LeBron James is the GOAT only if history is discarded

OPINION:

As LeBron James continues to turn in remarkable performances in the NBA playoffs, the debate about who is the greatest basketball player of all time has heated up as well. It may now be the most-contested dispute in the arena of sports argument — replacing whether or not Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

And, as the debate gets louder and more argumentative, so does the seemingly willful ignorance of those who engage in this particular battle, with participants boiling the question down to a two-man race: Has LeBron James wrested the “greatest of all-time” crown from Michael Jordan?

But you can’t make that assumption — the idea that it’s either James or Jordan — unless you ignore all the inconvenient history and those pesky stats that don’t fit your narrative.

Arguing that either Jordan or LeBron is the greatest without acknowledging the existence of either Wilt Chamberlain or Bill Russell? May as well argue the world flat.

Kyrie Irving is indeed a spokesman for his generation.

As evidence, I present exhibit A — an ESPN.com article headlined “LeBron or MJ – How the King is settling the GOAT debate.”

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This is what happens when a so-called sports news organization cuts loose their longtime veteran reporters because they cost too much. You get analysis like this:

“When Michael Jordan made his final shot for the Chicago Bulls 20 years ago next month, that question was easy to answer. While cases could be made for Bill Russell based on championship rings, Wilt Chamberlain on statistical dominance and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on longevity, the consensus was clear: Jordan was the greatest basketball player who had ever lived.”

Clear? As clear as a photo of a flat earth, perhaps.

Consider that opening paragraph for a moment. Yes, Bill Russell has all those pesky championships, and Wilt Chamberlain has all those misleading statistics that dwarf everyone else who has ever stepped on the basketball court. But the consensus basically chose to ignore all that because — well, simply because they believe otherwise.

And then what does the writer do? After acknowledging that Russell’s championships may appear to make him the best of all time, or perhaps Chamberlain’s numbers, the writer then chooses to dismiss them as if they shouldn’t be taken seriously since, of course, they happened before ESPN was born — and then makes his own case using statistics and championships as part of some invented formula he came up with to determine greatness.

There are always variables to argue in comparisons of players from different eras that you can use to support your own personal biases. But you can’t simply ignore what happened in sports simply because it happened before you were born.

There is a consensus that Jim Brown was the greatest football player of all time, yet Brown’s accomplishments came before the Super Bowl era. There is a consensus that Babe Ruth may have been the greatest baseball player of all time, and Ruth’s achievements came nearly a century ago.

Yet Russell and Chamberlain’s accomplishments are disregarded.

You can’t argue that Jordan’s six NBA titles makes him greater than LeBron and then chose to ignore Russell’s 11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics from 1956 to 1969 (in addition to two national championships in college at the University of San Francisco and one Olympic gold medal).

You can’t argue that James’ pure physical dominance and statistics make him greater than Jordan and then chose to ignore perhaps the most physically dominant athlete we’ve ever seen in Chamberlain.

Consider this: Chamberlain averaged 30 points and 23 rebounds a game over his career from 1959 to 1973. Those are the numbers he “averaged” every time he stepped on the court — the only player to ever have done this. He has his own NBA record book — single-game scoring record (100); highest single-season scoring average (50.4); highest single-season rebounding average (27.2), and on and on.

When you take a moment to examine what Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain accomplished, it really does seem as if arguing if Jordan or James was the greatest is like claiming the world is flat.

⦁ Thom Loverro’s “Cigars & Curveballs” podcast is available Wednesdays on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.