You Tube Gold: Bob Knight Nails The GOAT Argument

As the Last Dance went on, reaching its conclusion Sunday night, the apparently endless question came up over and over again for many people: who was better, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? Who was the GOAT?

There’s a bit of a generational divide with people who don’t remember Jordan tending to argue for James.

We’ve said that Jordan and Bill Russell are the two greatest because Russell was the greatest winner in the history of team sports.

So we were intrigued to see this video interview of Bob Knight from 2017.

First, Knight emphatically dispenses with the idea that James is in Jordan’s league. And then he answers the Jordan/Russell question brilliantly, arguing that Jordan was the best player while Russell was the most valuable. And that’s hard to argue with, since he won the last game in every season he played in but two from 1955-1969 - and he was hurt in 1957 (the 76ers beat the Celtics in 1967).

That’s a very intelligent distinction between the three players.

He also says that Red Auerbach was the smartest person in the history of basketball which, again, is hard to argue with.