Kids watching sports today don't know greatness.

Didn't want to say this because I know it's a controversial take.

Steroids makes the stats from that 90s-2000s era unfair to compare to historic records.

But there has to come a point where you recognize that so many people were on the juice then, Bonds was one of the all-time best BEFORE he even started juicing, and he pretty much broke the game with numbers that are just absurd after being on the juice... a very realistic case can be made that he's the best hitter of all time.

Three MVPs before he was on the juice. 7-8 gold gloves before he was on the juice. Consistently lead the league in walks before he was on the juice, consistently lead the league in on base percentage before the juice, slugged in the 500s half the time and the 600s the other half BEFORE on the juice, was a perennial 30-30 player before the juice... then after the juice...

Dude hit 73 home runs, slugged in the 700s and 800s, had four MVPs in a row, and recorded an OPS+ of over 250 three times. For those who don't know OPS+, that means he was 150% better than the average player. To give some perspective, the Babe only hit 250 OPS+ once. That means even by steroid era standards, there was generally a greater margin between Bonds and his peers in the early 2000s than there was between the Babe and his peers at his absolute best.

 

I'm going to say only a couple things about the LeBron-Jordan debate and then I'm going to hide.

If we were all in Heaven, and we were to have an all time draft of the best player of all-time at their best, and the only thing you were considering is who did their specific job better than anyone, Jordan would be the clear choice.

If we were in this alternate reality where Jordan and LeBron were the same age, both coming into the NBA in 2003, and you're basically the Cleveland Cavaliers with the #1 overall pick, and you are signing a guy to be your franchise guy for 20 years, LeBron is the answer. Why? LeBron has had Kareem-esque longevity and LeBron is a swiss army knife in the form of a basketball player; he can do anything on the court. Is he the best at any one thing? Probably not. But he's good to elite at everything. That makes him versatile and adaptable to fit whatever role you need at the given moment, and you'll be really good no matter what. He's been cheating a little bit with the Lakers over the last few years by sitting out and not playing defense anymore so he can inflate his offensive stats while staying fresh, but the bulk of his career has pretty much been that story.

Basically Jordan needs complimentary pieces around him for the team to really be optimized, whereas a team of 5 LeBron James clones would probably beat anybody and would last a long time. Whichever you prefer is really a personal preference. It's kind of like asking if you prefer Ohtani or Barry Bonds (ignoring the cheating). Do you value versatility or do you value one player doing a couple really important things far better than anybody? Do you value longevity or peak performance?

 

Are we speaking of the halcyon days of Greg Ostertag and Luc Longley going at it in two consecutive Finals series?

 

And today’s bean polebasketball teams could not even defend that. They would look like Shaquille O’Neal with today’s defenders.

 

Bam Adebayo probably could not defend most centers 20 years ago. He damn sure can’t defend Djokic right now.

 

Today’s NBA with the rules they have implemented remind me of the seven on seven tournaments they have for football. Just take all the big guys off the field and let’s just do a glamour stuff.

 

I think if Jim Thorpe played under today’s circumstances, he would definitely be in the conversation.

These comparisons remind me of something I read back in the 1980s. A World War II fighter pilot ace was lecturing some then current Air Force pilots on the tactics they used in World War II. At one point, one of the current pilots arrogantly said, “Try those tactics on us, and we would blow you out of the sky.” The ace responded, “If I was flying today, I would be the master of today’s tactics, and I would blow you out of the sky.”

As has already been discussed, so much depends upon the circumstances of the time in which the player performed. For a Christmas present when I was in the 10th grade, my brother gave me a 3-inch thick book called The Running Backs, about the great NFL and AFL running backs up to that time.

One thing the book said in the forward was that any team that threw more passes then running plays in a season always had a losing season. That’s not life today.

 

My kids do.
Its up to me to tell them.
I have.

My 12 year old son watches Jordan YouTube clips all the time.

My kids know Tebow was the college Goat and no kids think Mahomes is better than Brady yet. Brady retired 5 months ago.