YouTube Gold: The NBA Goat Question

The debate went on before Michael Jordan and it will go on for years after LeBron James retires. The question: who was the GOAT?

Or, in James’s case, is.

There are only a handful of realistic candidates: James, Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That’s about it.

We might argue Russell because his teams always won the last game: two national championships in college (and two undefeated seasons), Olympic gold and 11 NBA titles in 13 seasons and he was hurt in one of those two losing seasons.

Most people are going to argue Jordan and James though and that’s fine. Both of them are serious candidates.

But which?

In this video, Chris Broussard makes a strong argument for Jordan over James. He cites a lot of fairly specific reasons and we tend to agree with him.

However, we think there’s an easy way to get to the truth of it.

Imagine Jordan and James alone in a room. Would James have the nerve to say “Michael, I’m going to kick your ass?”

Of course not. He understands, as well as anyone, that Jordan was pathologically competitive and would find any angle to beat you.

And if Jordan said it to LeBron?

He’d just do it.