Would Michael Jordan Rule in Today's NBA?

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2020

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time." It's a common sentiment, especially as "The Last Dance" docuseries gives a new showcase for MJ's dominance. But the naysayers remain. "Well, that was the 90s," you might hear, "and the league has changed." ESPN basketball analyst and writer Kirk Goldsberry (admittedly in the Jordan G.O.A.T. camp) brings big data to the argument. He details how Jordan would stack up on shooting, defense, and other aspects of today's game. And he argues that while today's stars (LeBron?) have amazing talent, Jordan basically invented the modern NBA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	And by the way, when guys lead the league nowadays in scoring, it's by a point or two,
0:05.4	Jordan, when he was young, was not leading the league in scoring by a point or two.
0:09.1	Early in his career, he was smoking dudes like Dominique Wilkins, five, six, seven points
0:15.2	more per average, per game on average.
0:18.6	So when you look at the distance between him and second place and you look at guys averaging
0:22.7	close to 35 nowadays, Jordan's clearly going to be up over 40 points a game as a great
0:29.4	two-way player.
0:31.4	He's the greatest player of all time for a reason.
0:36.9	That was our Max Kellerman, making a case that Michael Jordan is the greatest NBA player
0:42.3	of all time.
0:43.8	It's a debate that comes up every now and then in the sports media, and one that's getting
0:48.4	new life as we watch Jordan dominate on the last dance.
0:52.1	But while MJ crushed the competition in the 1990s,
0:55.3	how would he have fared in today's NBA?
0:58.2	Today, ESPN's Kurt Goldsbury answers that question,
1:02.6	then tries to settle the goat debate once and for all.
1:06.5	I'm Mina Kimes.
1:07.5	It's Monday, May 11th.
1:09.1	This is ESPN Daily, presented by Marathon.
1:17.6	Hey, Kirk. Before we get started, I cut my own hair yesterday. So that's why I have a hat on.
1:23.4	It looks fine. Kurt Goldsbury is an NBA analyst and writer for ESPN.
1:29.0	Kirk, so I swear, I promise, we are not here to debate MJ versus LeBron, at least not until the end of the interview.
	...

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