I think Ogg, a hunter-gatherer from 130,000 BCE, has the edge here. His moves in taking down mastodons were legendary. That second jump to avoid the tusks… you can’t teach that.

The title is almost clickbaity haha

The question of “greatest athlete” is always such an interesting one, because the answer is almost always whatever the person speaking thinks is the best sport, lol.

Kerr is excluding himself, obviously.

Yes, but also a backhanded compliment in full context. He’s physically dominant to a level you’ve never seen but because he’s not a dickhead, he’s not Jordan. Real stockholm syndrome vibes. Sounds like Lebron is the most physically dominant player he has ever seen but also one of the most emotionally intelligent players.

Jordan was a huge asshole. Everyone knew it back in the day and if you are too young you saw Kobe Bryant try to emulate it, he was a Jordan clone in every single possible way. Both were huge pricks and from my perspective emotionally broken human beings. Lebron could dominate the game but chooses to make it fun for everyone. It’s part of why he is a rare breed as a passer.

You can go watch his high school highlights, he could just dunk on people nonstop, get every rebound, block every shot, etc. But he chooses to pass the ball and build up his teammates. That continued into the NBA and if you ever watched peak Lebron, he was physically on par with Shaq in that no one in the NBA could body him. He never let that affect his game though, and thankfully, because he’s incredible as a ballhandler/passer and imo his legacy is greater than Jordan. Lebron will live a great life after basketball, Jordan got yellow ass eyes, no way he’s happy in life.

edit; I’m lucky enough to have watched both players. If my kid’s hero was MJ I’d be worried, if it was Lebron I’d be thrilled. We as a society have to stop propping up broken humans as some pantheon of existence.

One of those guys, in their old age, became an outspoken progressive championing causes like racial diversity and economic equality, and the other became a right-wing crank who thinks players advocating social justice is “too political.”

Both took the road less traveled!

And them kids.

Tell that to Toronto

the officials

People who cry aboout SGA and the fouls would shit themself watching old Jordan games.

Marv Albert and Dick Enberg would openly mock other players for thinking they could touch MJ.

MJ would punch his lights out if he wasn’t sufficiently sycophantic

LeBron had this with Toronto haha

And his greatest achievement yet … . LeSperm playing alongside him in the NBA

Lelongevity

As a Toronto Raptors fan, I can say that Lebron definitely has killer instinct and mental strength.

Just because hes a nice guy, people make up bs

People love that Mamba Mentality bullshit but there are countless examples of people who reached the absolute peak of success without being a prick.

Nobody doubts he was an asshole, but he had killer instinct too which was more obvious in game than lebron.

Anyone else would get bashed for what he did to 18-year-old Kwame Brown

I don’t think it’s that’s simple. Nobody who has any IQ says Lebron doesn’t have a killer instinct. Absolutely he does. Better than 99% of NBA players ever. But there’s a difference between Jordan mentally and Lebron mentally when playing the game of basketball. It’s more than just being an asshole. Of course Jordan is an asshole, and quite honestly, I would expect Lebron to be one to a certain point as well.

There are things that are not quantifiable with great players and some just have a little more than another. The gap between them is so small.

While I do agree with you, but I do think there is a kernel of truth there. LeBron generally believes in his teammates and believes that the best way to win is through that. But 2018 basically proved that he could play like Jordan and decide multiple series on his own.

How I see it is Jordan is controlling the ball on the last shot regardless of it is the best play. LeBron would be happy to decoy if it meant a guaranteed wide open shot for someone else. And that is the “killer instinct” difference (not a judgement, just how I think people view it).

Not true, I don’t need to be nice to say Michael Jordan was an asshole, but the truth is he legit just had more mental toughness and iq in the big moments than LeBron- not even talking just about clutch shot making but rebounding defending passing, he just made the right play 9 times out of ten because he had no fear of making a mistake, lebron thinks too much about consequences which is why he’s so disciplined, MJ doesn’t at all which is why he destroys his body with alcohol and cigars and thought he could big league the mafia of all groups, two completely different realms in terms of psyche 

Lol at lebron not being passive aggressive .stop the cap

It was a lot easier to be mysterious though without camera phones or social media.

It would’ve been interesting how MJ would’ve been in a social media era because there’s no chance he would’ve been able to sneak out during the playoffs to go to Atlantic City and not end up all over the internet

LeBron is a regular guy / wine mom who just happens to be one of the greatest athletes in the world.

MJ with social media isn’t nearly as big a cultural impact.

MJ treated competition as the other team was trying to shame him and take away his manhood and dignity. Even if it’s a random game against the Vancouver Grizzlies in February.

I’m not saying that’s healthy. But that is the level of competitive psycho we’re talking about.

I actually feel the opposite. I feel everyone knows MJ. The drinking, gambling, and how he’s an asshole and all. He very publicly shows that. Lebrons image is pretty curated by pr and everything. The one time I felt he dropped that was in that interview with Pat Mcaffe.

If social media existed during Jordan’s career he would be viewed quite differently

“No Child Left Behind” putting in work.

Wym? What comments are you referring to?

You cannot quantify it. That’s the whole problem with comparing greats across eras by looking at a stat sheet.

Look when you strip away all the aura and unqualifiable descriptions, when you just focus on basketball…

Your left with 6 rings, 5 mvps, DPOY, the highest scoring average in both regular season AND the playoffs.

Da GoAT

we don’t know what it means, but it gets the people going.

I genuinely don’t think he’ll be “brutally honest” about any of those people, except for maybe Sarver, and even he was extremely helpful in Kerr’s career. I think fans want these guys to have the same beefs the fans do. Most of these guys helped make Kerr very wealthy and very successful.

Like Kerr could have been “brutally honest” about Draymond after the punch or the suspension. At least to some degree. He had the leverage and the public would have agreed with him. He has no hot take here that people seem to want him to have. 

KD came to the Warriors, they won 2 championships with him, KD played hurt and tried to win a 3rd, and then he left and the Warriors won another one. Everything went well for Kerr. We know that everything didn’t exactly go smoothly there, but what grievances do you think Kerr still has towards KD that he’d need to get off his chest by blasting him in a book? 

Literally what has he ever done to make you think this? If anything his history is the complete opposite and he tries to keep everything in house.

You think Steve Kerr is gonna be brutally honest about Draymond Green?

Eh, just depends on how his relationship with those people evolves through retirement. I doubt there will be much that is interesting.

getoffmydickerson read this comment and is tweeting as we speak.

It would be a damn good book if he does it tho

Kerr’s tell all book when it’s all over is gonna be great. You know he’s gonna finally be brutally honest about what he really thinks about MJ, Sarver, Lacob, Curry, Draymond, Klay, KD. and basically every significant NBA figure whom he’s interacted with in the past 40 years. No doubt KD is gonna get mad.

Just for the record, the greatest tell-all book ever would be (hopefully) written by Pat Riley.

Riley has personally witnessed an incomprehensible amount of basketball history.

Pat Riley has been involved in 18 NBA Final Series ( 3 as a player, 1 as an assistant coach, 9 as a head coach, and 5 as an executive ).  Since the NBA has ‘only’ been around for 76 seasons, Riles has been there for just under 1 out of every 4 Finals that have happened. Riley’s side has won half those Finals.

He played against Lew Alcindor when both were high school kids in New York, and somehow led Linton High to a win over Power Memorial, when no one beat Power.

Then he went and played for no less than Adolph Rupp – who rarely recruited outside Kentucky, never mind signing a kid from Upstate New York.  And played every minute of Kentucky’s famous loss to the UTEP Miners in the 1966 NCAA Championship game – the ‘Glory Road’ game and the first NCAA title won by an all-black starting five.

In the NBA, Riley played with: Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Elvin Hayes, Gail Goodrich, Connie Hawkins, Stu Lantz, and Paul Westphal, among many others.  Also played against Abdul-Jabbar again, this time in the 1971 Finals ( Oscar Robertson, too ).

In 38 seasons as an NBA coach and executive –during which time he has never been fired (!!)– he has coached or hired: Kareem, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Vlade Divac, Mitch Kupchak,
Bob McAdoo, Kurt Rambis, Jamal Wilkes, Patrick Ewing, Mark Jackson, Shaquille O’Neal, Doc Rivers, Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, both Van Gundys, Erik Spoelstra, LeBron James, Dwayne  
Wade, Ray Allen, Jimmy Butler, and hundreds of others.

Only 11 players in history have 28000 points – and Riley played with two, coached one of those and another, and hired a fourth. And he was teammates with the ABA’s all-time leading scorer at Kentucky.
Only 10 players in history have 9000 assists – and Riley coached two, and hired a third.
Only 3 players in history have 17000 rebounds – and Riley played with two, and coached one.

Of the top 30 NBA scorers of all-time, Riley played with, coached, or hired nine of them. There’s almost no one on any all-time leaderboard that Riley has not competed with or against in some fashion.

And just for good measure, he invented and trademarked the term ‘Three-peat’.

If there is anyone who has had a hand in more basketball history, I would be surprised, and I would like to know who it is.

People on here talk about “lebronto” like the leaders of that team weren’t literally referred to as The Trash Bros.

The Hamptons meeting has been totally memory-holed now lol

Pretty sure the entire eastern conference has PTSD from playoff Bron

imagine the relief of Eastern Conference teams when Bron went to the West. numerous teams thought it was their year then bump into Bron and their dreams crumble

You do know you can google when Kerr was Michael’s teammate, right?

Michael had 6 titles in his last 6.3 seasons in the NBA in the 90s.

That’s pretty believable with context.

The legend of MJ is what all the old heads who played in 90’s are eating off of today. “I played in the same era as MJ” is what most of those guys credibility is built off of

If he’s not God in human form then they’re left with the reality that none of them were capable of beating 1 team for an entire decade and couldn’t even take that team to a game 7 in the finals. Any of other era they’d call that weak and trash the opponents like they do for Russell. But they avoid this in the 90’s by making themselves victims of MJ

When Steve played with him, probably. And it was absolutely true for the dogshit eastern conference vs LeBron. I am sure the western teams thought they could win.

Lebron makes 2 finals in the west over that span 

LeBron is clutch. Fuck the noise. I believe that Jordan is the most consequential basketball player in the modern era and LeBron is legitimately better at basketball (in a lab setting where they are both given equal teammates — Jordan is likely better 1v1). That said, Jordan is my goat. That said, I respect LeBron and he has proven that he can lead a team.