Carol Butler has given his two pennies on who is the greatest basketball player of all time. The former wingman joined an AMA session with Bleacher Report where he got a lot of questions about current and old NBA-related topics. Obviously, he was asked about the GOAT debate and Butler had a very interesting answer to the never-ending debate.
“It depends. Just based off stats, Kareem. His longevity is impressive. After that, you shift to LeBron, Kobe, MJ, guys of that stature,” he replied.
Kareem played for 20 years in the league and he always did it at the maximum level with both the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers. He won six NBA titles, six MVPs, two Finals MVPs, earned 19 calls to the All-Star game among other accolades.
He only missed the All-Star game once during his career. Talk about longevity. The biggest thing about Kareem is that he learned how to be successful since he was young, racking up individual and collective awards since he was a teenager.
The rest of the players have had similar careers to KAJ, though; even Jordan was great when he was reaching the 40s, after two retirements and when people thought he was washed out. Kobe’s career went downhill after he picked up an injury in 2013, but he never stopped showing up flashes of his quality and his last game ever is the biggest proof of that.
If we talk about LeBron, he’s the most similar to Kareem. James is playing his 17th season in the league, at age 35 and is still the best player in the world.
However, not everybody had the same stats of KAJ playing the same years like him. That makes the difference for Butler.
