WP3
Part 1:
Why we shouldn't compare players from different eras in the GOAT debate
Sujit Ponguluri, USC Writ340 Writer
March 27, 2024, 11:59 PM PT
Legacy is multidimensional
If you are a basketball fan, I'm sure you have repeatedly heard the question, "Who's the GOAT?". This question has been asked for decades, and no one has yet to reach a common consensus. One may say Jordan, while another may say Lebron and others may pick Kareem. I wanted to dive deeper and explore this debate and find an answer.
For decades, sports debates have been an integral part of basketball, and a prevalent topic among fans is the debate on the greatest of all time. Sports debates are common among people across a wide range of ages. However, this complex debate includes players who are currently playing and retired. A more profound knowledge and understanding of the history and advancements in the game show why comparisons between players from different eras are illogical.
Era Discrepancies/Rule Changes
"2000-2001 Season: Lakers Repeat, Award-Winning Sixers, New Rules, Air Jordan Is Back" is an article highlighting the rule changes implemented in 2001, which introduced the defensive three-second rule and allowed for zone defense. First, gaining a deeper understanding of the defensive three-second rule and zone defense is essential.
The defensive three-second rule was introduced in the 2001 season to allow players to no longer stand within the paint for more than three seconds. This rule was implemented to stop defensive players from standing under the basket, allowing for a better flow throughout the game. It forced defenders to always guard an opponent by being arm's length away from an offensive player.
Zone defense, which was prohibited until the 2001 season, is a concept in which every player guards an area within the court instead of an opponent.
These rules completely changed how the game was being played, leading to the point of whether it was fair or not to compare these eras. Jordan played before the rule changes, while Lebron played in the era after the rules were implemented. This is an unfair comparison because they are playing a different version of the game. These rules may have removed specific strengths from one player and allowed for easier scoring for the other and vice versa. It is only possible to determine which is the case if both played in the same era, under the same rules, making the comparisons between eras unreasonable.
Advanced Analytics
Analytics has become an integral part of sports and is constantly utilized in sports debates. Two of the main statistics I looked into during my research were Plus/Minus and WAR. These are both important measurement tools when evaluating a player’s strengths and weaknesses.
Plus/Minus refers to a player's impact on their respective team during the game. For example, if a player had a Plus/Minus of plus seven, that indicates that the player's team outscored their opponents by seven points during the player's playtime.
WAR, also known as wins above replacement, is an interesting statistic that shows a player's productivity while on the court. It shows how many wins a player contributes to a specific team.
These are both crucial statistics and are used in debates, but how effective of a picture do they paint when comparing players across different eras? For example, the average points scored per game in the 1996 NBA season was 96.9 points per game. However, the average points scored per game in the current NBA season is 114.5. This enormous difference can be attributed to rule and strategic changes, showing how the game has evolved. Based on this information, mentioning Plus/Minus, WAR, or other advanced statistics is unfair when comparing players from different eras because they were distinct.
Health
Frequently, we see many people try to argue that LeBron's longevity makes him a better player than Jordan. Lebron's longevity is undeniable; however, this argument is slightly misleading.
Sports science is a necessary commodity when it comes to player health. Due to significant advancements in the medical field, players can now play for much longer. Injuries that previously would derail a player's career are now considered tolerable, which can be attributed to physical therapists/surgeons' increased knowledge of athletes' bodies.
Formerly, an ACL/Achilles tear was considered a career-ending injury, and most players would immediately retire. However, an ACL/Achilles tear is now recoverable with surgery within a few months and does not hinder any player's performance. An example of this can be seen in Cam Akers, who recovered from an Achilles tear within six months.
Newfound medical technology is critical in disproving the longevity argument. Players in the NBA during the 1990s needed access to such advanced technology and recovery equipment. In turn, comparing the longevity of players from different eras is unfair when most came down to medical technology, which was out of the player's control.
Championship Debate
A common argument when comparing players across eras is the amount of championships the respective players have. Ordinarily, a player with more championships means that they are better. This, however, needs to be more accurate. Many all-time great players don't have rings, and this wasn't because they weren't good enough to win them. When a player is drafted by a team, various circumstances may halt them from winning a championship. At the end of the day, basketball is a team sport that requires five players on the floor, not just one. The ring argument needs to be more logical because players in different eras played under other circumstances. This may come down to the teammates they had, the strategy they used, and injuries to their second and third-best players. It is unfair to give just one team member the credit of winning an NBA championship.
Subjectiveness
Subjectiveness is a complex but critical attribute in GOAT debates. The older generation of sports fanatics will always claim that the players in their generation are better. On the other hand, the younger generation of sports viewers will claim that the players in their generation were better.
This aspect of the debate becomes highly complex because getting an ideally educated answer from a sports fan is hard. Many times, bias will overshadow reason in these debates.
Fans must be educated on the era they weren't watching, which is considerably more complex than said. The lack of proper knowledge of specific periods of basketball discourse for various people is a hindering factor when comparing players from different eras.
An Answer?
My research made me question whether debating among players from different eras is even possible, and the answer was complex. I attempted to formulate multiple answers to this question and was only left with one answer. It should be noted that a debate among players from different eras is possible but needs to be more accurate. It is impossible to accurately determine who the better player is when numerous factors change across eras.
The all-time greats from different eras should only be compared to the others during their era. This would allow debates to have accurate evidence such as stats, health, and rules. A reason behind this is that their respective eras had an alignment in rules and stats, making the numbers proportional.
Discussions at the lunch table on who is better between Lebron and Jordan will always return to who a specific viewer likes more. Anyone who says they have a clear-cut answer on who's the greatest player of all time needs to be corrected!
Part 2:
For this assignment I decided to write a sports article. My topic was about I believe that this is the perfect genre to fit what I wanted to talk about. The freedom to write while including my opinions was important to me. I was always a big fan of sports articles growing up. Outside of sports debates on television, most of my information about sports in general came from sports articles. They are still something that I enjoy to this day. Sports articles are very easy to read and contains a dense amount of information.
I did a lot of research on espn articles to figure out the style that they write with. Growing up I had read many sports articles but never paid close attention to the stylistic and formatting conventions. I first wanted to figure out how a sports article is written and what the major components of a sports article contained.
From my research I found that ESPN likes to incorporate shorter paragraphs where multiple of these paragraphs build off on another. It strays away from the norm of fitting in one idea per paragraph. This style of writing allowed me to write a paragraph for every bullet point for an underlying point that I was making. I felt like this allowed my writing to flow better due to not having large dense paragraphs. It also allows the reader to read the article with ease.
The main purpose for any sports article is to inform. This was my main focus while writing. I wanted to make sure that my article was informative with evidence. Sports articles from ESPN and other sports studios usually include a lot of data and statistics as well. I wanted to make sure that I also incorporated this into my article to make it more interesting. Sports fans are also generally very critical about sports articles. Fans closely look at articles to see what they are saying about their favorite players. This made me focus on making sure my information was correct in order to produce the best article possible.
I was able to abide by these conventions through first setting up a detailed outline. Using this outline instead of writing a paragraph for an idea, I split up the idea into six to seven sub points. Using these subpoints I would write a small paragraph for each that would be on the shorter side. I also divided the essay into 6 major key points. These key points allowed me to have sections within the article to allow it to be more free flowing and talk about numerous different ideas without worrying too much about how it all fits together.
For this article I decided to hone in on my audience. In general the audience that ESPN writes their articles for are sports fans. These fans can have a range of different backgrounds and differences in levels of knowledge. However, in ESPN articles many times they don’t focus on going into detail on certain topics because they assume their audience has previous knowledge about it. This was always a big issue for some who haven’t watched a lot of sports, because it makes it a lot harder to understand the content.
In my article, I wanted to address sports fans across the world who are interested in basketball. A major point that I focused on while writing was to ensure that my article could be read by sports fans with various backgrounds. Some fans have a vast knowledge on basketball discourse while some are newer to the topic. I wanted to make sure that my article was clear even to a fan that has recently gotten into basketball, who doesn't have a vast amount of knowledge on the topic. I did this by explaining in detail a few of the topics that only a seasoned basketball fan could recall. This could be seen when I dove deeper into talking about plus minus of a basketball player and WAR. I also explained the rule changes in detail.
Overall, I feel like my article does a good job of getting my point across. I have multiple different sections labeled as well, allowing the reader to look at certain sections in specific. This is especially important in today’s day and age because many times articles are skimmed through and sometimes readers won’t even read a large majority of it. Having separate sections gives the reader the option to look at certain areas of my article to gain more information about the topic.