LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan.
The easiest way to start a heated debate among NBA fans is to ask who is the Greatest of All Time, the GOAT, LeBron or MJ. This debate usually breaks down along generational lines, but that changed on today’s episode of Run It Back on FanDuel TV, where guest Isiah Thomas called out co-hosts Michelle Beadle, DeMarcus Cousins, and Chandler Parsons.
“I know we talk about Jordan, but he leads in no statistical basketball category. But yet there’s an argument about him being the best. But then you look at Kareem and you look at LeBron, those guys lead in several statistical categories. But yet we say somebody else is better and I’m just giving you the evidence…
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“This is what I don’t understand about your era. You guys are playing with arguably the greatest player to ever play, and excuse me when I say this, but y’all treat him like he’s nothing,” Thomas said. “Instead of pumping your era up, y’all go back and say our era was the greatest. You know, ‘Michael Jordan was the greatest, nobody could ever be greater than Michael Jordan,’ right? Ok, and then you turn around, and in your era, LeBron James is sitting there holding every single basketball record. I mean, every single one of them. And, you’re looking at a Kevin Durant and you’re looking at a Steph Curry, but then when y’all talk about the greatest, y’all talk about the guy that gave you some shoes.”
The shoe thing is a great dig because it has enough truth to sting. Also, shout out to Thomas for mentioning Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who is constantly cut out of a debate he deserves to be in the middle of.
It should be noted that Thomas has a history with Jordan. Thomas and the Bad Boy Pistons invented the “Jordan Rules” and had many physical and emotional battles with Jordan’s Bulls in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those Pistons were the better team in the late 1980s, keeping Jordan and the Bulls out of the Finals and forcing them to improve to reach their peak (one GOAT argument for Jordan, that he never lost in the Finals, falls apart because of the Pistons — Jordan wasn’t good enough to get his team to the Finals until the Pistons faded a little, saving him some of the Finals losses LeBron had lifting lesser teams to the biggest stage).
