Putting an Asterisk on Potential NBA GOATs!

For everything in this video, I'm going to put an

asterisk

on a lot of the

potential

NBA

goats

; In other words, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate in a sense by presenting a counterargument as to why every gray in the NBA can't be the goat again, this is more for the sake of argument and not necessarily an actual position, so without more preambles, let's get started and who better to start than LeBron James, there's no way LeBron James is the goat, as far as I'm concerned, every NBA ring. whatever he ever won was circumstantial or the team he was facing was so weak and his team was so well built that of course he was going to win and I'm mainly referring to his first NBA ring when his super team defeated a baby Thunder team. and even in that series Kevin Durant didn't get the deserved foul on him with 12 seconds left in the second game.

There was a great opportunity for the Thunder to be up 2-0 in that series, but poor officiating allowed the Heat to tie the series at one-all. Kevin Durant received a foul call, he would have been at the free throw line with the ability of tying the game and there could have been a very different outcome, the rest was history as the Heat tied the series and then got a lot of home games as there was a 2-3-2 playoff system instead of the 2- 2-1-1 with which the finals now operate for home and away games, as for LeBron's second ring, we all know that Ray Allen saved it.

The man's running and also Greg Popovich benching his entire team in those final seconds didn't help. I mean, if Tim Duncan was on the court, he could have easily gotten that rebound instead of Chris Bosh. The Spurs were for all intents and purposes supposed to win that. sixth game and they won the series four to two, they even threw the Larry O'Brien trophy, the world was definitely ready to crown the Spurs as champions and LeBron would have lost another final series and even if LeBron had won all of his series rings in fair way. Having so much talent and such a great super team and only having two rings is a little embarrassing, especially since the 2011 finals were the ones chosen and one became the Frozen one and averaged around 2.2 points per game in the entire fourth quarter of the first. five games and the worst of all was that he averaged three attempts in the fourth quarter.

Never in a million years would we see Michael Jordan average just three attempts in the fourth quarter of an NBA Finals and he only scored 2.2 points per game in the fourth quarter of the NBA Finals. There's no way a basketball goat can choke on that magnitude, since for his only Cleveland ring, the NBA did LeBron a favor by suspending Draymond Green in Game 5, which was a huge momentum shifter. which allowed LeBron to win on the road and then hold the fort. playing at home is much easier with home field advantage when it comes to game 7, once a series gets to game 7 almost anything can happen and of course teammate Kyrie Irving hit one of the most decisive shots in NBA Finals history, which was the one that really sealed the deal to ensure the Cavs won that game and of course there's LeBron's Mickey Mouse NBA bubble ring where The Lakers had Anthony Davis before his injuries and this team beat a not so super Miami Heat team led by Jimmy Butler despite being the Lakers, clear favorites, they still extended the series to six games when they had no reason to have this series so close.

LeBron made it to so many Finals that were more of a product of a weak Eastern Conference that there's no way LeBron is going to make it to a 10th straight Western Conference Final. the East wasn't a beast at the time LeBron is struggling to get to the Western Conference playoff series let alone the Western Conference Finals. Overall, LeBron has four rings, but three of them seem a little hollow and with only one solidly earned ring there's no way there's enough prestige. to be the goat of the NBA, oh and I didn't even mention LE 4 and 6 in the NBA Finals, he has had so many All-Stars and so much help, but he still lost six NBA Finals, he has a losing record and still he played. with so many future Hall of Famers, yes, LeBron is not the goat, but two, to be fair, LeBron faced some of the toughest competition in NBA history, those crazy Warriors teams, he which brings us to our next player, Steph Curry, sorry Wardell, I can't consider you the goat. for several reasons, one you are a one way player, yes Curry plays solid defense, but if we are going to be more critical in terms of all time greats, Steph Curry doesn't play goat defense, only goat offense. goat, so many other

potential

goats

. are two-way grades, in fact I think literally every other goat, other than maybe Magic Johnson, is considered a great two-way player.

Curry is not a bad defender and technically he is a good defender, but he is not a goat. Elite Defender, two of his rings also come. with Kevin Durant and was facing LeBron James with J.R Smith and in the Warriors Cavs first Finals, LeBron only took the Warriors to six games, that's a little embarrassing on the part of the Warriors when Steph Curry faced a team of the Cavs completely healthy and then lost to them. Above we have Bill Russell and before we start I just want to say, both on and off the court, that he was a legendary man and he had an incredibly positive impact not only on the sport of basketball but on the world itself.

May he rest in peace. I'm just criticizing his NBA basketball ability considering Bill Russell can't be the goat for several reasons, one of the biggest being that most of his opponents were milkmen and plumbers while the Celtics had one of the strongest. NBA teams ever built during every season of his career, Bill played with no less than three and up to seven other future Hall of Famers on his same roster, so in every moment, every waking second he stepped on an NBA court next to him was in at least three out of every seven Hall of Fame greats of all time forget about the super teams or the Justice League teams, this was quite an Infinity War full of superheroes on your side and their trips to the finals were much shorter and technically easier by those standards.

It was just division semi-finals, division finals and lastly NBA finals, so only three rounds and the semi-finals were best of three, now best of seven, plus for most of his career there was only eight teams and before you say that fewer teams would cause more competition, keep in mind that the Celtics had a monopoly on NBA talent at the time, fewer teams was definitely something that worked in their favor once they knew how to beat said teams, all that was left was the repetition that more teams created. more randomness and more randomness makes it harder to get to the final if the goat debate was ever about Ring total there would never be a debate the bill would be the goat and there would be no discussion even without

putting

an

asterisk

.

I think fans value quality of rings over quantity of rings and that in itself explains why players with far fewer rings are in this Bill Russell debate. What's not self-explanatory is how anyone would consider

putting

a guy who averages 26 points per game on 12.5 rebounds. and 4.4 assists per game with a PR of 26.9 in the goat debate and they wouldn't do it because they are Kevin Love's main statistics, no one would put Kevin Love in the go debate and they shouldn't, with these statistics in mind, let me remind you. you that Larry Bird averaged 24.3 points per game 10 rebounds per game 6.3 assists per game with a PR of 23.5 so slightly War stats across the board, but two more assists, both are not as athletic as in nearly equal three-point shooting as they both shot 37 from Beyond The Arc now, I'm not saying Larry Bird would just be a mid-level All-Star like Kevin Love.

What I'm saying is that Larry Bird is not the goat, there are clearly better players than Bird and Lakers fans don't get too excited because Magic and Kareem aren't the goats either. Kareem may be the all-time scoring leader for now, but no one would say he has the highest score of all time, just like how many wouldn't say John. Stockton is the greatest passer of all time even though he leads the league in assists. The phrase "greatest passer of all time" tends to be a weed for Magic Johnson, who has less assist than Stockton. In addition, Kareem played in the 70s for much of his career as one of the most stellar. -decades away from NBA history and one of the fastest paced games in NBA history with huge amounts of point inflation due to the breakneck pace of the late 50's, 60's and even early 70's, to What I mean is that there are many Cream's regular season MVPs are not the same as Jordan getting all of his MVPs in the star-studded era he played in, not that MVP total should be some kind of measure. to rank players anyway because no one on Earth would say that Steve Nash is a better player than Kobe Bryant because he has more MVPs than him, it's a terrible argument and therefore Kareem's MVP total should be considered the same logic.

Kareem also played with the show's Lakers alongside greats like Magic Johnson and James Worthy, but magic ain't the goat either, so let's get into a magician never reveals his secret, but it's no secret that Magic Johnson was a machine of turnovers as he averaged almost four turnovers per game, which is practically double compared to other great point guards like Chris Paul Steve Nash Jason. Kidd and John Stockton take Chris Paul, who averages about two turnovers per game. Imagine if you had twice as many turnovers, the NBA would scrutinize you so intensely that you would have to be like your brother and sell car insurance, especially since you are not a champion, so they would directly blame your turnovers for the lack of rings. .

One of the only great point guards of all time to average the same number of turnovers as Magic Johnson is Russell Westbrook and we already know how much criticism Westbrook receives for his turnover rate when talking about Westbrook. People nickname him West Brick, but he is a much better three-point shooter than Magic Johnson and averaged almost the same amount of assists as Magic Johnson. He also averages about the same number of rebounds, a little more than seven per game. If you look at their stat sheets and not their trophy cases, it would actually be pretty difficult to tell the statistical difference between Russell Westbrook and Magic Johnson, but no one is saying Westbrook is the greatest point guard of all time and Westbrook's stats are diminished. over time due to playing so long, if you just compare the primes you can make a statistical argument to say that Prime Westbrook's stats look better than Prime Johnson's stats.

Magic is also not an all-time great defender. He is a good defender, but not a goat-status defender. It's fair to be critical in saying that he doesn't have a defense worthy of a goat, so I would personally choose Kobe over Magic in a debate about the all-time Lakers, but speaking of Kobe, as good as he is, Nor is it the goat before starting. I want to say that Kobe is an incredible player, he is a legend and may he rest in peace, we are only going to be critical of his talent in NBA basketball. Kobe Bryant is not the goat, he has five rings, but you could say there were three of them.

Shaq and Kobe's teams were just a teammate, as Kobe was 21, 22 and 23 during that first Lakers three-peat and yes, he was the second best player on those teams, but not the first best. Kobe only has two finishes in VPS and is an extremely inefficient player by the standards of goat, mining or being hypercritical here he has a career PR of 22.9 and a field goal percentage of 44.7 in comparison. Jordan has a career PR of 27.9 and a field goal percentage of 49.7 percent, which is a truly huge gap in efficiency. and of course, there's that 2004 series finale against the Pistons.

Now you could blame Shaq for that series, he's not the goat either, but Kobe was especially terrible in that final, shooting 38 field goals and averaging only 22 points per game, which is bad. by Kobe standards and bad by goat standards and in one of those games he only scored 11 points, he's not as bad as Lachoke in the 2011 Dallas series, but he's bad enough without being the goat of the NBA. I don't ask Kobe. score a hundred points a night because the guy who scored 100 points that night, Wilt Chamberlain, is not the goat either and again before we start, Wilt was an NBA legend both on and off the court.

May he rest in peace, but he is not. the goat some might even say he's the greatest stats charlatan of all time there's a reason why Wilt didn't win any rings until he stopped taking shots and being aball hog and started sharing the rock is because Wilt's high scoring days didn't lead to winning basketball, plus the league average in those times had a team average of 73 rebounds per game, which is crazy to think about, so you could argue that getting all those rebounds in that era is more a product of the era itself than of Wilt himself.

Rebounding ability Wilt is still a great player and a legendary man, but it's hard to call him the gold of the sport with so few rings in total and the fact that his core stats didn't lead him to championships in the first place, now again eventually. won rings, but not during his days with incredibly high stats, okay, enough with attacking these NBA legends. It's time for us to be more critical of the guy many consider the goat and that is Michael Jordan. Jordan was a great player, no doubt, but many forget how great basketball legend Scottie Pippen was.

Jordan's record without Pippin is 154 and 170, which is a winning percentage of 47.5 percent and in the playoffs it is one in nine without Scottie Pippen, which is a winning percentage of only 10 percent. On the other side of the coin Pippin without Jordan has a record of 295 and 185 with a winning percentage of 61.4 percent and in the playoffs he has a record outside of Jordan of 19 and 21 with a winning percentage of 47 .5 percent, plus Scotty almost took the Bulls to the Conference. Finals without Jordan: Another thing I want to mention is that maybe Jordan's retirement mid-career created a myth around his 2 or 3 mascots.

Imagine if you never retired during your Prime and then played those seasons. If you got tired and didn't have a perfect final record because of that again, this is too hypothetical because one could also hypothetically argue that what if Jordan also won during those years so we can leave that aside for now? Jordan also couldn't beat Larry Bird or Magic Johnson until well after their primes, but to be fair, the Jordan that Larry and Magic were beating was a very young Jordan, which is why we never saw Prime Jordan vs Prime Larry vs Prime magic all at once, but The reason I bring this up is what if Jordan's perfect Finals record is more of a product of weak Finals competition because Jordan never faced the Prime Showtime Lakers, he faced to the old Showtime Lakers?

If instead of the Jazz back to back the Prime Showtime Lakers faced each other back to back it would be possible for Prime magic and Kareem to steal a series from Jordan and yes, the 90s had crazy competition, but it was very tough competition, so that the good teams were good but the bad teams were pretty bad and this is because all the new teams were added to the league as far as the regular season was concerned, this was an expansion era which is why there were so many cities new ones that teams like Miami Minnesota Charlotte and Orlando got and during the regular season there was a lot of cannon fodder for the best teams to just build on their good records and get easy wins and good stats, which helps the overall winning percentage and prospects Jordan's stats and could make him much stronger than he really imagines if LeBron James faced him during his regular seasons. cannon fodder baby teams, their regular season stats would look a lot better than they already are and they would have a higher PR, who knows, but anyway, if none of these players are the goat, then who's okay, Of course, it's a close call between Taco Fall and Brian Scalabrini. but that debate is for another video let me know what you thought of this video and if you want me to add more players in the future I would love to talk about players like Hakeem Olajuwon Tim Duncan and many more don't forget to dunk on that like button, subscribe with the notifications activated.

I'll rewind and fast forward to you later.