There has been a Charles Barkley LeBron James feud of sorts going on for some time. The former played in the 1980’s and 90s and hasn’t given any love to the new generation of players or the way the game is played today. In 2017, Barkley called James “whiny” and accused him of stacking teams to win, rather than compete for a title. He softened a little bit later, calling James’ career a great story.
It was Barkley’s newest comment on James that raised eyebrows, though. In an interview with Stephen A Smith, the former 76er said of the player joining his old team, “If they can win two more now. I didn’t say one more. You said two more. If he wins two more, I think you’d have to be kind of crazy not to say he’s the best to ever do it.”
The idea of Barkley calling anyone but his best friend (Michael Jordan) the greatest basketball player of all time seems far-fetched. The fact he would consider saying it about James is even crazier, given their history. Since his comments aired, they’ve been replayed millions of times, converted into reels, shorts, and TikTok videos. His words have been used as ammunition for those who have been calling James the GOAT for a decade or more.
Is The Charles Barkley LeBron James Comment Accurate?
It’s not a simple yes or no answer. It’s actually yes and no. The G in GOAT stands for greatest, and the term greatest is an opinionated word. There is no greatest anything, nor has there ever been. There are only opinions about what is and isn’t the greatest, and while some may believe that if the majority of people share the same opinion, then the opinion becomes a fact. That’s simply not true.
Opinions can’t become facts, any more than fat can be turned into muscle. They are two completely different and separate things. In a recent poll about what America’s favorite ice cream flavor is, chocolate beat out vanilla. Does this mean that Chocolate is the greatest flavor, or just the most popular? Choosing the greatest basketball player is nothing shy of choosing a favorite. If Barkley calls LeBron the GOAT, then it’s true, or true to him at least, but he doesn’t get to decide for the rest of the world.
There is no statistic, metric, or measurement to determine conclusively who the best basketball player of all time is. When people use stats to support their choice (rings, stats, stats per game), all they are doing is choosing their favorite stat to support their favorite player’s claim to the title. The crazy part is, they usually ignore the stat they choose when it doesn’t support their argument, even though they give it 100% credibility when it does.
Case in point: When a person says Jordan is better than LeBron because he has six titles and LeBron has four, they are claiming that rings determine greatness. When Robert Horry and his seven rings are brought up, rings don’t count anymore. They’ll say it’s the most rings for the best player on a team. Retorting to their new argument with “Bill Russell,” they will change their argument yet again.
Someone might bring up stats or records, then is told about Wilt Chamberlain, and says that stats and records don’t count if not in the right era. They are trying to prove who the greatest is by using a fact, but there are no facts to support the greatest. Once again, greatest is an opinionated term, and therefore, the greatest player of all time is just an opinion (can’t be proven).
So, if James does win two titles in a row, giving him six, and Barkley calls him the GOAT, he will be speaking only for himself, and in that case, he is 100% right. James will be the greatest in his opinion. If Barkley tries to say James is the “undisputed” GOAT, he will be 100% wrong. There will never be a player that everyone agrees is the GOAT, and even if they did, it still wouldn’t be true. It would just be a popular opinion.
