LISTEN: NBA Top 75 GOAT; Dirk Nowitzki & Other Mavs Rank?
The debate around what defines 'greatness' in sports is never-ending. Everyone has their own opinion. Somewhere along the way, we decide what makes a player great in our heads, and often times we'll attach a name with that idea and run with it.
Most Dallas Mavericks fans probably consider Dirk Nowitzki as the GOAT (greatest of all time). In reality, despite being the city of Dallas' GOAT, Nowitzki isn't that for the NBA at large, although he does fall somewhere on the list of other NBA GOATs.
There is no surefire way to determine who is the GOAT (greatest of all time) in each sport, especially when it comes to comparing athletes across multiple generations. The games evolve, the science around fitness evolves, and the attention that we pay to athletes has gone from huddling around a radio to hear a play-by-play of the game, to watching the game on your HDTV, watching highlights on your phone, checking your fantasy lineup, and seeing who your favorite players follow on Instagram to determine if they’re about to go ring-chasing..
To Mike Bibbins from the Mavs Outsiders podcast, greatness isn’t just about how talented a player is. It’s not, “who would win if these two players played 1-on-1?” Greatness is about your abilities, of course, and what you were able to accomplish with those abilities.
Statistically, did the player dominate the box score? Did the player dominate an era? Did they stake their claim as the best in the game as compared to their peers at the time?
Did they win?
For the NBA's 75th Anniversary, Bibs decided to list the top-75 players of all-time according to his 'GOAT' formula, which is explained at length in each episode. Today's episode features the countdown from No. 30-21 on the GOAT list, but you can catch up on all the previous episodes here before getting to that most-recent one at the bottom. You can also find out where Mavs legends such as Nowitzki, Jason Kidd and Alex English fall on the list:
For each player, Bibs gives you their profile, the list of accolades that went into their ranking, and tries to provide some interesting facts that you may not have known about them. Now is the perfect time to jump in as the series moves closer to the top-20 players of all time before the NBA All-Star break!
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