The NBA GOAT debate just won’t die. Rather than appreciating every player for what they’ve brought to the game, people are hell-bent on pitting them against each other. The two most commonly mentioned names are, of course, LeBron James and Michael Jordan.
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The debate has gained a second breath of life recently, as James’ performances at 40 years old have made a lot of people reconsider their original stances. Mario Chalmers isn’t one of them, though.
Chalmers, who shared a locker room with James in Miami, has made his allegiance clear in this debate. Despite seeing James operate firsthand, Chalmers claimed that Jordan’s aura of intimidation makes him the greatest ever.
A lot of players have been on record speaking about how they feared Jordan, going so far as to give him the nickname “Black Jesus” because of the awe he inspired in them. For Chalmers, it’s this same feeling that puts Jordan clear above anyone else.
Chalmers’ admiration for Jordan doesn’t come at James’ expense, though. He admitted that, as a basketball player, nobody comes close to James’ overall game. But the GOAT debate has always been more about emotions than actual gameplay, and that’s why he handed the title to Mike.
“With Jordan? It was fear,” he said. “There was a different stigma that came with playing against MJ… But my GOAT? The guy I’d want to live and die with in a big moment? That’s Jordan. That’s just me.”
Chalmers isn’t the first former teammate of LeBron’s to snub him for Mike. Even Dwyane Wade, with whom James shares a close friendship, admitted that Jordan would always be the GOAT in his eyes.
Why Dwyane Wade picked Michael Jordan over LeBron James
Before making a name for himself as a Miami legend, Wade was just a kid in Chicago, which is where he fell in love with the legend of MJ. He says he tried to model his game after Jordan as a child, and that’s what made him pick Mike over his teammate.
“I never saw Bill Russell play. I never saw Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] play. Obviously they are someone else’s GOATs. But my GOAT, I grew up in Chicago, so Jordan is mine,” Wade said in an interview with Bleacher Report.“It just becomes who you grow up watching, who you see and envision and say, ‘Oh I want to be that person.’”
Wade’s statement further expands on the point that, for a lot of people, the debate about the NBA’s greatest-ever player is largely influenced by their emotional significance in the hearts of their fans.
While he won two championship rings with LeBron James in Miami, Michael Jordan inspired Wade to pick up basketball, and so he’s always going to side with him.
