LeBron James just led the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA championship, his fourth victory with three different teams. He’s the league’s third all-time scorer and ranks eighth in career assists. No one has won more NBA playoff games than LeBron James.
But according to most, he’s still not the greatest of all time.
It has become the most common debate on sports talk radio and television: Who is the greatest of all time — or the G.O.A.T., in the parlance of the times?
While Kobe Bryant, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar get honorable mentions, the conversation has really been whittled down to two: Michael Jordan, the cultural king of the 1990s, and LeBron James, the face of the modern NBA.
If you follow only ESPN or talk radio debates, you would think the question is close — or that LeBron was widely considered the best. But most normal fans don’t see it that way. An ESPN poll of NBA fans chose “His Airness” in every single category, from scoring and defense to fashion and sneakers, even among younger fans.
Yes, Jordan has won more titles (6 out of 6 trips to the finals, compared to LeBron’s 4 out of 10) — an advantage in championships that pushes him over the top. As ESPN’s The Last Dance showed, Jordan had a vice grip on the culture of the ’90s. With an air of invincibility, Jordan went to and won the title every single year in his prime (with a brief baseball break in between).
LeBron hasn’t owned the culture in the same way. Kobe Bryant laid claim to the league at the beginning of LeBron’s career, while other interruptions have popped up, such as the gripping Golden State Warriors. While Jordan is clearly the most popular U.S. athlete of his era, LeBron has had to contend with Kobe and the NFL’s Tom Brady.
Is LeBron’s standing in the conversation simply buoyed by the media’s desire to find something to talk about? Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is fans being caught up in the moment, watching one of the greatest to ever play and elevating him to the best because of the dreaded recency bias.
Whatever it is, most fans appear not to agree. LeBron is certainly an all-time great, but most fans would rather be like Mike.
