The conversation as to who the GOAT is in the NBA is still largely favoring the Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan over LeBron James of the Lakers.
The ongoing GOAT debate got another voice in the mix this week. After the former Houston Rockets Hall-of-Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon and Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray threw their voices into the ring in the GOAT debate recently, the next up becomes the former Seattle SuperSonics star power forward/center Shawn Kemp. The opinion from Kemp still has the Chicago Bulls all-time great shooting guard Michael Jordan well ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers superstar and now four-time NBA Champion LeBron James.
In a recent interview on “The Dab Roast” posted on YouTube, Kemp gave his take on who still holds the edge between Jordan and LeBron. Here’s more on what he had to say on the matter (dialogue courtesy of Fade Away World).
"“I’mma say Michael Jordan. I think LeBron James has done great, but only thing Michael Jordan ever did was win. There’s players as myself who haven’t won a championship that were very good. There’s guys who I’ve seen win championships, they’re good players, but they had a good team also around them,” Kemp said. “And I look at Michael Jordan, he played with the Bulls, and he had Scottie Pippen. But without Michael being there, the Bulls wasn’t gonna win the championship. It came from Michael Jordan.”"
Although LeBron likely closed the gap in this conversation as to who holds the edge in the GOAT debate, he’s still two shy of the amount of titles that Jordan has. And there’s still that often discussed aspect of this debate that Jordan never lost in a single NBA Finals series, while LeBron has lost six so far.
Now there is the potential bias in this discussion that Kemp spent much of his playing days in the NBA taking on Jordan and those great dynasty Bulls teams of the 1990’s. In fact, he was a member of that SuperSonics team that lost to Jordan and the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals.
Kemp is still a very worthy opinion worth hearing out. He was a six-time NBA All-Star selection and three-time All-NBA Team selection. He spent much of his NBA career with the SuperSonics (eight seasons). But his career officially rounded out after the 2002-03 season, which he spent with the Orlando Magic.
Jordan and the Bulls had their greatness of the 1990’s highlighted in the premier this year of the Emmy Award-winning docuseries “The Last Dance”. But we should also still respect the greatness we are seeing out of LeBron and the Lakers at this point in time.