Research: Who do NBA players say is the GOAT?

The GOAT debate in the NBA is one of the fiercest in any sport, as although Michael Jordan appeared to set the bar impossibly high, along came LeBron James to not only reach it, but possibly surpass it.

And who better to ask than NBA players, both current and former, for their thoughts on the matter?

For this piece, we compiled player responses from the past four years on who they consider the GOAT. Some of those answers predate James breaking the league’s all-time scoring record, so it’s entirely possible a few players have since changed their minds as he keeps adding to his list of league records. There’s also a generational skew to account for. Younger players are far more visible in regular media and social media, whether through quick-hitter interviews for socials or full podcast appearances, so they get asked the GOAT question much more often than their predecessors. As such, the vote is going to lean young, no matter how hard we try to make it as unbiased as possible toward any GOAT candidate.

That lean helps James, hurts Jordan and buries Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an underrated GOAT candidate with one more MVP than Jordan and two more than James.

Let’s get to our findings, which you can take a closer look at Research: Who do NBA players say.

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Out of 112 active or former players polled from one media outlet or another over the past four years, 49 picked James as the GOAT and 46 picked Jordan, with 17 votes going to other players. Out of 57 active players polled, 34 picked James (59.60 percent) and 17 picked Jordan (29.80 percent). Meanwhile, among 55 retired players, 29 picked Jordan (52.70 percent) and 15 picked James (27.30 percent).

Below, you can check out an even more detailed breakdown of the results.

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We have data from six different decades to look at here: players/ex-players born in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80, ’90s and ’00s.

The 1950s is the only decade not to go with Jordan or James, as the winner there, albeit on a small sample size, was Abdul-Jabbar, who got votes from Julius Erving, Mychal Thompson and Michael Cooper. There’s some bias at play here, of course, as Thompson and Cooper were teammates of Abdul-Jabbar during the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers days.

The 1960s are when Jordan had the most votes, as it’s his birth decade, so these are players that faced him in the ’80s and ’90s. As such, the vote went heavily to Jordan there. Only two players born in the ’60s picked James as the league’s GOAT, and of course one of them was Isiah Thomas.

The 1970s were also filled mostly with players who faced Jordan, so the vote from this decade went to him, too. Nine of the 15 ex-players born in the ’70s voted for Jordan and just four chose LeBron.

James was born in 1984, so the ’80s is a decade in which many players who would go on to be his contemporaries were born. Even so, this one didn’t shift as drastically for James as Jordan’s birth year did for him. 20 ex-players voted here, with seven going to Jordan and nine going to James, a surprisingly close number.

Also surprisingly, the ’90s vote didn’t shift that heavily to James either: of the 20 players who made their MVP pick public, eight chose Jordan and 10 picked James.

The 2000s are where James builds his lead. Of the 36 current or former players born in that decade who have named their GOAT over the past four years, 22 went with James and 10 with Jordan. That makes sense, as James entered the NBA in 2003-04, meaning he has been a dominant force for literally the entire lives of most of these guys.

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Another surprise here: Although four out of five former teammates of Jordan’s picked MJ as their GOAT, with one choosing a different player not named Jordan or James, a surprising eight former teammates of James’ picked Jordan as their GOAT, while 11 picked James. 

One of those former teammates is Mario Chalmers, who won two titles alongside James in Miami back in the early ’10s. Here’s what he had to say on the matter:

Another former James teammate and a close friend of The Chosen One to pick Jordan as his GOAT was Dwyane Wade. Former Laker teammate Dwight Howard also picked Jordan as the GOAT, as did Andre Drummond, who played with James for some time in 2020-21.

Meanwhile, the only former Jordan teammate to pick a different player than MJ as his GOAT was Scottie Pippen, who has publicly shown some resentment towards his former teammate over recent years. Pippen tabbed Magic Johnson as the NBA’s greatest.

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One would think the international vote would have gone more heavily towards Jordan. As the face of the ’92 Dream Team that took over Barcelona that summer, he has received a lot of credit for the game’s growth overseas ever since.

Even so, seven of the 11 international-born players who were asked who their GOAT is picked James, while just three picked Jordan. That was surprising, considering most international hoopers old enough to remember the ’92 Olympics would more than likely pick Jordan as their GOAT. But the international players who picked James were mostly of the younger variety.

Meanwhile, players born in the U.S. just narrowly went with Jordan over James as their GOAT, with the difference coming down to one pick.

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The data here is interesting. James won the guard vote by one and the forward vote by three, while Jordan won the center vote by one. Some of the guards who voted for James were younger players like Edgecombe, Darryn Peterson and Austin Reaves, while older guards like JR Smith, Dwyane Wade and Magic Johnson went with James. Two young guards who picked Jordan, interestingly enough, were Stephon Castle and Anthony Edwards.

Besides Thomas, slightly older guards who picked James were Jeff Teague and Eddie Johnson.

Kobe Bryant’s five GOAT votes came almost entirely from guards, which makes sense, as Bryant had a stranglehold on NBA fandom in the 2000s and early 2010s. The players who tabbed Bryant as their GOAT were Brandon Jennings, Jalen Williams, James Harden, Robert Horry and Trevor Ariza.

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The results for Hall of Famers vs. non-Hall of Famers in the GOAT debate make perfect sense, as it’s already been established that the older vote skews Jordan while the younger vote leans heavily toward James. Players enshrined in Springfield, who must be retired for three seasons before they become eligible, went heavily with Jordan: 12 to two.

In 10 years, that will look far different, as more former James foes will be in the Hall of Fame then.

Among non-Hall of Famers, 47 went with James while 34 went with Jordan.

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Interestingly enough, James is tied with Bryant for GOAT picks among former MVP winners, with both trailing Jordan by three votes here. According to our database, James has just one GOAT vote from a former MVP, and that vote came from himself (via TMZ):

Seems LeBron James does indeed think he’s passed Michael Jordan as the NBA’s best ever … ’cause during a backyard hoops session with his son on Thursday night, he bragged repeatedly that he’s the “G.O.A.T.!!!”

Seems LeBron James does indeed think he’s passed Michael Jordan as the NBA’s best ever … ’cause during a backyard hoops session with his son on Thursday night, he bragged repeatedly that he’s the “G.O.A.T.!!!”

Even so, Wembanyama, as we mentioned, picked James as his GOAT, and he’s very likely to win an MVP someday, based on his quick ascension, so this should change at some point.

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Finally, among players who have been All-Stars, Jordan took the vote by seven players, while among players who have never been All-Stars, James took the vote by 10.

This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Research: Who do NBA players say is the GOAT?