Our misguided obsession with G.O.A.T.
Who started this debate about the “The Greatest of All Time,” (a.k.a., The G.O.A.T.)?
One answer lies in the boxing and wrestling rings of the mid-20th century.
Muhammad Ali famously declared, “I am the greatest.” But he was not the first to make this proclamation. In the 1940s and ‘50s, Gorgeous George, the flamboyant professional wrestler, commanded a king’s ransom from fans who came to see him lose. Gorgeous George advised Ali, “A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So, keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous.”
Today, “The Greatest” has become “G.O.A.T.” Rapper LL Cool J coined the acronym and made it the title of his 2000 album, which debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200.
Ever since, the crown of all-time greatness has been the topic of the zeitgeist — particularly among elite athletes comparing themselves (always favorably) with those who came before them.
Today, amidst a growing crowd of G.O.A.T.s of one kind or another, LeBron James most emphatically claims the crown. He even wears one occasionally — his nickname is King James. Despite protests from Michael Jordan and fans, LeBron himself has said that he believes he is the best athlete to have played the game. But does a self-coronation make it so?
Uneasy lies the head that not only wears the crown but feels the need to remind us all.
Yet, it has always been thus. In Homer’s “Iliad,” Achilles was the G.O.A.T. — not simply for his prowess on the battlefield, but for selling an image of himself as unbeatable. In the 10th year of the Trojan War, Achilles publicly tested the G.O.A.T. appellation. He sat out the fight in a fit of pique, as if to say to his fellow Greeks, Just try winning this thing without me. They couldn’t, and Achilles secured living-legend status when they paid him public obeisance in return for his killing Hector and winning the war.
But the gods were not amused, and the telltale Achilles’ heel may have been more than the tendon at the ankle where the god Apollo guided Paris’s arrow. Achilles’ death was comeuppance for his selfconscious moodiness and blowhard self-love.
G.O.A.T.s are often not fan favorites. There is a special schadenfreude for those who fly too near the sun. The concept of hubris — the deadly cocktail of overconfidence and arrogance — finds its way into tragedies, then and now.
In the play by Euripides, “Hippolytus of Athens,” Hippolytus is an elite athlete, renowned not only for his hunting prowess but his extreme physical beauty. Not surprisingly, he is also a prig, self-righteous, and aloof. He aligns himself with the virgin huntress goddess Artemis, placing him at odds with Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Using his smug superiority against him, Aphrodite causes a series of events that lead Hippolytus to an ignominious death, his beautiful body crushed under the wheels of his own chariot.
I thought a lot about that Euripides play while watching the late Kobe Bryant during the mid-2000s — the hard years that followed his first three world championships with the Lakers, which included off-court dramas, most notably a sexual assault case.
Fans, journalists, and more than a few peers seemed to be wishing him the worst, celebrating his being caught under the chariot wheel of his own hubris.
Yet Kobe found a way back to all-time greatness — not just on the basketball court, but in family life, public esteem, and even in Hollywood, winning an Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2018. How did he do it?
By humbling himself, privately and publicly — with his wife, who stayed married to him, and with his acceptance of public vitriol. Eventually, the championships returned to L.A., and the Lakers beat their hated rivals, the Boston Celtics.
The losses along the way humanized Kobe and made his triumphs less godlike and more human. Indeed, this is something we look for in heroes, and in our G.O.A.T.s — the ability to turn difficulty, even tragedy, into learning and progress.
Why? Because we want to see ourselves in them, since we and the G.O.A.T.s are all — after all — human. I’d like to believe that each of us has within us at least one moment’s greatness, an instant of superhuman strength or unexpected courage.
Greatness is momentary, even for the G.O.A.T.s of the world. Which is why greatness should be appreciated in all its forms.
Rather than crowns or self-proclamations and the cults that they engender, perhaps the truest metric comes from another all-time great human, the late children’s TV host Fred Rogers. As he said, “Being the best loser takes talent, just as being the best winner does.”
If there is a postscript, it’s that the gods of sport are fickle. Being a self-proclaimed G.O.A.T. did not spare LeBron and his Lakers from being swept this postseason by the Denver Nuggets.
In LeBron’s post-game press conference after that defeat, his words revealed less than the gestural power of his immense frame did. At first, he was combative and clipped. Gradually, he relaxed his shoulders and reminisced about his team and family. He even found a way to smile.
Let’s hope would-be-G.O.A.T.s will take notice. This was true greatness on display.