Only the next generation can properly judge.
Once LeBron James beat the 73-win Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals (with help from the rest of the Cleveland Cavaliers, of course), the murmurs became audible. What had only ever been projection or a hot take kept to a whisper for fear of backlash began to be openly discussed by reasonable people.
Has LeBron James passed Michael Jordan to become the greatest basketball player of all time?
Many aficionados will still laugh you out of the discourse for claiming that LeBron is now the G.O.A.T., but it has become a more open debate in a way it never has for any player since MJ’s retirement. This isn’t to say that LeBron has reached Jordan status — we’ll get to that — but he is the first player since Jordan to legitimately enter the conversation.
Players who preceded MJ remain in the conversation. Some suggest Bill Russell. A few bring Wilt Chamberlain to the table. I’ll offer up Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Others may make a case for Oscar Robertson and the Bird/Magic era have their devotees, as well. The general consensus for G.O.A.T. status through Jordan’s era is firmly Jordan.
LeBron is challenging that.
The problem is that while this generation of sportswriters, fans, players, and TV personalities is having the debate, we will not decide the debate. That’s for basketball’s next generation, and they’ll do it once LeBron’s career is actually over; not while he’s still competing for championships.
We can argue about whether Jordan’s six rings in six Finals are more impressive than LeBron’s seven (and counting) straight conference titles. We can debate the value of LeBron’s superior rebounding, shot-blocking, and passing vs. Jordan’s preternatural scoring ability. We can quibble about clutch shooting, assessing new standards to old data, and diving deep into the semantics of what actually constitutes crunch time. We can meme Crying Jordan and Cramped LeBron and everything in between.
But we cannot rule on this debate definitively. It’s not our debate to decide.
The G.O.A.T. is not settled in a moment frozen in time, and certainly not within the active playing career of one of the options. Being the G.O.A.T. isn’t solely about performance. It’s about cultural impact. It’s about how basketball changes in response to style and weapons of the G.O.A.T.
Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck wrote an incredible piece documenting the era of the Next Jordans. It’s a fascinating exploration of how the long shadow of MJ covered a generation of score-first shooting guards. Most failed to achieve even a small percentage of what Jordan had. Kobe Bryant got closer, but still fell short.
The mere fact that Kobe, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill, Jerry Stackhouse, and others were thrust into the center of the NBA spoke to the enormity of Jordan’s legacy. There was a Kobe because there was a Jordan. And Kobe, in his own greatness crawling from out of MJ’s shadow, begat his own generation of players, like DeMar DeRozan, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook. (And on the lineage goes ...)
We haven’t seen the crop of Next LeBrons yet. It’s possible that there are no Next LeBrons. He’s a total physical anomaly with a set of skills no human should possess.
If Jordan was the natural, perfect basketball scorer taken to its logical end (with elite defense and playmaking thrown in for good measure), LeBron is more of a lucid dream come to life. LeBron grew up watching Jordan, but took his stylistic cues from Bird and Magic. His size affected who he became. That will affect who follows his style and carries his torch on the court in the coming decade, as well.
Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ben Simmons are mentioned as the heirs to LeBron. Giannis is becoming his own archetype already, and Simmons hasn’t played an NBA minute. We don’t know how LeBron will lead to NBA evolution beyond LeBron because we remain under the reign of LeBron.
Evolution in nature is a slow, generational process. It happens faster in sport ... but not this fast. We need time to see how LeBron affects the style of play and player once he’s gone.
That will help determine how LeBron is summoned into conversation, how he is referenced by the next generation of fans and analysts. That will help set the contours of how LeBron is remembered through his disciples, much as Jordan’s legend is kept aloft by the failure of any heirs to live up to his stature.
If in the next generation of big, powerful, ultra-skilled athletes no one lives up to LeBron’s standard, we will appreciate him all the more. But we can’t know yet. We need to see it all play out.
It’s not just the next generation we need to see play out to know if LeBron has topped Jordan. It’s the current, ongoing LeBron era. All data matters, and what King James does in these 2017 NBA Finals and next season and beyond all counts. LeBron hasn’t even reached his closing arguments yet. His case is still being actively prosecuted. The jury is young and won’t have a verdict for some time.
Until that verdict comes in, and perhaps after as well, Jordan remains the consensus G.O.A.T. That doesn’t mean he’s the only right answer — there need not be unanimity of opinion for there to be a consensus choice — but he is the most widely accepted answer to the question.
Someday, LeBron may replace him. Arguing it now sets the tone of the debate to come and passes time, but nothing will be definitive until we escape this moment and give the next generation of fans room to assess the full picture.