Who's the Greatest of All?
By DANIEL OKRENT

Is Michael Jordan the greatest ever? Not just the greatest basketball player but the greatest athlete: a figure who not only dominates his sport but also changes the way it's played, who dominates that sport not only in his own time but also across time? Where does Jordan stand relative to Babe Ruth, say, or Muhammad Ali?

Let's knock down the basketball straw man first. If someone plays defense like Bill Russell, passes like Isiah Thomas, scores like Julius Erving and rises to the occasion like Larry Bird, it's hard to argue against him. The clincher comes in the context of his team. When Jordan's around, the Bulls win championships. When he's off flailing at minor-league curve balls, they don't.

Now, the serious competition. Ruth nearly invented the home run, and remains second only to Hank Aaron in career homers. His teams won more than their share--more even than Jordan's share--of championships. As an offensive force, Ruth utterly dominated his era (in 1921, only two American League teams hit as many home runs as Ruth did all by himself), and that was an era in which baseball had a near monopoly on the best professional athletes. The capstone to the Ruth argument is the five-season stretch during which he was among baseball's best pitchers before switching full time to the outfield. He was Mark McGwire, Tony Gwynn and Greg Maddux all rolled into one.

But Ruth's accomplishments are diminished by one brutal fact: he didn't play against black athletes. One-tenth of the population, and surely a far larger proportion of those motivated to succeed in athletics, never had a chance to test Ruth. I hate to admit it, but it may be that the Babe was more George Mikan than Michael Jordan.

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