The Greatest of All-Time? There is no such animal...

As LeBron James and the Miami Heat inch toward an NBA Championship (incessantly giving the Dallas Mavericks opportunities, the series tied 2-2 when the Heat could be Champs already, squandering 4th quarter leads and opening the door for the world's longest use of parenthesis) the usual debate has arisen: LeBron versus Jordan...whose better making them the best player in the history of the game, theoretically.  Truthfully, sports has had very few debates about the greatest players in respective sports.  Baseball's greatest is Ruth, Soccer's is Pele, and Boxing's is Muhammad Ali...but how indisputable is the greatness of all of those players?  Think way back to the 1960's-1970'.  The greatest hockey player of all-time?  Bobby Orr, without question, that was the rumor.  No one could touch Orr, he was the greatest.  The year Orr retired, there was a rookie in the NHL named Wayne Gretzky.  "The Great One" soon became without question the Greatest Player in Hockey history.  No debate, it was Gretzky.  All the Bobby Orr disciples barked, "If he played against Bobby, he'd be a fraud."  Maybe, but we'll never know, will we?  It wasn't that Gretzky was better or that Orr was better.  It was simply people who watched Orr thought he would always be the greatest and the ones who grew up watching Gretzky play drew the opposite conclusion.  Such is the world of sports.  There is no such thing as a greatest of all-time.  Maybe the purest example is Babe Ruth.  The Great Bambino!  The Sultan of Swat!  He cannot be touched...but he played in an era without African Americans.  In fact only whites were allowed to play baseball when Ruth was making his history.  What if he had to face pitchers like C.C. Sabathia or Johan Santana (before he became bad) and pitch to hitters like every hitter in the MLB today since whites don't exist.  What if Ruth was standing in the box as Aroldis Chapman threw 105 at his head, probably wouldn't have been quite as dominant, but once again it's all speculation.  I wish we could plug Ruth into today's MLB and see how he does, but it isn't possible.  The fact of the matter is that everything is a bias.  Those who grew up during the Jordan-era echo unquestionably that Jordan is and always will be the greatest.  "He has six rings!  Call me up when Baby Bron Bron equals that!" is the unmistakable call of a Jordanian...but what does a ring matter in the end?  If rings are the benchmark isn't Bill Russel The Greatest?  I mean he won 11 championships, five more than Jordan for those who are challenged by arithmetic.  People of the 80's and 90's watched Jordan create an environment never seen in the NBA.  They bought his shoes, they pretended to be him in the driveway, and above all they watched him play.  That's why Jordan is the greatest to those people, because he is.  Jordan changed the environment of the NBA.  People say LeBron is more selfless and a better rebounder.  "Three inches and forty pounds probably help in the rebounding arena.  And a better passer?  Nah, he's a guy who doesn't want the ball.  Just because he wants to dish it off and let Dwayne Wade make or miss the shot doesn't make him a better passer!" says the Jordanian.  "Michael was accountable, he wanted the rock.  LeBron is scared to be a failure in the media thus making him into a coward on the court".  If you watched Game 4 this argument is impeccable.  However, a facilitator who scores 26.7 a game is worth a look.  And you cannot blame LeBron for being bigger than Jordan.  That's the law of the basketball jungle 99% of the time, size wins.  In the end we watch as LeBron tries to get his first of six championship rings.  The teens who never saw Jordan take a jumper snap at their fathers who call Jordan the indisputable king of basketball.  How can anyone be right?  Times change, players change.  Could LeBron have won 6 titles with Pippin, Rodman, and Kerr?  Could Jordan have accomplished the same feats as LeBron in Cleveland and then made it to where he is with Wade and Bosh?  It's naive to argue because we'll never know.  It's silly to debate because there is no comparison.  6 rings? Cool, at least LeBron was on his varsity high school team Sophomore year.  Take that.  Six Rings...it'll never end because people won't let it.  Even if LeBron wins 6 or more Championships the next generation will yield a 7-footer who can stroke it from 3 and score 40 a game, but I mean he just isn't LeBron.  The kids of that era will sputter about how LeBron couldn't rebound the way so-and-so can.  How he scored less.  The kids of this current generation, "where are so-and-so's 6 rings?"  In sooth, the 7-footer won't be as good to us because he isn't LeBron.  It wouldn't be because he isn't better than LeBron.  Which is why LeBron isn't better than Jordan, it's because he isn't Jordan.  There cannot be a greatest player of all-time because there is no omnipresent fan who has seen every NBA game and can relate to every play made by LeBron and every play made by Jordan.  Everything's a bias because in my generation it was someone else.  LeBron is never going to be as good as Michael Jordan in the minds of the fathers of today.  Not because of 6 rings, but because LeBron is not Michael Jordan.