Adrian Frater | Of the greatest and the contending views

While basketball ranks behind football, cricket, athletics and golf among the sports I have developed a deep passion for over the years, I simply cannot avoid paying keen attention to the ongoing debate about whether it is Michael Jordan or LeBron James that is the greatest basketball player of all time.

Without even delving too deeply into the individual statistics of the two men, I must admit that I am starting out with a slight bias to Michael Jordan because it was his heroics, during his two stints at the Chicago Bulls, in which he won six championships, five MVP titles and won three consecutive championships twice in the 1990s, that attracted me to the sport.

However, while Jordon remains a very special player in my priceless collection of great sporting memories, within recent times, I have been paying keen attention to the exploit of James, whose greatness cannot be disputed. While he is behind Jordan in terms of title, MVPs and general adoration, I strongly believe he is now close to eclipsing Jordan as the best player the sport has seen.

In terms of his commanding presence on the court, his awesome power, his all-round game and the fact that he has lacked a stellar supporting cast, especially at Cleveland, it must be clear to all and sundry that, with three NBA titles and four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards already under his belt and at least another three to four good years in his legs, he is indeed the stuff legends are made of.

Personally, I would not get into any quarrel about which of the two players has the better credential to be considered the greatest. In the era Jordan played, the game was more beautiful as it was strong in finesse and classy execution. Today, in this era that clearly belongs to James, it is more about extreme athleticism and raw power, albeit equally entertaining.

To be frank, I believe that outside of those sports with built-in mechanisms to measure greatness, greatness will remain highly subjective as, in addition to performances and achievements, other factors such as parochialism, nationality and familiarity could help to slant how one feels about a sporting personality.

CHARISMA

If one could see Muhammad Ali as an example, his greatness is not necessarily about the opponents he conquered, but also about the charisma and the colour he brought to boxing. When one looks at his opponents Ali has beaten in his prime, except for possibly Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, George Foreman and Joe Frazier, his opponents have been fairly ordinary.

Yet, a boxer like Mike Tyson, who was like a 'fighting machine' in his prime, does not get the kinds of accolades Ali gets from boxing pundits, albeit that, in his prime, no boxer could absorb his raw power, which has many opponents, including former champions Trevor Berbick, Michael Spinks and Donovan 'Razor' Ruddock, beaten by fear before they entered the ring.

Football serves up another fantastic example in the Brazilian Pele and the Argentine genius, Diego Maradona. While Pele took the world by storm as a 17-year-old at the 1958 FIFA World Cup, in Sweden, and went on to win three world cup titles, Maradona lit up the 1982 edition and then completely dominated four years later, in a manner never seen at the level of world football before or since.

While the stopwatch and dazzling collection of gold medals has elevated Usain Bolt to the position of undisputed greatest sprinter of all time, I am 100 per cent sure that if it was not for the stopwatch, the Americans would be hanging the greatest of all-time sprinters tag on either Jesse Owen or Carl Lewis, even with all the Olympic Games and IAAF World Championships medals Bolt has won.

Armed with all the contending factors and my own views, such as believing Diego Maradona is the greatest footballer that has ever walked this planet, albeit just having one World Cup title to Pele's three, I think it would be quite silly to argue with the persons that Michael Jordan is greater than Lebron James or vice versa.