Throughout the course of history, pundits, analysts, fans, players, and the media have gone back-and-forth on the never-ending debate of the greatest player of all time.
Michael Jordan was the obvious choice two decades ago but that distinction has kind of changed as the years go by, not because players have done something better to him but because the new wave of fans has witnessed other guys do history.
That’s why Los Angeles Lakers guard Alex Caruso even changed his mind, as he thought Michael Jordan was the greatest to ever do it until he saw prime LeBron James dominating the league, as he told JJ Redick in his Podcast ‘The Old Man and the Tree’:
“When I grew up, I had this fascination with highlights and I was a huge Michael Jordan fan… I’ve never seen full games or see him play in person, all you get are these highlights, you’ve got game winners, you just got them locking people up, you got them dunking. In my head, I’m like, he does it all and this is like the best dude to ever do it,” Caruso said.
“And then LeBron comes in like 2003 and we start watching him and then I get older and I start realizing more about basketball… I don’t know when it changed but there was somewhere around the year six-seven-eight for Lebron, when I was like this dude’s got to be the best basketball player to ever play. There is nobody that can do what he’s doing and then he did it for another 10 years,” the guard concluded.
Truth be told, there’s not a point in engaging in this debate anymore. You can like one player better, even if you don’t feel like he was superior to another.
Also, basketball has come a long way since its dawn and we can’t compare players from different eras, with different rules, and different contexts.
