One of the most frequent debates you will hear among sports fanatics is: Could great athletes from the past compete with current players? Would the old-time Hall of Famers still be some of the best? Or would they at best be average, or benchwarmers? Maybe they wouldn’t even be professional level today.

Take the NBA’s Luka Doncic, for example, who has made an immediate splash in the league. You’re gonna hear most modern basketball fans say that Luka would have been the GOAT if he played alongside Jordan, Magic and Bird in the 1980s. You will hear and see comments that claim Larry Bird was a scrub.

This is a laughable take, usually coming from bitter younger men who are lowkey jealous over the fact that they must depend on videos, instead of being able to see Bird and other legends in their prime, and in the moment.

One problem with these kinds of opinions is that no one ever answers our question: Are you going to take the 2022 Doncic and transport him back thirty-odd years to the so-called golden era of the NBA?

Or, as we here at With Lurv would contend is the finest comparison, are you going to cause Luka and other current hoopers to be born in the 1950s and 60s, and then become 1980s and 90s players?


Are you going to allow Wilt, Oscar, Cousy, and others to be brought up in the 21st century?

You will never hear people square up to this, because if they were honest, it would destroy their certainty about the illusion of the 2020 basketball player’s superiority. Making today’s NBA go without the conveniences of improved nutrition, footwear, travel, and, most of all, copying and fine-tuning off of previous players, would turn Luka, LeBron, Steph, and others into different dudes on the court.

And wouldn’t that work both ways? Would a Larry Bird born in 1995 be the so-called GOAT today? Why do we call people GOATs anyhow? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the GOAT title? Because last time we checked, GOAT means, Greatest Of All Time, which is singular.

When did GOAT turn into an arbitrary emoji thumbs up accolade we give to any halfway satisfactory feat that an ESPN or other Internet fact checker posted as a Did You Know?

We have questions. And you know you cannot answer them convincingly.