Also what people often don't get is that Ali calling himself the Greatest was as much bluster and performance as pure arrogance. Bolt does more or less the same thing, though I think in his case he does tend to believe what he says... and I love him for it.
(Also the same reason why Carl Lewis is one of my faves ever, if you care to know.)
I'm sure a few Rafaelites have something to say about that.
But yeah, what Fed (and Rafa) has done in their 30s is just amazing. I used to second Bud Collins' prediction of 17-18 majors for Fed but now I'm beginning to think he might pass Rosewall with the most generous accounting (what was it now, like 23?). Still would bet against it but then I've never seen such a dearth of young talent before (there I said it) so maybe it's more doable.
Of course it's possible that MJ and LBJ switching places might have produced the same outcomes, but I doubt it. I know I may not be the most impartial observer but MJ had that X factor that I've yet to see from any other basketball player except Kobe, and not quite even in the latter's case (as you know Kobe wasn't quite the same athletic freak as MJ or LBJ).
I don't mean to sound like an old fogey here as I'm nowhere near there yet (honest!), but I don't think most youngsters can appreciate just what a massive worldwide phenomenon MJ was unless they lived through it. You might have seen me telling these stories before about my experience overseas but I knew what the "Jordan number" was even though I had yet to watch a single basketball game on TV, because you really couldn't miss that "23" emblazoned on some Nike (or fake) wear if you were a schoolboy at the time. In fact there was no way to catch any NBA action on TV back then... unless you didn't mind watching the unintelligible English-language broadcasts on the American military channel... which is exactly what many of my classmates did! And they'd go far as to record and share tapes of certain MJ games that they were interested in, during lunch or under the table of course as videocassettes of any type weren't allowed in school. And get this: the MJ phenomenon got so big the sports section of domestic newscasts would be featuring the latest NBA news (I'll admit Shaq was another big name at the time), even though no domestic channel had yet to show full NBA games!
Just chew on that for a second, and think how big the MJ brand must have been to be able to command that much marketing power. Could LBJ, Kobe or any other successor to His Airness have done the same? Possible, yes, but I doubt it. Like I said MJ had that combo of power, skill, speed and intensity that I've yet to see in any other athlete in my lifetime, and unlike LBJ (at least at first) he was also a shrewd PR player who knew exactly what kind of innocuous soundbite to feed the public (as you may know reporters would be surprised at the level of trash talk and even venom he'd be spewing in closed practice). You could say he was the first modern athlete in that regard: a fine-tuned corporate machine designed to attract the most top dollars while demanding the blindest fan loyalty. That's the part of his legacy I don't much care for (it was/is absolutely hilarious to see his fanboys brush aside his utterly classless HoF speech like it was nothing), but what he gave on the court was so special I like many others don't care much the other way either.
As you can see even I'm not completely immune to corporate PR.
But nobody is, much as we like to pretend otherwise.
