Fox Sports 1 personality Nick Wright is well known for his strong opinion that LeBron James is a better player than Michael Jordan, whom many regard as the greatest NBA player ever.
Some may say it’s a generational thing. Wright is a millennial, and millennials and members of Generation Z are much more likely to put James over Jordan than those who have been around longer.
However, Wright surprisingly doesn’t think the Los Angeles Lakers superstar is the greatest of all time.
Instead, he thinks a former Lakers great deserves that spot.
While on “The Dan Patrick Show,” he said that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the greatest player in the history of the sport (in his opinion).
“If we were to say: Take the guys who are candidates for the greatest of all time in any sport. Nobody has more championships than him (Abdul-Jabbar) of the GOAT candidates. He has scored the most points, goals, or runs, whatever the sport is, of all the candidates – in fact, of everyone in history, and has the most league MVPs of everyone in history, it would not be controversial to say he should be in the discussion.”
“Jordan’s pinnacle, his peak, one could argue, was higher than anybody else’s. However, the second place on that list might be Shaquille O’Neal, so why is Shaquille O’Neal not in the top five, top six, top seven? He didn’t do it long enough. Kareem has more seasons where he was a top-five MVP vote-getter than Michael Jordan has seasons.”
“… Michael Jordan was a very good college player, good enough that people said I’d rather have Sam Bowie. In high school, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went 79-2, and I’m told Michael Jordan got cut from his team. Now I’m sure it was a very good team he got cut from, but Kareem wasn’t getting cut. I just think Kareem has the better basketball life than Michael Jordan.”
One of Wright’s main points is Abdul-Jabbar’s longevity. He mentioned the former Lakers great won the NBA Finals MVP at age 38 and was still a very good player at age 40, while Jordan wasn’t quite at the same level at the same ages.
Unfortunately, because Abdul-Jabbar had a reputation for being introverted and even difficult to deal with for the media during his playing days, he often gets shortchanged in this debate, especially by those who were too young to watch him play live.
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