Michael Jordan might be the outstanding candidate to be regarded as the NBA's greatest of all time but his claim has been put under threat by the scoring feats of LeBron James.
'King' James is the all-time leading NBA scorer and is still going strong at the age of 40. Jordan's former Chicago Bulls team-mate Scottie Pippen attracted headlines when he was asked to pick between the two, and moved to clarify his previous comments.
"I never said that LeBron was the greatest, that was never said," Pippen told a podcast after the reaction to his initial comments.
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Pippen outlined that James and his scoring numbers will benefit from a longevity that Jordan didn't have. Together, Jordan and Pippen won six consecutive NBA championships but Jordan's career on the court was much shorter than James has managed.
When pressed on the matter and asked whether he'd pick Jordan or James alongside him, the seven-time NBA All-Star delighted his interrogators with the "best answer" they'd ever had from a guest.
"That's a dumb f***ing question!" replied Pippen. "I've never done anything with LeBron, so I wouldn't take LeBron to the movies with me."
Pippen, no great friend of Jordan's but a legend in his own right as a small forward with the Bulls, has subsequently added a third name into the mix when asked similar questions.
"Michael bunched up all of his competitiveness and sort of exposed it out to the world within 12 to 14 years. We saw his whole resume, his competitiveness, his drive, his will to win, what he's want to do," he told the PBD Podcast.
"When someone like LeBron has to spread that out for 20 plus years it's not the same drive, it's not the same fight, it's not the same hunger and so when people try to make those comparisons of those two players, it's like talking to someone in the front seat in the back seat they ain't even in the same lane.
"When you ask who's better, LeBron or Michael, you can't ask me who's the GOAT between LeBron and Michael. Neither one of them are GOATs they both won differently, you can't put them at the pinnacle.
"Magic Johnson to me is a bigger GOAT than anybody because of how he lead, how he brought a whole team, how when the greatest scorer in the game, Kareem, was not there and him as a rookie, steps in and plays a position that no one even knew he could play that's transcending what you can do as a player."
Johnson won five NBA championships as a Los Angeles Lakers point guard in the 1980s, including only the Lakers' second championship since moving to LA, and was the standalone NBA star of his day.
Topics: Michael Jordan, NBA, Lebron James
Chris Nee