There will always be a debate about whether Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time or not. Younger fans tend to lean towards LeBron James or Kobe Bryant, while classic hoops fans won’t even engage in a debate about it. For them, no one sits at Michael Jordan’s table.
And, while that debate could be more subjective as the years go by and all of those players have more than enough accolades in their résumés to back up their case, it seems like former Celtics player and Croatia legend Dino Radja doesn’t want to hear anything about it.
Recently, the two-time FIBA European Cup champion gave his insight about the GOAT debate, claiming that he ‘vomits’ whenever people start putting LeBron James’ name ahead of Michael Jordan’s:
“When the comparisons between LeBron and Jordan start, I vomit. My son assures me that LeBron is better but for me, it’s not a discussion. If he had played twenty years ago, LeBron wouldn’t have been able to do even half of this. Today, when LeBron enters the paint, everyone moves away from him, but Jordan was getting beaten like no one and he still dominated. In front of LeBron were Kobe Bryant and some others. I respect LeBron but Kobe was better,” Radja said, as quoted by Essentially Sports.
Needless to say, him being an old-school hooper, it’s likely that his opinion is quite biased. At the end of the day, he’s by no means going to say that modern hoops are better if he played back in the day.
We’ll never know for sure whether LeBron could have dominated 40 years ago or not, so trying to engage in that debate doesn’t make much sense. I guess that the safest bet is to agree to disagree or at least divide the ‘GOAT’ distinction into different eras.
