There Are No GOAT Debates

I mean, there are -- but they're not very good

Novak Djokovic is by no means my favorite tennis player. I’ve never found his prickly demeanor to be endearing. It seems to fuel his play, but I don’t love watching him bark reprimands at his coaches in the box. And though his mental toughness — in my book, his foremost asset — is remarkable, I still wouldn’t call his playing style the most appealing, not compared to his two rivals for men’s GOAT status. His brilliance is endurance, both in a given match and in his illustrious career. He is as complete a player as the game has ever seen. He outlasts, and he’s still outlasting.

He’s 37 years old, the same age as Andy Murray and one year younger than Rafael Nadal, both of whom are now on their farewell tours before retirement. Nadal last won a major in 2022, Murray in 2016. Federer, who is five years Djokovic’s senior, retired two years ago, having won his last major in 2018.

Now, obviously, the fact that Djokovic is still playing would not be enough to make his case. So what? Sports are a results business, and Djokovic has them. He has more of them, and with this Olympic gold — the one accomplishment his career was missing — he adds another. #RingsCulture can be very reductive. It can also just be right. There is no hiding in tennis: no comparing the quality of the star’s supporting cast, or the freak injury to a key starter, or the way the coach manages the clock. It’s one-on-one. You win or you lose.

On Sunday, Djokovic won. He beat an absolutely incendiary rising star of the sport, a 21-year-old supernova who is a dramatically more explosive athlete at this point in their respective careers. Carlos Alcaraz has had a fantastic year, rivaling the best years of those aforementioned greats.

The youngster dominated Djokovic at Wimbledon just a few weeks ago, also capturing the French Open in June. Winning both in a row is very difficult and thus very rare. Only five others have done it: Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg, Nadal, Federer, and yes, Djokovic.

There are very few records in the sport that the Djoker does not jointly or solely hold. Without even addressing his ATP Tour accomplishments, which are no less overwhelming, the Grand Slam numbers say all you need to know.

Overall titles? Check. Finals made? Check. Semifinals made? Check. Matches won, across the whole set as well as each individual tournament. Check and check.¹

Every ATP ranking record is also his and his alone. I’ve already disclosed that he isn’t my favorite. In my heart of hearts, that’s Federer, and it will probably stay that way, though I have been loving me some Jannik Sinner of late. The sport’s in a better place than we could’ve expected with the exit of the Big Three.

Except: one of them hasn’t exited yet! Djokovic is still doing it. He has winning records against both of of them — them being Nadal and Federer — and while I might’ve preferred it was otherwise, this isn’t a debate anymore. It’s him. It’s been him. It continues to be him.

And that whole trajectory reminds me of the way a few other comparable debates have evolved over a somewhat similar time frame.

First, there was the Peyton Manning-Tom Brady thing. There was a time when people like me, who thought Manning was asked to do more and delivered a superior offensive output, considered Manning a better player in a worse situation. That was not some sacrilegious take when I was a teenager. Then, as time passed, Manning faded and Brady just kept winning. He got better and better, and he kept going so much longer. Seven Super Bowls was unheard of. Then Brady did it, and made Manning’s two look pretty pedestrian by comparison. Manning was incredible. It’s not to detract from his career to say that Brady’s was better. It is, however, the clear conclusion to draw.

The LeBron-Kobe conversation — which wasn’t a GOAT debate per se, but more of a who’s the best right now thing — traveled along similar lines. For a time, I was in the extreme minority in thinking LeBron was the better of the two.

I said all kinds of stuff about how he was a superior teammate who didn’t shoot his team out of games. I took some L’s along the way — those 2011 Finals stung — but with time and distance, it became clearer and clearer that LeBron’s body of work had ended the debate. Maybe that’s still not true for everyone. I understand that there remains a Mamba truther community.

But if you’re looking at these things objectively, you should be able to observe two things. LeBron passed Kobe a while ago, but he’ll never catch Jordan. And that’s okay! It really is. Much like Djokovic, watching LeBron continue to perform like this — he’s also rampaging through these Olympics, we must note — is a true gift that we’re just lucky to have.

These debates exist because they’re fun to have. They get people worked up, and they make for buzzy (if redundant and lazy) media fodder. LeBron vs. MJ will stick around, even if it shouldn’t. Connor McDavid vs. Wayne Gretzky is a fun one that seems comparable in a lot of ways, mainly that it isn’t very close, just like it ultimately wasn’t with Sidney Crosby before him. Then there’s Mike Trout, whose injury history sank whatever chance he had to take up baseball’s mantle, but a guy like Shohei Ohtani makes for some peak performance arguments. Baseball is a little more complicated in that you could make a pretty compelling case for three guys: Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds. Most people will tell you it’s Ruth though.

There are always more. Better athletes will continue pushing old sports to new heights. Who’s Better? will remain a question that I attempt to answer with my grandchildren, who will presumably be ignorant to every single name I’ve listed so far.

Tennis, though? That’s settled.

For now. Right, Alcaraz?

Also, This

🏀 Very fun semifinal in the men’s basketball draw. It really seemed like the U.S. was going to drop that one when Serbia held its lead through the third quarter. Then the Americans put the clamps on, KD started hitting, LeBron finished some unthinkably un-39-year-old fast breaks, and Serbia went cold from deep. That was that. Signature Curry game at the Olympics. Good stuff. Prediction: that was the only test. USA will absolutely dismantle France.

🏃 I still don’t totally understand how Noah Lyles won that 100m race. I was watching and thought he’d finished third, so you won’t catch me throwing shade at the announcer who called it for Thompson. I thought that closing speed would give him the upper hand in the 200m for sure, but he didn’t look ready for that race. Tebogo smoked him, possibly because Lyles had Covid…? I don’t know. I’ll be opting out of the social media discourse on this particular front.

🏈 There’s that NCAA vs. Michigan news drip we warned you about when Harbaugh (and several of his similarly implicated assistants) jumped to the NFL. Nothing’s gonna happen to ol’ Jim, of course, and it’s not clear if much of anything will happen to his successor in Sherrone Moore. He’ll probably get a short suspension if anything. The enforcers have left the building. They’ve got bigger problems.

📺 The Round Mound of Rebound does it again, with a predictably quick reversal on that retirement he announced this year. Yeah. This guy’s not going anywhere. Maybe the bigger surprise is that he says he’s staying with TNT, but that’s easy to say right now, when there’s still a year of NBA games left.

🏐 The North Brooklyn Baddies got rained out this week, and no, I'm not ready to talk about it. Was that my only shot? It’s just too painful to consider right now.

1. Djokovic would very likely have added to these records had he not missed several tournaments during the pandemic. Since that was a partly voluntary move on his part, I’m choosing not to dwell on the impact that had on the numbers, but there’s every reason to think that Nadal would never have won the 2022 U.S. Open had its defending champion — Djokovic — been there. Rafa hasn’t gotten a set off of Novak on a hard court since 2013. There’s just no way.