between LeBron and Jordan also highlights the underlying struggle between the nostalgia for sports in the past and the romanticization of sports in the present. Sports are a powerful unifier; they are events that so many have seen and the backbone of many Monday morning conversations (“What did you think of the game yesterday?”). Because of this, we want to put into words what sports mean to us, and what individual moments and players mean.
This dilutes our views. If you want Jordan to be the GOAT, then every time James does something, you will look for a way to twist it into something less impressive.
If you feel that James is superior, then whenever James breaks a new record or wins another game, you will celebrate it in hopes that it is finally enough to prove he is better than Jordan.
This constant comparison is damaging our enjoyment of our fandom. Answering this question forcibly removes the fan from their ability to just observe the game, and thrusts them into the trenches of argumentative conversation.
The best way to be a fan is by not comparing the two, but by enjoying them as a connected story. When I participated in the GOAT debate, one of my go-to arguments was that James wouldn’t have had the success as a wing without Jordan having success as a shooting guard first.
I argued that the NBA was center driven until Jordan’s generation and that LeBron wouldn’t have been allowed to shoot and extend the game the way he does now. (This argument could be made accurately about Jordan’s era changing this, but I was nine when I came up with this.)
This is the same logic I use now when I try to appreciate the whole NBA as a continued story. Without Jordan, there was no Kobe (as Kobe said himself); without Kobe, there is no James. I mean, for crying out loud, James wore 23 on his jersey for a significant portion of his career because of his love for Jordan.
Watching basketball during this debate also takes away from the fun. If my favorite player wins the finals and performs well, I want to be allowed to celebrate that. Instead, fans feel the compulsive need to compare every athlete. It is demoralizing. The debate needs to be finished. Maybe now that James has broken Kareem’s record, we will finally be able to stop talking about it.