If you’ve been anywhere near a television or computer, you’ve likely heard discussions about whether LeBron James compares to Michael Jordan or even Kobe Bryant.
The arguments rage across the media spectrum, whether it’s Skip Bayless yelling at Stephen A. Smith about how LeBron lacks a clutch gene like Kobe, or a person on Twitter with an egg as his avatar arguing that James is the best player to put on a headband.
These discussions don’t stop at the LeBron and Jordan comparisons. They span across the spectrum of sports, with at least one game per year being labeled the “Game of the Century” and certain teams becoming the greatest single collection of talent ever assembled.
This is, unfortunately, what the sports world has devolved to: arguing about legacies of things that haven’t even reached their finality.
The argument against LeBron is that he lacks the number of championships that Jordan accumulated (six) during the course of his 15-year career. What that point of view fails to realize is that LeBron has only played nine years in the NBA and his career, barring a catastrophic injury, is far from over.
I’m not saying that he’s better than Jordan, or vice versa, but why have the argument when his career is just now reaching its apex?
It’s the same as saying that any collection of players is the best team ever assembled or the team of the decade.
If I were to tell you before the season that a team that had Kobe, Steve Nash, Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol would be floundering in the bottom of Western Conference, would you believe it?
That’s why they play the games.
We’ve become impatient as a society when it comes to sports. People demand predictions, results and trade scenarios from analysts on a daily basis and they feed it back to the general public because it’s what they want.
ESPN has fed off the idea of debate-based television, and it shows with a look at its daily lineup. Turn on the ESPN network of channels and there’s First Take, Numbers Never Lie, SportsNation, Around the Horn, and Pardon the Interruption, all debating whether Joe Flacco and Eli Manning are truly “elite” (another arbitrary sports media buzzword) or which Canadian League Football team Tim Tebow will end up with.
As sports fans, we should demand more. Instead of “debating” whether or not Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are the greatest baseball players to grace the game, let’s demand a wait-and-see approach with detailed analysis of the seasons they’ve had and improved reporting regarding little-covered sports such as hockey.
Sports media, despite its bright spots like Grantland and Sports on Earth, is broken, and it’s about time someone stepped up to fix it.
Christian Hoppens is a sophomore studying journalism and a staff writer for The Post. Email him at ch203310@ohiou.edu.
