This position paper is about a question that keeps coming up. Who is the greatest basketball player of all time? This question caused many debates about who truly is the greatest of all time. He is Michael Jordan. When talking about the greatest basketball player of all time, some might wonder if it is Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James. Michael Jordan probably has the best all-around averages throughout a career, and all the championships and MVP awards are incredible. Compared to all the NBA Legends, Michael Jordan solidifies himself as the greatest of all time.
The other NBA Greats put up tremendous numbers throughout their careers, and could also
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He would not be number one on the ESPN all time rankings if he was not the greatest. An ESPN expert panel voted on the peak performance and career value, and out of 150 NBA Greats, Michael Jordan is number one (Jackson, 2016). This says a lot about the argument about who the greatest of all time actually is. People always debate the question and say someone else is, but with Michael being the number one ranked out of 150, this must be true. The debate is a real fun question to answer. People begin to wonder, how can you say that Michael is the greatest of all time if the person has not seen him play. Well, the statistics and footage of his game proves that he could be considered as the greatest. Another reason for the debate is Michael’s championships. People counter this part of the argument by saying, every time that the Chicago Bulls went to the NBA Finals, their team was stacked. But that is not all true. The team was great but without Michael they could not win a championship. Bruce (2016) agrees that he is the greatest basketball player he has ever seen play. There are many documentaries to see how Michael played back then. There is a special documentary about his 69 point “flu game” (Morgan, 2015). Morgan (2015) even mentioned that if someone would watch Ultimate Jordan, people would forget about the debate and call Michael what he truly is, the greatest of all time. When talking about Player Efficiency Rating (PER), since the NBA has started counting turnovers, no player has had a higher rating than Michael Jordan. Jordan posted a “31.89 PER in 1987-88, when he averaged 35 points on 54 percent shooting, 5.9 assists, 5.5 rebounds, 3.2 steals, and won the first of his five season MVP awards that year” (Eagle, 2013). Posting this PER and being the only player to have the highest, is just absolutely extraordinary. Michael Jordan redefined the NBA superstar. In the article it states,