Lol, that’s funny! I concede.
Jackie Robinson would fall into this category as well. Four sport athlete at UCLA plus junior tennis champion. This in addition to supposedly his worst sport which landed him in the MLB HOF.
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I would def. have Jackie in the conversation of the greatest athlete with Jim Brown. Bo Jackson may have been the greatest athlete if he hadn’t injured himself so young.
The issue you run into with Jim Thorpe is the competition. The Olympics were still mainly amateurs back then. But I love the idea behind a 6ft 200 pound person being the greatest athlete.
Honestly, Lebron James is arguably the greatest athlete. At 6ft 8in and 270 pounds with the physical balance he shows, he could exceed 99.99% of people in just about any sport.
Lebron is bull-legged and would be very limited in sprinting, the purest form of athleticism.
No doubt he’s bull-legged, but I imagine you really mean bow-legged.
You are all wrong. The answer is Wilt Chamberlain.
Ran track and field and played basketball in college. In the basketball HOF, as well as volleyball. 7 ft 1, nearly 240 lbs.
He could easily dunk on 12 foot rims. He could grab dollar bills off the top of regulation backboards (13.5 feet). Multi-time Big12 high jump champion. Could shot put 56 feet. Once lifted a 600+ pound cart. As a bell hop he routinely lifted up cars that had flat tires but no jack on hand.
Wilt beat an angry Jim Brown in a sprint race TWICE out of two attempts.
He ran the 100m in 10.9 seconds. Bench pressed north of 500 lbs (can any player in the NBA right now do that?).
He is one of the biggest, strongest, fastest, highest/furthest jumping, multi sport stars to ever live. He gets my vote for best.
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Yet, Wilt isn’t even a top two Center in Lakers history.
Olympics aside, Thorpe was a NFL and MLB star, not to mention a pro basketball player. Look at his football career alone. 2x consensus All-American in college, one of the NFL’s all-time greatest RB’s and punters…he likely had the longest punt in history (official stats were not kept at the time).
I could go on and on… his history almost seems unreal and impossible. But it’s real, and there’s only so much that can be chalked up to ‘level of competition’.
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huh??? Who could you possibly rank higher? Kareem? I can see that I suppose, though I disagree. Shaq? LOL no. Wilt: 30 pts 23 rb, and 4 assists per game. Shaq? 23/10/2. Those are hardly all star level numbers. Wilt’s average numbers were good enough to run away with the MVP award every year these days. Wilt didn’t retire because his body broke down, he retired because he got bored. Then he learned volleyball, and became the best at that as well.
In his 40s he played a game against Magic Johnson and some other guys. Magic whined about a getting fouled. Wilt blocked every subsequent Magic shot attempt of that game. Every last one. He, a 7 ft 1 inch tall 40 something year old retiree, shut down the greatest point guard of all time like nobody had every done before or since.
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Also, in the 112 games where there is shot block data for Wilt, he averaged 8.8, EIGHT POINT EIGHT blocks per game. If you took the 112 best blocking games of any other player on the planet, there is no way it would come close to that.
I would very much rank Kareem as the GOAT. I would def put Shaq and maybe even George Mikan over him. Wilt didn’t play with another superstar so he had to put up those numbers. How are you saying “Those are hardly all-star level numbers” when talking about a 15-time all-star and 3x finals MVP (Wilt only went to two NBA finals).
Wilt is an all-time great but let’s be real… You have to have titles. The Lakers did more with the other three big men.
My Lakers all-time centers would be:
- Kareem
- Shaq
3a. Wilt
3b. Mikan
I will give you Wilt over Mikan but that man was a baller:
To be fair it’s Kareem and a toss up. A Good argument can be made for all three in 2-4.
my point with the numbers was to say that one (Wilt) had career averages that were better than the numbers of most league MVPs… and his numbers could have been a ton better if he wasn’t so concerned with being seen as a nice guy. If someone averaged 23 and 10 today, they’d be lucky to make the all star game. That is my point. Statistically, there is no argument to be had. Wilt was clearly the better, more dominant player.
Wilt is in the conversation of greatest player ever. Shaq isn’t.
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Shaq is easily considered Top 10 player all time. Not sure where you are getting that he is not.
I think this is true. I am also quite certain that Shaq in his prime - being allowed to bang as Shaq was allowed to bang - would not have had a hard time at all scoring on Wilt.
top 10 =/= greatest of all time. Wilt is at least mentioned in those debates, nobody talks about shaq.
I don’t think Shaq would have had major issues scoring against wilt in his prime, but that doesn’t mean that Wilt wasn’t better. Shaq could bang, that is it. That was his game. Wilt is the only big to EVER lead the league in assists.
Of course, in any serious GOAT debate, it comes down to MJ vs LeBron.
“Shaq could bang, that’s it” tells me all I need to know. The top 5 of all time wouldn’t contain Wilt. He’s in the next 5 discussions with Shaq and Kobe. The other two in the “Next 5” Bird & Duncan.
Sancho, Kareem is better than MJ and Lebron. The other two in that top 5, Magic and Bill Russell.
My Top 10:
- Kareem
- MJ (for now)
- Lebron
- Magic
- Bill Russell
- Kobe
- Shaq
- Larry Bird
- Wilt
- Tim Duncan
Guess what Wilt is definitely not, Greatest Athlete.
If we’re talking basketball specific. Which we ain’t. The goat is still Karelin.
Will was way past his prime when he was a Laker. For their careers, Kareem and Wilt would be there together, although I’d give the nod to Wilt. Shaq would be in a far lower echelon.