The way we discuss athletes bothers me. What I used to remember as a light hearted debate about the greatest ever has become a repetitive twitter cesspool. I sat down as a kid and watched every part of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary with my dad, and I remember asking him to tell me his thoughts: who really was the greatest?
We’re well past that now, and every debate show in the world has already figured out that this topic can be trotted out 3 times a week and rehashed. The problem is that at this point, it’s only mudslinging. Barely anyone takes the time to actually celebrate just how great these athletes are, which was theoretically the whole point in the first place.
I’m here to propose new rules of engagement- a new way to frame legacy discussions. The rules are simple: you can only discuss positive accomplishments of the athlete.
How Does This Even Work?
Let’s take for example perhaps the most famous and hotly contested GOAT debate- Jordan vs. Lebron. The typical Jordan stan will say “Look at how many finals Lebron has lost!” Under these new rules, that is no longer an option.
However, you can stack the positives against one another. Lebron has won 4 titles. Michael has 6. Advantage Jordan. Lebron has 1 scoring title. Michael has 10. Another to his Air-ness.
You can even value titles differently in a positive sense. Winning a title with no other all stars on your team? That can be added to your positive stack. Winning a title against an all time great team? That can be added to your positive stack. You can contribute any information to the discussion as long as it is additive.
This accomplishes 2 major things:
Firstly, we center the greatness. We are talking about the two greatest players ever- what is the fun in reliving their minor career pitfalls?
Secondly, we no longer have completely contrived points such as the aforementioned finals losses- as if it is a virtue to lose in the earlier rounds to avoid some notion of choking.
The Proof is in the Nurmagomedov Pudding
Khabib Nurmagomedov was the athlete that initially sparked this idea in my head. Some contingent on MMA fans continue to push that he was the greatest UFC fighter ever. Why can they make this argument? They bring up the negatives of every other contender.
For the uninitiated into the world of MMA, Khabib Nurmagomedov is a Dagestani fighter with a 29-0 professional record, who retired at the relatively young age of 32 in 2021. Khabib never lost, a nearly unheard of feat in the world of MMA 1 (granted, Jon Jones has 1 loss on his record and it was from an illegal move disqualification).
Let’s compare Khabib to Anderson Silva, another name thrown around as the potential MMA greatest, but one whose career vastly differs from that of Khabib’s. Silva’s record? 34-11. Your classic pundit will decry, “How can you even compare a man with an undefeated record to somebody with 11 losses?”
But let’s try our new methodology. Title defenses? Silva 10, Nurmagomedov 3. The quality of the fighters they’ve beaten? While obviously more subjective, Nurmagomedov only began fighting the absolute top tier of his weight class in his last 3 professional fights, while Silva took down many more notable names from the Middleweight division.
If we reward Khabib with the title of GOAT, what does that mean for the career of an athlete? If he is the ideal, then any athlete should pack it up the day their skills begin to wane. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander should have hung it up last season. He saw the top- what if this season, he can’t do it again? Should we really detract from him for that?
I celebrate the athlete who hangs on too long. It’s the most compelling story there is, to see if the experience and skill can carry you as father time takes away the natural gifts. Plus, if sports can teach us anything about life, it’s the virtue of overcoming adversity after getting knocked down.
Perhaps MMA serves as the best example for this methodology, as the quality of opponents and path to the title vary so differently. There is no standardized single championship per year always being fought over by some 30 to 32 teams. If anything, this extreme example proves how foolish the classic definition of legacy can be.
Choking?
The pushback I expect is for there to be doubt around how an athlete can be the GOAT if they’re a choker. However, the common conception of choking barely passes the smell test to me.
If one athlete reaches the championship 5 times and wins 1, but another athlete only reaches once and wins, somehow the common perception favors the latter. We act as if coming up clutch at every moment up to the end, but failing the final hurdle, is worse than never even getting off the blocks.
I don’t have a solution to this except to say, as per my new system, you won’t have to worry about re-framing these ideas. Mentioning choking is simply banned.
Final Thoughts
As with any system which you come up with while daydreaming on the train, I’m sure there are some holes in my descriptions. The idea is ¾ baked at best. However, I think there’s something here. I think there’s something to the idea that when you are trying to ascertain who climbed the highest, you don’t focus on their few stumbles.
Next time some guy in a basement tries to argue with you online about the best, let them know you only do so following the Quaid Paradigm of Greatness (name is work in progress).