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Do you know what I love? When someone tries to tell me that a certain athlete is the greatest ever at their respective sport. I have to laugh, because there is no way for us to determine who is the best of all time. Sure, we can point to certain individuals and say, “that person is one of the best players I’ve ever seen.” Or in the case of someone like Lebron James: “That person is doing things that nobody has done before.” But we don’t know which one of them is actually the best. Every athlete has a different set of circumstances including his or her teammates, the competition they compete against, the era in which they play, the rules and regulations of that era and several others.
Allow me to provide a few examples of people who are commonly considered to be the “best ever,” and some counter-arguments for each of them.
Michael Jordan: Nobody in their right mind would disagree that MJ is one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but is he really better than every single other person that ever played the game? Maybe the answer is yes, but how can we ever know? It boggles my mind that a guy like Wilt Chamberlain is hardly ever mentioned when talking about the greatest of all time. Usually we hear Jordan, Kobe, Magic and Bird, but Chamberlain changed the game. Several rules were changed as a result of his dominance, and he still holds numerous scoring and rebounding records. I could talk about all of them but all you really need to know is that he averaged more than 50 points per game during the 1961-62 season. Jordan’s highest average of his career was 37.1 points in the 1986-87 season.
How about Tiger Woods? He currently ranks second all-time in major golf championships and third all-time in PGA Tour wins. He was the youngest golfer to ever achieve the career Grand Slam and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. How could anyone argue he’s not the greatest golfer of all time? Simple. The competition he plays against year in and year out is not the same that guys like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus played against. The courses are not the same, and the clubs have evolved. There are too many variables to be able to say, beyond reasonable doubt, that Tiger is the greatest ever.
There are plenty of examples like this where people have a perception of a certain individual being the best who ever played the game. I hear arguments almost once a week about who’s the best: Jordan or Kobe? They are both incredible athletes who can certainly be identified as two of the best. As for which one is better, that’s comparing apples to oranges. The same goes for Tiger: He’s undoubtedly the most dominant golfer of his generation, but he hasn’t had to compete against the thousands of PGA golfers who came before him. If you disagree, well, ignorance is bliss, my friends.
Related Posts:- No Kobe, no problem (April 21, 2005)
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- Who’s No. 3: Hockey or baseball? (April 27, 2006)
- Think Kobe’s guilty? Think again (October 20, 2003)
