A MART脥NEZ, HOST:
For decades, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all-time scoring record of 38,387 points was deemed unbreakable until LeBron James, who surpassed it two years ago. And now LeBron hit a new milestone.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: LeBron.
BILL MACDONALD: Open three. (Shouting) Go.
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: (Laughter).
MACDONALD: Twenty-two seasons, 40 years of age. LeBron James - 50,002 points.
MART脥NEZ: That's combined playoffs and regular season. Now, with numbers like that, can LeBron James now be called the greatest basketball player of all time - the GOAT? Let's ask Jesse Washington. He's with ESPN's Andscape. So what are some arguments for and against LeBron claiming that title?
JESSE WASHINGTON: Yeah, well, what LeBron has done is really, really unprecedented. The man is 40 years old - four zero - and I'm not a math guy, but that's four times 10.
MART脥NEZ: (Laughter).
WASHINGTON: And what he's doing is just amazing at that age. You know, Michael Jordan, who is the other contender for the GOAT crown, when he was 38 and 39 playing with the Wizards, he did not look like this. So just the counting stats - what LeBron is doing at his age is pretty amazing.
MART脥NEZ: Yeah, what tends, though, to be the thing that would divide someone either picking one or the other? Because it seems to me, when I've had these arguments, when I used to be a sports radio host, Jesse, is that - championships. Jordan went to six NBA finals and never lost. LeBron has been to 10 finals and lost six of them.
WASHINGTON: Yeah, that's the thing, you know? It's the rings - the rings and things. Bring them out. Bring them out. And so Michael is perfect in that. Michael's got six finals MVPs. You know, he's the ultimate winner. He made a everlasting joke of Bryon Russell when he sat him down for the series winner against Utah Jazz - so those kind of moments. And also, the thing that really separates Michael is people who saw him play. I mean, it's really hard to describe. He was like a alien from another planet - and I'm not talking about Wemby - like, a relatively normal-sized human being doing things that no physical person should be able to do. Flying - I mean, he flew. Let's not get it twisted.
And so just the eye test with Michael, his competitiveness, sort of his legend grows over time, all the stories you hear about him just turning it on at will and utterly annihilating other folks - you know, those legends grow perhaps to unrealistic dimensions as the years pass. But the rings and the legend and just the mythos of Michael Jordan is what really puts him at the top of a lot of people's lists.
MART脥NEZ: The thing is, though, Jesse - I think you probably know this too - any GOAT debate is 100% subjective. So why do you think this resonates so much with sports fans?
WASHINGTON: Yeah, 'cause it's fun.
MART脥NEZ: (Laughter) Yeah. Right.
WASHINGTON: 'Cause we get to crack on the young guys, 'cause we get to tell them they don't know what we're talking about. I'm official OG, you know. And so we get to - oh, you - back in my day, it was - we played with one hand behind our back in the winter and still scored 30, you know. So it's just fun, man. I mean, what else have we got to do while we're waiting two hours for a barbershop cut on a Saturday?
MART脥NEZ: Yeah.
WASHINGTON: That's what we do.
MART脥NEZ: And that generational divide, too. You mentioned people that have seen Michael Jordan play. I grew up in LA in the '80s, so no one's going to tell me that Magic isn't the great - I mean, that's my greatest of all time. So I think it's one of those things where you're kind of in the moment and you make that emotional decision.
WASHINGTON: Yeah, Magic and LeBron are pretty close. You know, LeBron is fourth all-time in assists. He's the only, you know, non-point guard anywhere in the top 20, so that's pretty amazing. And also, you know, let's not short LeBron for what he's done and continues to do. Anybody who saw that windmill left-handed dunk that he had earlier is like, what are we really looking at? We're looking at something we've never, ever seen before.
MART脥NEZ: Defying time. That's Jesse Washington, senior writer with ESPN's Andscape. Jesse, thanks for joining us.
WASHINGTON: Thank you.
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