If Lakers Win Again This Year, Is LeBron James The NBA GOAT?

An expert weighs in.

Following a stellar 104-101 Game 4 home win against the Golden State Warriors, your Los Angeles Lakers stand one game away from ousting the defending champs and advancing to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2020.

Suddenly, it's not so crazy to wonder if a 43-39 team that would be the technical underdog in every single series throughout these playoffs has a chance of actually making the NBA Finals once again. A title series berth this year would mark the 11th such appearance for 19-time LA All-Star small forward LeBron James. Los Angeles is presently the favorite to emerge out of the West among Las Vegas oddsmakers.

If James actually pulls off the improbable and wins his fifth NBA title, does that move the future first-ballot Hall of Famer any closer to all-time NBA GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) status?

In a recent appearance on First Take, ESPN's Stephen A. Smith noted that, yes, another title could inch James a bit closer to former Chicago Bulls shooting guard Michael Jordan, generally considered the best player in league history. Ex-Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and former Boston Celtics center Bill Russell are the other all-timers generally considered to be in that best-ever conversation. 

If LeBron wins a fifth NBA title, @stephenasmith says "it would warrant a discussion" of passing MJ on the basketball Mount Rushmore 👀 pic.twitter.com/YR3tuBkCpu

— First Take (@FirstTake) May 9, 2023

"I will acknowledge that I have found it insulting for anybody to think that [James] belongs above Michael Jordan," Smith noted. "If he were to win a fifth title this year, I would no longer feel insulted by that discussion."

"I would have to concede that, yeah, I still wouldn't put him above Jordan," Smith continued. "But I understand others who might think otherwise."

Beyond still being a title short of Jordan, there's another X-factor in this greatest-ever chatter working against James: Anthony Davis, not James, has emerged as the most important player on this Los Angeles club. Granted, that could be due in part to the fact that James still seems to be significantly bothered by his lingering right foot soreness, which has compelled him to pick his spots on offense a bit more than he has in the past. 

Jordan was the clear best player in five of his six title runs (you could make an argument for Scottie Pippen's defense on Magic Johnson being the determining factor in Chicago's first title run, against the Lakers in 1991). He was always named the Finals MVP for all six of his wins. If James wins a fifth title as the second-best player on his own team, should that be weighed against him?

We're getting a bit ahead of ourselves, to be fair. Should the Lakers close out Golden State (which seems very likely, at some point) and advance to the Western Conference Finals, they'll again be the underdog, against either the Phoenix Suns or the Denver Nuggets. Denver, the top seed in the West, currently leads that series on the other side of the bracket, 3-2.

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