It’s amazing that nobody sees the similarities.

You’d think they’d know just from arguing in favor of their own favorites that their own perspectives are contextualized for time and place.

Like arguing A Tribe Called Quest versus The Migos.

Who your favorite is probably depends on your age group.

If you’re younger, you might respect that Tribe shit, but you be hard pressed to explain to some geezer why The Migos are what they are.

If you’re older, all that new shit sounds the same to you anyway.

Similarly, when people get to arguing about basketball, as Michael Jordan himself – easily the best 2-guard to ever play and I won’t accept a counter argument – set folks to doing by positing that Kobe Bryant’s 5 rings make him better than LeBron because LeBron only has 3, a position that I do not, by the way, agree with, everybody on Twitter starting bringing up Bill Russell because he famously has 11.

What bothers me tho, is that too many people were bringing him up sarcastically.

Like, yeah, then this old fucker’s The Goat.

Well, you know what?

Yeah, he is!

I know I’ve written this before but if you’ve got the most rings, as Russell does with 11 and all 11 of your teammates changed around you while you played, then you certainly have an advantage over most, Jordan in particular, in the Greatest of All Time argument, if only because Jordan never won a ring with teammate and sidekick Scottie Pippen and, quite honestly if anybody really wanted to be a dick, they could argue that Jordan was actually Scottie’s sidekick because during Jordan’s first retirement, Scottie took the eventual Eastern Conference Champion Knicks to Game 7 in the semis and in their pursuits with other teams, Scottie went to the playoffs with the Rockets and the Trailblazers while Jordan ain’t take his Wizards team nowhere.

Also, Mike never got out of the first round without Scottie as a teammate.

Now, Russell takes a beating because at 15.1 ppg, he didn’t really score that much and his 44% FG meant that his shooting percentage was for shit, but his 22.5 rebounds per are and were nothing to sneeze at and if you’re keeping it all the way real and know basketball, then you understand that in a league where almost everybody comes scoring, a guy that voluntarily does everything else becomes the most valuable person on the squad.

Why do you think Dennis Rodman got 5 rings?

What’s Golden State without Draymond Green?

Jordan having the highest ever ppg scoring average is the real reason most imbeciles think he’s the best, which would make, in order, Jordan, Wilt, Elgin Baylor, Kevin Durant (so far), LeBron (so far), Jerry West, Allen Iverson, Bob Pettit, George Gervin and Oscar Robertson the 10 best players in history.

Now, does that sound right to you?

No Shaq, Magic, Kobe, Duncan or Bird?

And, of course, Russell won his last two as Player/Coach.

So, basically, if you were putting together a team and wanted to win, then you’d certainly grab first a guy that won in his very first season in the league and 10 more times over the course of 12 more years way before you’d get a guy that took 7 years to discipline himself enough to win, burning through 4 head coaches along the way.

If Mike was the Goat, then he’d have come in winning and left winning – like Russell – and he did neither.

Sorry.