How many have a logical case for GOAT?

[AMW27]

We tend to forget about George Mikan when ranking the top players of all time.

Sent from my LM-Q710(FGN) using RealGM mobile app

[Jaivl]

You completely misunderstand the hierarchy of how things work in soccer. While I don't personally like the system, as far as success is concerned in the eyes of soccer fandom..

1. World Cup/Copa America/Euros
2. Champions league
3. Everything else

This is rich. You're calling it soccer and telling me the football equivalent of "water is wet". Did I give the impression that I don't know which trophy means the most? You haven't said anything that disputes what I said. I'll say again:
1. Messi is one of the most successful football players of all time. Karl is not close to that in basketball.
2. Ronaldo just had a phenomenal 5-year run. It's a feat for Ronaldo, not an anti-feat for Messi

When the 2014 wc arrived, soccer media and the public put a milestone messi would have to cross to be considered goat.

1. Win a world cup.
2. Have a assist/goal in the international final

Messi was the best player in the 2014 world cup but he didn't win and that sentiment was repeated post the world cup.
Then we got the copa america, where the milestone was changed to
1. Win an international title
2. Score a goal/assist

Again, Messi was he best player in the tournament but he still wasn't considered goat because he had failed to win in the biggest stage.

Your milestone No. 2 is made up. It was simply to win the world cup in 2014. Noone would've cared about his stats in the finals if Argentina had won. See "coach Ronaldo" winning his oh so special international trophy while cheering from the sidelines for reference.
For the bold, I personally felt that he was not the best player in the WC. He was the best player who happened to play in
the WC though. FIFA and the media were pandering to Messi to an embarassing degree, culminating in that consolation prize golden ball they gave him at the end of the tournament. He disappeared throughout the knockout stages.
Them lowering the bar to just "win an international trophy", and him subsequently choking in the Copa didn't help my image of him either.

Which is the soccer equivalent of stacking olympic medals and conference final apps. A la liga holds next to no weight compared to a champions league or a euro or a copa. Messi didn't become goat through winning, he became goat through longetivty.

No. The football equivalent of stacking olympic medals is......stacking olympic medals. It's a thing in football too. And no, freaking conference finals apps are not as important as a La Liga or Copa del Rey. The conference finals is literally the semifinals of the NBA championship. A conference finals app is the same as winning a quarter finals tie in the UCL. That's laughably unimpressive.
You may not know this, but these are all separate competitions. The top teams compete in at least 3 major competitions every season, each of which start from matchday one or group stages. Every season, teams have to juggle lineups in order to balance the fatigue and injury risk that comes with playing 2 or even 3 big matches in a week. Some years teams just flat out give up on moderately big competitions like the Europa league and send their B-teams to play knockout games in favour of keeping their starters fresh for a marquee league match that will affect their league title chances.
We can all appreciate that there's only one major trophy in basketball, but that doesn't mean that every trophy in other sports has to be placed on some stupid scale where the NBA title is the highest level. League titles and domestic cups have no equivalent in basketball, don't force it.

Messi was considered > Ronaldo, he was also considered < maradona and pele. Ronaldo won a lot to "catch up" was considered messi/goat level durng the winning, but once it stopped, Messi became a near unanimous goat. Winning gets you hype when it happens. As time passes it stops holding weight. Ronaldo goat consideration is now roughly on par with kobe goat consideration in popularity.

He did not stop winning. His and Barca's trophy cabinet continues to grow every year. I keep saying this. Messi didn't win a UCL between 2011 and 2015, and that period contained arguably his greatest and most hyped years. He was still tearing everyone apart then. Where do you think the hype you're talking about came from? He was just playing the best football anyone's ever seen, that's what it came down to with Messi. Sure the trophies followed naturally, but you just knew that it didn't get better than that. This is why I said that you had to have been following it in real time to get it.

Messi is missing the soccer equivalent of an nba title. Hence karl malone is an apt comparison.

Umm no he is not. The football equivalent of the NBA title is the UCL trophy. The NBA title is nothing before the WC. The WC is seen as a sort of holy grail in the football world that stops the entire world in it's tracks every 4 years. It's so elusive, and that's why Pele winning 3 has given him a godlike status among fans. So far I've been trying really hard not to get into the context of why Messi and Ronaldo can't win the world cup when clearly inferior players like Cannavaro, Ronaldinho, fat Ronaldo, Klose, Lahm, Iniesta, Torres, Henry, heck even Griezman and Pogba have won it. I'm sure you know that this is a huuuge huuuge discussion which would have its own thread that would go on for a loooong long time. Lmao @ the NBA title being close to that level of significance.

Pele has more goals per game, chances created per game, dribbles taken on per game, and basically evert per game stat you can think of over peak messi, and it's by a significant margin too. Mess's goat worthy resume is based on longevity, not peak. Ronaldo's "goat case" is also based on longetvity.

Not too surprising tbh. Pele was the Wilt/Russell combo of his era. Plus the rules and competition back then inject some context into it, but that's another story.
Longevity on its own means very little in football. If it doesn't come along with team success, it means jack. The only one whose legacy has received any meaningful bump from the past few years is Ronaldo, and that's because he won 4 UCLs in 5 years. At both their peaks (which again, the football gods made sure to align for us), Messi was by far the better player, and was actually the best we'd ever seen. Contrary to what you believe, he continues to win meaningful trophies because he's that good.
Any GOAT case about Messi that does not include his peak is a ridiculous one.

Agree with the general sentiment, but just to clarify, olympic medals are worth next to nothing on football, as the Olympics is a glorified sub23 trophy. In fact, Messi has a gold medal himself, lol.

[freethedevil]

You completely misunderstand the hierarchy of how things work in soccer. While I don't personally like the system, as far as success is concerned in the eyes of soccer fandom..

1. World Cup/Copa America/Euros
2. Champions league
3. Everything else

This is rich. You're calling it soccer and telling me the football equivalent of "water is wet". Did I give the impression that I don't know which trophy means the most? You haven't said anything that disputes what I said. I'll say again:
1. Messi is one of the most successful football players of all time. Karl is not close to that in basketball.
2. Ronaldo just had a phenomenal 5-year run. It's a feat for Ronaldo, not an anti-feat for Messi

When the 2014 wc arrived, soccer media and the public put a milestone messi would have to cross to be considered goat.

1. Win a world cup.
2. Have a assist/goal in the international final

Messi was the best player in the 2014 world cup but he didn't win and that sentiment was repeated post the world cup.
Then we got the copa america, where the milestone was changed to
1. Win an international title
2. Score a goal/assist

Again, Messi was he best player in the tournament but he still wasn't considered goat because he had failed to win in the biggest stage.

Your milestone No. 2 is made up. It was simply to win the world cup in 2014. Noone would've cared about his stats in the finals if Argentina had won. See "coach Ronaldo" winning his oh so special international trophy while cheering from the sidelines for reference.
For the bold, I personally felt that he was not the best player in the WC. He was the best player who happened to play in
the WC though. FIFA and the media were pandering to Messi to an embarassing degree, culminating in that consolation prize golden ball they gave him at the end of the tournament. He disappeared throughout the knockout stages.
Them lowering the bar to just "win an international trophy", and him subsequently choking in the Copa didn't help my image of him either.

Which is the soccer equivalent of stacking olympic medals and conference final apps. A la liga holds next to no weight compared to a champions league or a euro or a copa. Messi didn't become goat through winning, he became goat through longetivty.

No. The football equivalent of stacking olympic medals is......stacking olympic medals. It's a thing in football too. And no, freaking conference finals apps are not as important as a La Liga or Copa del Rey. The conference finals is literally the semifinals of the NBA championship. A conference finals app is the same as winning a quarter finals tie in the UCL. That's laughably unimpressive.
You may not know this, but these are all separate competitions. The top teams compete in at least 3 major competitions every season, each of which start from matchday one or group stages. Every season, teams have to juggle lineups in order to balance the fatigue and injury risk that comes with playing 2 or even 3 big matches in a week. Some years teams just flat out give up on moderately big competitions like the Europa league and send their B-teams to play knockout games in favour of keeping their starters fresh for a marquee league match that will affect their league title chances.
We can all appreciate that there's only one major trophy in basketball, but that doesn't mean that every trophy in other sports has to be placed on some stupid scale where the NBA title is the highest level. League titles and domestic cups have no equivalent in basketball, don't force it.

Messi was considered > Ronaldo, he was also considered < maradona and pele. Ronaldo won a lot to "catch up" was considered messi/goat level durng the winning, but once it stopped, Messi became a near unanimous goat. Winning gets you hype when it happens. As time passes it stops holding weight. Ronaldo goat consideration is now roughly on par with kobe goat consideration in popularity.

He did not stop winning.

He added trophies which meant nothing in comparison to what prior goat candidates had won. So yes, as far as a goat cse is concerned, he stopped winning. That stretch you're foaming over made him goat worthy because of sustained play. It's anagolous to lebron's 2017 and 2018 play where he was atg in the postseason but didn't win the titles that really mattered. If Lebron ha dlost the 2016 final, we would have a similar stretch to messi's post his last ucl.

Umm no he is not. The football equivalent of the NBA title is the UCL trophy.

The nba title is the most prestigious and highest honor you can win in basketball. The world cup is the highest honor you can win in soccer. This isn't about soccer vs basketball. And Ronaldo has own both a euro and now a nations league, two international titles. You can backflip all you want, Messi's "success" case is weak.

Longevity on its own means very little in football. If it doesn't come along with team success, it means jack. /quote]

And yet it gave Messi a big boost despite him failing to win either of the two most important trophies. So no, you're wrong, the first and primary argument made for messi and ronaldo is how long they've mantained they level of play. "No one has done this for ten years". Messi's peak isn't clearly goat, and it honestly doesn't hold up to pele's, so no, the peak helps, but it is clearly the sustained # of years playign at that level that have given him the edge.

This is rich. You're calling it soccer and telling me the football equivalent of "water is wet". Did I give the impression that I don't know which trophy means the most?

If you understand that, then you shoudln't be making arguments that ignore that premise. Messi has failed to win the most important tile in football, all of his goat rivals. Messi is not close to the likes of pele and maradona as far as winning is concerned. and he's behind ronaldo. That's literally all that's relevant to my post

[freethedevil]

Messi is not the consensus GOAT. Not even close.

Pretty much every poll disagrees with you, but okay.

[freethedevil]

I am arguing against this framing:

Messi was seen as someone who never won when it mattered and 4 years later he's consensus goat despite failing to win anything post 2014 and his own contemporary three peating and winning multiple international titles.

The first part is outright untrue in a meaningful sense, the second part is not representative of his accomplishments, and the third part itself suggests that the first part was never seriously in play.

I find his argument weird. Obviously we all agree that team success isn't the be all end all, but using Messi of all people as an argument that a GOAT candidate can just go on a 4 year drought and inexplicably get elevated into GOAT status during said drought when everything about Messi contradicts that is weird. Just make your case without reaching so hard on a sport I'm assuming you're not as familiar with as you are with basketball.

I know vastly more about soccer than i do about basketball. And given your takes, that's more than you know.

[freethedevil]

You guys are giving KG some airtime in a thread he has no business in. Please stop.

He has as much business as Duncan does, deal with it.

You can stand up for Maurice without resorting to absurdities like this.

From the clown who thinks ronaldo has a case for goat?

[freethedevil]

Interestingly enough, during the Top 100 projects I always preach the idea of taking the GOAts of each era, and then comparing. Mikan at one point the hands down GOAT, though that ended in the 60's. Still, he's on the ballot, evne if his era weighs him down heavily.

If we took the GOats of each era, that would be the ebst ballot simply because each player can say they were ebst of their time.

50s - Mikan
60s - Russell
70s - KAJ
80s - Magic
90s - MJ
00s - Kobe
10s - Lebron

Players like Wilt, Bird, Duncan, weren't the best of their era, and really don't fit by proxy. Shaq had a great 3 year run in the 00s, but a lackluster 90s, and is more about the arguable GOAt peak than career.

He was a great system player,.

The spurs needed their "great system" player more than the lakers ever needed kobe. Much like the wolves and the celtics needed their "great system player" than the lakers ever needed kobe, just like the lakers needed shaq, another "system player" more than they ever needed kobe.

"Great system player" = multi-facited and versatile. And versatile players are generally more valuable than less versatile ones, hence why they improve their teams more, won or lose.

[An Unbiased Fan]

The case for Duncan, without using any analytics, is that he was a comfortably better player up until 2008, regardless of whether the Spurs had any wing players to effectively guard Kobe.

Except he wasn't, and we saw that on display in 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2008, when Kobe/TD's teams met and Kobe was the best player on the floor. TD is the guy hoeld the Dream team to an Olympic loss.....Kobe is the one who brought gold back. Kobe was 4-1 against TD in the playoffs during the 2000s. Kobe had two seperate mutil-title teams with almost two different rosters outside of Fisher. if we go without analytics, its easily Kobe which is why he was voted player of the decade.

[homecourtloss]

[quote="bledredwine"]
Kobe is better than Garnett because Kobe was a better player than Garnett, period and even Garnett said so.[/quote]

This is literally a textbook example of the Begging the Question fallacy.

[img]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0e/31/7a/0e317af388ca2014717c492de2c4ee55.png[/img]

[An Unbiased Fan]

He was a great system player,.

The spurs needed their "great system" player more than the lakers ever needed kobe. Much like the wolves and the celtics needed their "great system player" than the lakers ever needed kobe, just like the lakers needed shaq, another "system player" more than they ever needed kobe.

"Great system player" = multi-facited and versatile. And versatile players are generally more valuable than less versatile ones, hence why they improve their teams more, won or lose.

Lakers had Shaq and system players in the late 90s....and didn't win anything. Kobe won 3 with Shaq and 2 more without him. Shaq never won a ring here without Kobe, and only won in 2006 because Wade went videogame mode. If West doesn't bring over Kobe in 97', Shaq doesn't win anything in LA.

[liamliam1234]

And if Pau Gasol is not brought over, Kobe never wins anything without Shaq.

[Baski]

Agree with the general sentiment, but just to clarify, olympic medals are worth next to nothing on football, as the Olympics is a glorified sub23 trophy. In fact, Messi has a gold medal himself, lol.

True. They're pretty meaningless, a little more than in basketball in fact, but ironically they're harder to win in football. Imagine thinking something as ridiculous as comparing the Olympics to a La Liga or Copa del Rey

[bledredwine]

And if Pau Gasol is not brought over, Kobe never wins anything without Shaq.

And if Ray allen, Paul Pierce, Rondo,

Actually never mind.

[Baski]

You completely misunderstand the hierarchy of how things work in soccer. While I don't personally like the system, as far as success is concerned in the eyes of soccer fandom..

1. World Cup/Copa America/Euros
2. Champions league
3. Everything else

This is rich. You're calling it soccer and telling me the football equivalent of "water is wet". Did I give the impression that I don't know which trophy means the most? You haven't said anything that disputes what I said. I'll say again:
1. Messi is one of the most successful football players of all time. Karl is not close to that in basketball.
2. Ronaldo just had a phenomenal 5-year run. It's a feat for Ronaldo, not an anti-feat for Messi

When the 2014 wc arrived, soccer media and the public put a milestone messi would have to cross to be considered goat.

1. Win a world cup.
2. Have a assist/goal in the international final

Messi was the best player in the 2014 world cup but he didn't win and that sentiment was repeated post the world cup.
Then we got the copa america, where the milestone was changed to
1. Win an international title
2. Score a goal/assist

Again, Messi was he best player in the tournament but he still wasn't considered goat because he had failed to win in the biggest stage.

Your milestone No. 2 is made up. It was simply to win the world cup in 2014. Noone would've cared about his stats in the finals if Argentina had won. See "coach Ronaldo" winning his oh so special international trophy while cheering from the sidelines for reference.
For the bold, I personally felt that he was not the best player in the WC. He was the best player who happened to play in
the WC though. FIFA and the media were pandering to Messi to an embarassing degree, culminating in that consolation prize golden ball they gave him at the end of the tournament. He disappeared throughout the knockout stages.
Them lowering the bar to just "win an international trophy", and him subsequently choking in the Copa didn't help my image of him either.

Which is the soccer equivalent of stacking olympic medals and conference final apps. A la liga holds next to no weight compared to a champions league or a euro or a copa. Messi didn't become goat through winning, he became goat through longetivty.

No. The football equivalent of stacking olympic medals is......stacking olympic medals. It's a thing in football too. And no, freaking conference finals apps are not as important as a La Liga or Copa del Rey. The conference finals is literally the semifinals of the NBA championship. A conference finals app is the same as winning a quarter finals tie in the UCL. That's laughably unimpressive.
You may not know this, but these are all separate competitions. The top teams compete in at least 3 major competitions every season, each of which start from matchday one or group stages. Every season, teams have to juggle lineups in order to balance the fatigue and injury risk that comes with playing 2 or even 3 big matches in a week. Some years teams just flat out give up on moderately big competitions like the Europa league and send their B-teams to play knockout games in favour of keeping their starters fresh for a marquee league match that will affect their league title chances.
We can all appreciate that there's only one major trophy in basketball, but that doesn't mean that every trophy in other sports has to be placed on some stupid scale where the NBA title is the highest level. League titles and domestic cups have no equivalent in basketball, don't force it.

Messi was considered > Ronaldo, he was also considered < maradona and pele. Ronaldo won a lot to "catch up" was considered messi/goat level durng the winning, but once it stopped, Messi became a near unanimous goat. Winning gets you hype when it happens. As time passes it stops holding weight. Ronaldo goat consideration is now roughly on par with kobe goat consideration in popularity.

He did not stop winning.

He added trophies which meant nothing in comparison to what prior goat candidates had won. So yes, as far as a goat cse is concerned, he stopped winning. That stretch you're foaming over made him goat worthy because of sustained play. It's anagolous to lebron's 2017 and 2018 play where he was atg in the postseason but didn't win the titles that really mattered. If Lebron ha dlost the 2016 final, we would have a similar stretch to messi's post his last ucl.

Umm no he is not. The football equivalent of the NBA title is the UCL trophy.

The nba title is the most prestigious and highest honor you can win in basketball. The world cup is the highest honor you can win in soccer. This isn't about soccer vs basketball. And Ronaldo has own both a euro and now a nations league, two international titles. You can backflip all you want, Messi's "success" case is weak.

Longevity on its own means very little in football. If it doesn't come along with team success, it means jack. /quote]

And yet it gave Messi a big boost despite him failing to win either of the two most important trophies. So no, you're wrong, the first and primary argument made for messi and ronaldo is how long they've mantained they level of play. "No one has done this for ten years". Messi's peak isn't clearly goat, and it honestly doesn't hold up to pele's, so no, the peak helps, but it is clearly the sustained # of years playign at that level that have given him the edge.

This is rich. You're calling it soccer and telling me the football equivalent of "water is wet". Did I give the impression that I don't know which trophy means the most?

If you understand that, then you shoudln't be making arguments that ignore that premise. Messi has failed to win the most important tile in football, all of his goat rivals. Messi is not close to the likes of pele and maradona as far as winning is concerned. and he's behind ronaldo. That's literally all that's relevant to my post

You're still repeating your same bad take like you read nothing I said. Carry on if you like.

[Baski]

I am arguing against this framing:



The first part is outright untrue in a meaningful sense, the second part is not representative of his accomplishments, and the third part itself suggests that the first part was never seriously in play.

I find his argument weird. Obviously we all agree that team success isn't the be all end all, but using Messi of all people as an argument that a GOAT candidate can just go on a 4 year drought and inexplicably get elevated into GOAT status during said drought when everything about Messi contradicts that is weird. Just make your case without reaching so hard on a sport I'm assuming you're not as familiar with as you are with basketball.

I know vastly more about soccer than i do about basketball. And given your takes, that's more than you know.

I'm not here to engage in a dick measuring contest with you. You've made some uninformed takes that sound like stuff you read retroactively from Wikipedia and Sky sports. Not the kind of stuff someone who was following the game back then (or ever) would say. La Liga and Copa del Rey=Conf finals apps for example. You can beat your chest all you want but your own posts show what you know

[Baski]

He has as much business as Duncan does, deal with it.

You can stand up for Maurice without resorting to absurdities like this.

From the clown who thinks ronaldo has a case for goat?

[kendogg]

Yeah in terms of the 00's greats it is Shaq, Kobe and Duncan at the top 3 spots for sure. You can argue about order but those 3 are pretty solidified as top 3. I don't think anyone else has a reasonable case for 00's greatest. Then you got Wade, Garnett, Iverson, Dirk, LeBron in the next tier (LeBron did most of his work in the 10's). Perhaps some others but none of those guys have a case for 00's greatest except Shaq, Kobe and Duncan. And really it is probably between Shaq and Kobe as I think most would agree the best team of the decade is the early 00's Lakers. Kobe is the more skilled player and had the longer career but Shaq peaked higher. It's extremely hard but not impossible to slow peak Kobe by a significant amount. It is actually impossible to slow Shaq. Teams would literally double him without the ball to deny him. And playoffs Shaq is also a monster on the boards and as a rim protector.

[70sFan]

Wait, not sure if I read it correctly, but Pele definitely has case over Messi in terms of peak. The only thing you can question is his era and I don't like doing that because he couldn't pick the year when he was born. Besides, you can watch his games and his abilities can't be doubted. He was extremely talented player, likely the most talented and versatile forward in football history. He didn't have any weakness and his techique puts in shame a lot of modern "magicians".

[Baski]

Wait, not sure if I read it correctly, but Pele definitely has case over Messi in terms of peak. The only thing you can question is his era and I don't like doing that because he couldn't pick the year when he was born. Besides, you can watch his games and his abilities can't be doubted. He was extremely talented player, likely the most talented and versatile forward in football history. He didn't have any weakness and his techique puts in shame a lot of modern "magicians".

This is definitely a fair take, but like you said, the era thing still hangs over his career. However, like Russell and Wilt, he dominated them and won a lot, so it's not much of a direct knock on him. Still, there's been a lot of discussion over the years trying to discredit him such as the bizarre "there was no offside in his time" argument and some rumours about him not really scoring over 1200 goals among others. There was also a huge marketing campaign behind him and the Brazillian national team, similar to Nike pushing Jordan. Except this one was mostly over the radio, where people had to believe what they heard about this juggernaut and their young talented superstar without the visual confirmation (TV's weren't that common when he was young, and those who did have them had to suffer through 3-day old highlights and games where the 1st half got cut out) of what they were hearing. To his credit, Pele grew into the hype and delivered, but he was a myth before he became a legend. Brazil was quite the powerhouse, as they have always been, and of the available games, there were many games where Pele was subpar but it didn't matter because Brazil was STACKED. As a plus for Pele, there are cases to be made that the South American leagues were the strongest they've ever been back then by virtue of having some of the best players in the world.
You'll get some pushback on his abilities though. Watching some of his full games, I found him to be technically (as in technique-wise) inferior to Maradona and Messi (while still very impressive overall. He was clearly the best on the pitch most matches). Pele in 2006-2018 might be even better than he was back then, but I get the feeling he'd still be inferior to Messi whenever they shared the pitch.

[Amares]

Not sure why it went to football GOAT, unending topic that never gives the right answer.