LeBron James has already placed himself in the conversation as one of the greatest basketball players of all time. His dominance for about a decade, coupled with team success (having gone to six straight NBA Finals) has made him an all-time great.
So how much higher can he get? Well, according to James, he’s still chasing the GOAT, Michael Jordan.
Following via Tom Withers of the Associated Press:
“It’s a personal goal,” James told The Associated Press on Monday. “I just never brought it up. It’s my own personal goal to be able to be greater than great. I think that should be everybody’s personal goal.”
…
“If you work for any company or you work for any designer or anywhere, you’re like, ‘Oh, I aspire to be that guy because he’s done it right.’ He’s the greatest and that’s who you look at,” he said. “So that’s always been my personal goal, to use the motivation he gave me as a kid and I’ll use it as motivation now as well that I want to get to where he is. That’s never changed. People kind of wanted to turn it into a conversation, but that’s my personal goal and that’s where I land at.”
It seems blasphemous to bring up any players as anywhere close to Jordan. But watching James dominate the Finals, especially in games six and seven, against the greatest regular season team of all time, made me think for the first time that he could be right there.
These rankings are always arbitrary, of course. Even if James does surpass Jordan (and some may even say that he already has) many people would not rank him higher based purely on the fact that it’s Michael freakin’ Jordan.
Regardless, LeBron James has plenty of time to continue chasing his childhood goal. How much time is unknown, but as James told reporters during media day, it may not be much:
LeBron James said that with Kobe, TD and KG retiring that it makes him think, "We're on deck," with him, Melo, Wade, CP3 etc.
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) September 27, 2016
We’re slowly nearing the end of LeBron’s career but there is a whole lot more history waiting to be written.
