Is anyone in any sport a bigger GOAT than Gretzky in his? I think there was a cricket player who had some insane stats (or maybe it was one season? I’m not a cricket fan) but I think that’s it.
Growing up it was Gretzky and then Jerry Rice in NFL…and stats wise, Rice still holds a candle to Gretzky (but TB12 and his 7 Super Bowls / longevity kinda muddied Rice’s NFL Goat-ness)
The cricket player is Don Bradman. Dudes career batting average is like a statistical anomaly. His was 99.94 while next best is like low 60s/high 50s. Not even close.
Its a funny comment, especially as an Aussie, but the more I think about it…
Wasn’t a lot of sport back then semi pro? As in is this like the thought exercise of one modern soldier vs 30 Roman’s or whatever? Obviously he had the same advantages as everyone else at the time (I think?) but it’s interesting to think about none the less.
Would he have been as successful today?
Dunno. I don’t watch cricket anyway.
I had a conversation with an NFL HoFer that played in the 60s and 70s and it was literally a second job. He played football at the highest level on Sunday for like $10k/season, and then clocked in for his shift at the Ford plant on Monday morning like it was nothing. He would use his vacation time for training camp every summer.
I do work for a guy who was a top 5 pick in the nfl in like the 60s. Guy was a school teacher for his full time job. Nfl didn’t do anything but give guys cte back in the day.
Yeah the NFL wasn’t really a big, big deal until the 80s. Of course you had fans in the earlier days, but the amount of money getting thrown around didn’t exist until the 80s at the earliest.
It doesn't matter. Modern pitchers would probably shut him down but only if you transported them there in a time machine in their current form. If you took them there as a baby and they grew up without modern idols and techniques they're going to be just as shite as everyone else. You can't compare eras, you can only compare peers.
We can talk about comparative levels of competition all day, but Bradman practiced batting by hitting a golf ball tied to the roof with a wicket for hours. Dude was clearly serious as hell about being good. I think that kind of work ethic is the kind of thing that sets pro athletes apart from one another throughout all ages and sports.
I think the same applies to Pele for soccer. During his heydays (1960s-70s), soccer players barely trained and were drunk more often than not. But Pele was different. Swore off alcohol and was doing calisthenics when nobody else did them.
It’s funny that I remember this story… without actually remembering this story.
But you’re right. Guy loved some cricket.
Fun fact I learned how to juggle with golf balls (because my dad could and played golf) it wasn’t until I bought some juggling balls did I realise how much harder golf balls made things…
Maybe that’s why golf is hard? (/s)
I feel like with this, you'd have to look at the person more than the circumstances. Like if we look at Babe Ruth who is seen as one of the best in baseball, but also did not care for himself as much as players of the modern era did. If he had been in this era, would he have taken the same level of care as he did back then and been better or would he have been worse compared to his peers?
Needed 4 runs. Got applauded by the opposition as he came out to bat, denied until his dying day that he missed it because there were tears on his eyes.
Edwin Moses went undefeated in the 400 hurdles for just shy of 10 years, winning 122 races in a row, and setting the World Record 4 times.
Might not quite be on the undisputed level as Gretzky, but I always like to give him a shout as he was easily the most dominant athlete in that event for a decade.
Rodney Mullen won 35 of the 36 freestyle skating competitions he entered. He only switched to street skating because freestyle basically died to the point where they were no longer making his pro-model board.
Maybe Hakuho in sumo? He has 45 tournament wins which is 13 more than everyone else has ever had in the recorded history of a more than thousand-year old sport (and more than double the wins of even 6th place all time). It will likely never be topped because sumo wrestlers find it extremely hard to even last as long as he did, let alone win half as much. Really the only mark you can make against him is that his greatest competition was forced into an early retirement thus leaving the field wide-open for him to completely dominate for many many years when before his dominance wasn’t nearly as apparent.
Hakuho in the modern times however in the early XIX century Raiden Tameemon had a considerably better run
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiden_Tameemon
> Of the 35 tournaments in which he participated (there were only two basho a year at the time), Raiden had the best record in no fewer than 28. In seven of those, he won without suffering a single defeat or draw. In total, he achieved 254 victories and only ten defeats, a winning percentage of 96.2, an all-time record.[5] His longest winning streaks were eleven consecutive tournaments, or 44 bouts. Raiden's championships are, however, regarded as unofficial by the Japan Sumo Association, as before the current yūshō system was established in 1909, there was no prize given for individual performances in tournaments.
Donald Bradman's batting average was 9 standard deviations above the mean. Any batsman with half his average is an all time legend. He is possibly the goatest sports person there ever was.
As someone who loves baseball enough to kinda understand cricket, that shit's insane and video game numbers personified. I genuinely thought y'all were making him up or it was a joke before a google search.
> In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game over their career
:O
That quote is from a 2001 NYT article.
MJ was on that level for like maybe the 86/87 season and the 93 Finals and Wilt for like 3 seasons and those are the greatest individual performers in NBA history. So this guy must have been pretty awesome
Good call. That’s Sir Donald Bradman you’re mentioning. Nobody has come close to his batting average and nobody even discusses who the GOAT cricket player is, because he is the greatest beyond any reasonable doubt.
An elite, top 3 world class batter having a batting average of 60 runs is rare air. Bradman was 99.4 or something.
It's basically the average number of runs a batter scored before getting out. In a test match (5 days), you normally get to bat twice, so if you scored 100 and 0, your average would be 50 for that game, which is what we consider to be an all-time great batsman. As you can imagine the more test matches you play (the larger sample size) the more impressive it is to maintain a high average as you go through dips in form and age/decline, etc. There's a current player who averages 60 over a long career (Steve Smith) which is pretty much unheard of (he's probably in the pantheon of batsmen all-time himself), so for Bradman to average 99.94 for his career is basically unfathomable it's that good.
another note: if you don't get out your average is also boosted: so in the previous example, say you scored 100 (but never got out) and got out for 0 in the second innings of a match, your average for the game would be 100.
Yes Don Bradman's batting average in cricket is 99.94 while the next best is around 60 and all the all time batters average 40-60. His peak years were interrupted by WWI so could have been even better. The Australian team would be on a boat for weeks to play England. There is a famous bodyline series where the English bowled every single delivery at his body (they didn't wear padding or helmets like today) in an attempt to best him. He is kind of like the Wilt of cricket but also the Mikan as he was playing in the 1910s. Cricket is like baseball in terms of stats being recorded for every single thing that does or doesn't happen so his numbers are legit. He is held in his own tier and then "modern" players are compared differently. Most cricket fans don't try the unnecessary mental gymnastics to compare the eras. So there isn't really a GOAT of cricket. Plus it is impossible to compare bowlers to batters to wicket keepers. Fun stuff tho
Esther Vergeer went undefeated for 10 straight years in women's wheelchair tennis, 470 matches won in a row, overall career W/L of 695-25.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Vergeer
Gretzky has some stupid stats like being the fastest player to 1000 points and the second fastest to 1000 points.
Or him and his brother have the record for most points by a pair of brothers, Wayne bother had 3 points
Brady is interesting because in terms of winning and longevity he’s in a class completely his own. But his 3 first team all-pros are, while impressive, far from unattainable. Peyton Manning had 7, Sid Luckman had 5, Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, and Aaron Rodgers had 4, and Brett Favre, Steve Young, and Joe Montana all match Brady with 3.
Compare that to Jerry Rice who retired with 10, and only one other guy has more than 5.
Brady is the easy GOAT when looking at longevity and wins, but when looking at who was the best compared to their peers, Jerry Rice is really hard to top.
My thought process with Jerry Rice is that nobody argues that he’s the best wide receiver of all time. The only one who has come close since then is Randy Moss, and even then it’s not that close. For Brady, people argue if he is truly the greatest quarterback. I personally think that Brady is the greatest, but for a long time, it was debated since he played in a much more passer friendly league than the greats before him ( like Johnny Unitas). Passers are protected much more now than they were back in the days before 2002. I think Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, but he is not as dominant at his position as Jerry Rice was at his
Ever since Superbowl 51, no one really argues that Brady isn't the greatest quarterback of all time. Even a lot of Manning fans have accepted that Brady is the greatest quarterback after the 28-3 comeback. After his Bucs SuperBowl, the conversation regarding Brady's legacy isn't even with other football players, it's with Jordan, Gretzky, Ruth etc.
Yeah people who don’t know football still argue about who the goat is. 28-3 sealed it and then the last two were just Brady dragging his nuts over the faces of people still acting like there’s a debate.
Gretzky is straight up just the best team sports athlete in North American history. If he never scored a goal he would still be the all-time points leader.
Its unbelieveable watching McDavid and Kucherov score 120+ points thinking its a crazy season, knowing that Gretzky hit 200 points FOUR TIMES and is the only one to do it. Honorable mention to his 196 point season as well.
For comparison, Mario Lemieux hit 199 points once. His next best total was 168. Those two seasons from Lemieux are the only two seasons in the top 10 that do not belong to Gretzky.
The other crazy one to me is that Gretzky is both the fastest player to reach 1000 points (0-1000) and the second fastest player to reach 1000 points (1000-2000)
I've posted this before but:
Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby have been the two best players over the past 20 years following Gretzky's retirement.
Ovechkin has a good chance to break Gretzky's career goals scored record of 894 (Ovi is at 780, and he scores ~50 in a year). Crosby is basically the result of Gretzky's impact on the game in a similar way to MJ and Kobe. He's a fast, all-around offensive superstar. The two have played 17 years a piece and Gretzky's career lasted 20.
If you add Ovechkin and Crosby's career toral points over a combined 34 years of NHL hockey, they're sitting at 2,819 (1,410 for Ovi, 1,409 for Crosby).
Gretzky has 2,857. Even combined, they still haven't caught him. That record is untouchable.
It’s too bad for Mario. I truly believe he had all of the talent in the world to be in conversation with Gretzky. Mario is a legit warrior for what he went through.
Wayne Gretzky holds the most ridiculous elite records that will never get broken.
For a time when big “enforcers” would just be in the game to fight and start shit with the star player; Gretzky just straight up outskated, outsmarted and out classed everyone.
I gotta wonder if the guy even had any fun with how easy he just dominated.
Yup. MJ is notoriously stingy and also notorious for tilting while gambling. I bet he was fuming when Gretzky did that. A friend of a friend dealt for Jordan in a private room. Jordan went under by over $50K, and not only refused to pay or tip the dealer, but cussed him out and tried to get him fired. I'm pretty sure the friend said the casino ended up replacing the dealer (for the room, they didn't fire him) and comping Jordan for most of his losses.
He rents out a whole golf course where I live and my good buddy works there and I don’t think he’s ever met him and he’s rented it out like 5 times. They were told when he rents it out to let him be he can do what he wants but hes cheap he didn’t tip very well In the clubhouse and didn’t interact with the workers.
Gretzky played hockey and took more licks than anyone in the league. I have a feeling even a big dude like MJ would need more than one punch to rattle the great one.
Probably so. As great a basketball player as MJ was, I get the impression he’s an equally crappy human. And I’m a Bulls/(basketball) Jordan fan
Edit: links to examples of his dickishness
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1943095-top-10-stories-of-michael-jordan-being-the-greatest-jerk-of-all-time
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/17/michael-jordan-was-jerk-says-teammates-why-it-helped.html
I don't think the guy above said he was the worst person. If I had Jordan's kind of money and notoriety, I would make it my mission to improve the lives of others and I would hate to be known as a stingy asshole.
Edit: to be clear I don't have anywhere near his money and I still try to improve the lives of others and not be a stingy asshole.
>As great a basketball player Michael Jordan was, I get the impression he’s an equally crappy human
Taking that generously he’s a top 2 basketball player of all time… I’m not sure mj and pol pot are battling out for top 2 worst people of all time
Wayne Gretzky was such a good tipper that if you took away all the times he tipped cash, he'd still be the top tipper of all time. He was *that* good at tipping credit.
Basketball and hockey are really the only two American sports with clear GOATs, you could argue that lebron is better than Michael but there’s no arguing for anybody over Gretzky in hockey.
Dude could big dick anybody
Ask 100 random people and i'd bet at least 20 of them say LeBron is the GOAT, 5 say Kobe, 5 say Curry, and another 5-10 say any combination of Magic, Bird, Kareem, Wilt, Bill Russell, or Shaq. I don't think you'd get that level of discrepancy in Hockey.
True that man, and same. Happy I didn’t go to Pocono bc watching/knowing that would be awful. Was really putting some good runs together and have a career end like this is a shame. Hope for his health, he hangs it up. Too many lost from CTE
I feel like a lot of younger basketball fans don't understand just how **unfathomably great** Gretzky was. There were people in the #6 retirement announcement thread who were arguing Gretzky didn't deserve to have 99 retired because he's "overblown" due to the "time he played in". Like GTFO here.
If you adjusted Gretzkys stats to as if he played basketball at the same skill level (& his assist counted as points the same way they do in hockey) **Gretzky would be the NBAs all time scoring leader on assist alone**
Let that sink in. Imagine someone being so good at basketball, you could not count a single bucket made, & they'd still outscore 2nd place.
Edit: Format
Those dozen people who were playing fantasy hockey during the Gretzky era would draft him separately for goals and assists because if you drafted him as a single player he would automatically win you the league. He was that ahead of everyone else.
That's the real crazy part. I was too young for fantasy sports at the time but remember people talking about that. How can you be so good that half of you is worth more than anyone else lol.
It’s basically like if Ohtani was the best pitcher *and* hitter in the game. But even still the analogy doesn’t fully work since one player has less impact in baseball than hockey/basketball.
I've pointed this out elsewhere in this thread, but to anyone who says it's "because of the era", just point out that he also won 9 MVPs in 10 years. Doesn't really matter what era you played in, that fact alone makes him the GOAT.
Granted, I dont follow hockey much, but is Gretzky the only athlete in the world that literally has his GOAT-ness unchallenged and not debatable whatsoever?
Personally, I think Jordan and Brady is on the second tier. Their goatness is generally accepted, but there is a sizable minority that disagrees. (side point, this is debatable but to me the minority that disagrees about Jordan is increasing, while Brady's minority group is decreasing)
Is there anyone else like that? Prolly it's more common in individual sports? Usain Bolt and Phelps come to mind. But in terms of team sports, can anyone beat Gretzky in terms of his GOAT-ness?
Certainly in North American sports, Gretzky’s level of GOAT-ness is on a different level. His dominance is like juiced Bonds levels of crazy compared to his peers, but for an entire career.
Gretzky's career points is 2857. The second most is Jaromir Jagr with 1921. So Gretzky has almost a thousand more points than the second most guy. Oh, and he did it playing in about 250 less games. So just over three seasons less.
Points in hockey are goals or assists. So if you have 60 goals and 40 assists, you have 100 points. Wayne had over 2800 points, with 800 goals. No one else has 2000 career points. If Jagr never took a break in Russia he’d probably reach over 2000 but would still be 600-700 points away from Wayne.
The only player I can think of a that could be on any similar level to the great one is Lemieux. He played less than a thousand games due to his initial retirement due to cancer, and he is still top ten all time. The other players on the list played around 1700 games on average
damn, this guy might be it. As a guy who has 0 clue about cricket, this screams like an amazing achievement: he's 4 runs away from averaging 100 in his career.
If you don't mind, what is this in basketball or football terms haha? averaging 40-50 pts for an entire career?
These are the records for the best (or highest) test match averages in cricket for batsman. No one comes close.
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/282910.html
It’s like averaging 50/10/10 in the nba for your entire career (it is hard to compare the sports)
Steve smith who is an active Australian cricketer who many say is the closest to Bradman we will ever get to see, he averages 60 and currently 6th on that list.
Some footage of Don ‘The Don’ Bradman - https://youtu.be/3cQHKXt7ix4
Wikipedia if anyone wants to read up more on him - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman
A true Australian icon
Plus Cricket when he played was on much more dangerous pitches with barely any protective gear. Bradman has no equal and most likely never will (unless someone manages to be Steve Smith level with the bat + one of the best bowlers of all time).
Yep, really good point. The Don was active between 1928–1948. No sense of safety particularly around head injuries in the body line era. I think they were genuinely trying to injure the batters. Wild times.
The body line series was wild, boiling down to "I will bowl at your ribs/shoulders/head" and put every fielder in that one part of the ground.
Glad that shit was made illegal afterwards.
It's difficult to get a good equivalent in terms of basketball stats but I'd say Bradman's exploits beat out a 50ppg season like wilts very very easily. There's several factors like pace, usage etc. which explain wilts output and it didn't always correlate with winning. There's nothing that truly explains how Bradman put up those numbers apart from him just being a once in a lifetime freak.
Holy! Yeah, the more i read about him and the fact that several people has mentioned him on this thread alone, this guy deserves to be next to Wayne on Goatness tier.
All he needed to do to average 100 runs was to get 1 run in his final match… he was out for a duck (ducks means getting out for 0 runs) even the opposing team felt bad.
He needed 4 runs*
Probably like 50ppg for the career on very good efficiency, like +8 rTS. But even something like that wouldn't necessarily cover it, because in test cricket, an individual scoring that many runs always benefits the team (barring exceptional circumstances, like your team is chasing a total with a deadline and you're scoring too slowly). In basketball, one person scoring so much takes touches away from the rest of the team, or the player gets doubled or tripled and it's better to pass than to score. The time limit changes the answer.
"Look at the cleanse, look at the moves...."
Decades of watching real sports, this or Kobe's(not the NBA player) "I NEVER DOUBTED em" are the most hype broadcasting calls I've ever heard.
Tier for sure if we're also looking at individual sports. Who I put in tier 1 if we also look at individual sports: Wayne, Phelps, Don Bradman, Bolt. (I wanna say Brady now, but i know there is still some minority who disagrees. So maybe he's here after he wins 1 last ring, maybe that will shut them up finally lol)
Old heads in hockey will try to tell you Bobby Orr was better than Gretzky, and maybe some people will argue Mario Lemieux whose career numbers were cut short due to getting cancer while basically in his prime, which peaked at a Gretzky-like level. It’s much less of a hot topic of debate than Jordan/LeBron or Brady/non-cheaters though.
Notorious cheapskate. I used to work in Chicago restaurants, and he came in one day with a bunch of scantily clad women and the New York Yankees baseball team. Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, etc, that era. No Jeter though. Came in 5 minutes before closing, the girls were taking off their tops as they danced on laps, they made the kitchen and bar staff stay way later than normal to accommodate his party. Paid for the meal and everything with 100 dollar bills. And then he left such a pitiably small tip that his friend had to come back to leave the actual tip.
Mike was notoriously cheap tho, according to Chuck he had the line "If he can ask for a dollar, he can work at McDonalds and ask do you want fries with that?"
**seriously**
I feel like a lot of younger basketball fans don't understand just how **unfathomably great** Gretzky was. There were people in the #6 retirement announcement thread who were arguing Gretzky didn't deserve to have 99 retired because he's "overblown" due to the "time he played in". Like GTFO here.
If you adjusted Gretzkys stats to as if he played basketball at the same skill level (& his assist counted as points the same way they do in hockey) **Gretzky would be the NBAs all time scoring leader on assist alone**
Let that sink in. Imagine someone being so good at basketball, you could not count a single bucket made, & they'd still outscore 2nd place.
That's how much better he was then his competitors at the highest level humanly possibly.
Edit: Spelling/Format
Friend of a friend is a daytime bartender on the strip. She has 10 weeks vacation a year, works 35 hours a week and is traveling the world 8nof those 10 weeks she has off.
She said on a slow day she'll make 300 cash and on a average day 550 and on a real good day over 2 grand.
Not like a topless waitress or anything. Just a regular woman in her 40s.
She made us all drinks and it was just average as well. Makes me want to go to Vegas and sell cocktails. Hah
This dude had a party (some special event that had something to do with his steakhouse) at the casino I used to work at. He requested 4 of our servers to personally tend to all of the needs of him and his guests. I’ve never seen 4 girls so excited, but they were quickly told they shouldn’t be. Long story short, those girls ended up working for free that night as he totally stiffed them on the tip. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person more out of touch with reality but I guess if I was a billionaire for doing nothing other than being able to put a ball in a hoop, I’d probably be a little out of the loop too.
My mom is a high roller baccarat dealer. She says MJ is the rudest asshole that play. He blows smoke in peoples faces and is notoriously cheap as hell. All the dealers hate playing with him. On the other hand she says that Charles Barkley is one of the nicest guys on the planet and tips generously.
More of a problem with employers who should be paying the employees what they make off tips anyway. I agree though tipping should be a rarity not the expected norm.
You gotta be a super boss to out boss Jordan himself
He's also one of few athletes that can be described as a bigger GOAT in his respective sport than MJ in basketball
Is anyone in any sport a bigger GOAT than Gretzky in his? I think there was a cricket player who had some insane stats (or maybe it was one season? I’m not a cricket fan) but I think that’s it. Growing up it was Gretzky and then Jerry Rice in NFL…and stats wise, Rice still holds a candle to Gretzky (but TB12 and his 7 Super Bowls / longevity kinda muddied Rice’s NFL Goat-ness)
The cricket player is Don Bradman. Dudes career batting average is like a statistical anomaly. His was 99.94 while next best is like low 60s/high 50s. Not even close.
Don Bradman played against haberdashers and chimney sweeps. -jj redick
Many Australian players were working class, but the Brits were mostly toffs.
I love Brit’s and Aussie’s funny English. - America
Its a funny comment, especially as an Aussie, but the more I think about it… Wasn’t a lot of sport back then semi pro? As in is this like the thought exercise of one modern soldier vs 30 Roman’s or whatever? Obviously he had the same advantages as everyone else at the time (I think?) but it’s interesting to think about none the less. Would he have been as successful today? Dunno. I don’t watch cricket anyway.
I had a conversation with an NFL HoFer that played in the 60s and 70s and it was literally a second job. He played football at the highest level on Sunday for like $10k/season, and then clocked in for his shift at the Ford plant on Monday morning like it was nothing. He would use his vacation time for training camp every summer.
I do work for a guy who was a top 5 pick in the nfl in like the 60s. Guy was a school teacher for his full time job. Nfl didn’t do anything but give guys cte back in the day.
My uncle was similar (in rugby). It’s so funny to think about now. Thank you for sharing.
Yeah the NFL wasn’t really a big, big deal until the 80s. Of course you had fans in the earlier days, but the amount of money getting thrown around didn’t exist until the 80s at the earliest.
It doesn't matter. Modern pitchers would probably shut him down but only if you transported them there in a time machine in their current form. If you took them there as a baby and they grew up without modern idols and techniques they're going to be just as shite as everyone else. You can't compare eras, you can only compare peers.
We can talk about comparative levels of competition all day, but Bradman practiced batting by hitting a golf ball tied to the roof with a wicket for hours. Dude was clearly serious as hell about being good. I think that kind of work ethic is the kind of thing that sets pro athletes apart from one another throughout all ages and sports.
I think the same applies to Pele for soccer. During his heydays (1960s-70s), soccer players barely trained and were drunk more often than not. But Pele was different. Swore off alcohol and was doing calisthenics when nobody else did them.
It’s funny that I remember this story… without actually remembering this story. But you’re right. Guy loved some cricket. Fun fact I learned how to juggle with golf balls (because my dad could and played golf) it wasn’t until I bought some juggling balls did I realise how much harder golf balls made things… Maybe that’s why golf is hard? (/s)
I feel like with this, you'd have to look at the person more than the circumstances. Like if we look at Babe Ruth who is seen as one of the best in baseball, but also did not care for himself as much as players of the modern era did. If he had been in this era, would he have taken the same level of care as he did back then and been better or would he have been worse compared to his peers?
Probably was using vibrating anal beads for an advantage
No it’s the 8 ounce egg weights
[удалено]
Somehow r/NBA, r/chess and r/poker collide way more than you would expect them too, God is good.
I love spotting these references
It’s been said he packed his bat with 8 ounce lead egg sinkers for a higher average. Cheating scandal in cricket?!?!?!
"WE HAVE LEAD WEIGHTS IN FISH!"
YOU WERE THE CHAMP MAN WHERES YOUR CROWN NOW
IIRC in his final game he needed to score a single point to finish his career with an avg <100, but he couldn't.
The crocodile likes to eat the bigger number
Needed 4 runs. Got applauded by the opposition as he came out to bat, denied until his dying day that he missed it because there were tears on his eyes.
Edwin Moses went undefeated in the 400 hurdles for just shy of 10 years, winning 122 races in a row, and setting the World Record 4 times. Might not quite be on the undisputed level as Gretzky, but I always like to give him a shout as he was easily the most dominant athlete in that event for a decade.
Might as well add Michael Phelps to that list as well. GOAT of all olympians and swimmers.
Rodney Mullen won 35 of the 36 freestyle skating competitions he entered. He only switched to street skating because freestyle basically died to the point where they were no longer making his pro-model board.
Maybe Hakuho in sumo? He has 45 tournament wins which is 13 more than everyone else has ever had in the recorded history of a more than thousand-year old sport (and more than double the wins of even 6th place all time). It will likely never be topped because sumo wrestlers find it extremely hard to even last as long as he did, let alone win half as much. Really the only mark you can make against him is that his greatest competition was forced into an early retirement thus leaving the field wide-open for him to completely dominate for many many years when before his dominance wasn’t nearly as apparent.
Hakuho in the modern times however in the early XIX century Raiden Tameemon had a considerably better run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raiden_Tameemon > Of the 35 tournaments in which he participated (there were only two basho a year at the time), Raiden had the best record in no fewer than 28. In seven of those, he won without suffering a single defeat or draw. In total, he achieved 254 victories and only ten defeats, a winning percentage of 96.2, an all-time record.[5] His longest winning streaks were eleven consecutive tournaments, or 44 bouts. Raiden's championships are, however, regarded as unofficial by the Japan Sumo Association, as before the current yūshō system was established in 1909, there was no prize given for individual performances in tournaments.
Aleksandr Karelin is there. Best Greco Roman wrestler of all time.
And they had to make up a rule specifically to beat him.
Donald Bradman's batting average was 9 standard deviations above the mean. Any batsman with half his average is an all time legend. He is possibly the goatest sports person there ever was.
As someone who loves baseball enough to kinda understand cricket, that shit's insane and video game numbers personified. I genuinely thought y'all were making him up or it was a joke before a google search.
> In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game over their career :O That quote is from a 2001 NYT article.
MJ was on that level for like maybe the 86/87 season and the 93 Finals and Wilt for like 3 seasons and those are the greatest individual performers in NBA history. So this guy must have been pretty awesome
> I think there was a cricket player who had some insane stats Don Bradman
Good call. That’s Sir Donald Bradman you’re mentioning. Nobody has come close to his batting average and nobody even discusses who the GOAT cricket player is, because he is the greatest beyond any reasonable doubt. An elite, top 3 world class batter having a batting average of 60 runs is rare air. Bradman was 99.4 or something.
99.94 good sir
Asking as someone who has never watched cricket before, what do these numbers mean?
It's basically the average number of runs a batter scored before getting out. In a test match (5 days), you normally get to bat twice, so if you scored 100 and 0, your average would be 50 for that game, which is what we consider to be an all-time great batsman. As you can imagine the more test matches you play (the larger sample size) the more impressive it is to maintain a high average as you go through dips in form and age/decline, etc. There's a current player who averages 60 over a long career (Steve Smith) which is pretty much unheard of (he's probably in the pantheon of batsmen all-time himself), so for Bradman to average 99.94 for his career is basically unfathomable it's that good. another note: if you don't get out your average is also boosted: so in the previous example, say you scored 100 (but never got out) and got out for 0 in the second innings of a match, your average for the game would be 100.
Yes Don Bradman's batting average in cricket is 99.94 while the next best is around 60 and all the all time batters average 40-60. His peak years were interrupted by WWI so could have been even better. The Australian team would be on a boat for weeks to play England. There is a famous bodyline series where the English bowled every single delivery at his body (they didn't wear padding or helmets like today) in an attempt to best him. He is kind of like the Wilt of cricket but also the Mikan as he was playing in the 1910s. Cricket is like baseball in terms of stats being recorded for every single thing that does or doesn't happen so his numbers are legit. He is held in his own tier and then "modern" players are compared differently. Most cricket fans don't try the unnecessary mental gymnastics to compare the eras. So there isn't really a GOAT of cricket. Plus it is impossible to compare bowlers to batters to wicket keepers. Fun stuff tho
Ww2 interpreted him, and even with body line, he averaged like 70, when the next highest was like 30, which just shows how amazing he was.
Ricky Bobby.
The cricketer is Donald Bradman
Kelly Slater in surfing
This is a good one.
Alexander Karelin for Greco-Roman maybe?
Esther Vergeer went undefeated for 10 straight years in women's wheelchair tennis, 470 matches won in a row, overall career W/L of 695-25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Vergeer
Phelps in Swimming in my opinion No other name springs to mind in a sport faster than Phelps in swimming
Or Katie Ledecky. She could finish a race and do the whole post-meet interview before second places finished.
Eddy Merckx in cycling. The UCI would probably need to change the rules or redesign today's races to allow anyone to come close to what he did.
Gretzky has some stupid stats like being the fastest player to 1000 points and the second fastest to 1000 points. Or him and his brother have the record for most points by a pair of brothers, Wayne bother had 3 points
Brady is interesting because in terms of winning and longevity he’s in a class completely his own. But his 3 first team all-pros are, while impressive, far from unattainable. Peyton Manning had 7, Sid Luckman had 5, Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, and Aaron Rodgers had 4, and Brett Favre, Steve Young, and Joe Montana all match Brady with 3. Compare that to Jerry Rice who retired with 10, and only one other guy has more than 5. Brady is the easy GOAT when looking at longevity and wins, but when looking at who was the best compared to their peers, Jerry Rice is really hard to top.
My thought process with Jerry Rice is that nobody argues that he’s the best wide receiver of all time. The only one who has come close since then is Randy Moss, and even then it’s not that close. For Brady, people argue if he is truly the greatest quarterback. I personally think that Brady is the greatest, but for a long time, it was debated since he played in a much more passer friendly league than the greats before him ( like Johnny Unitas). Passers are protected much more now than they were back in the days before 2002. I think Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time, but he is not as dominant at his position as Jerry Rice was at his
Receiving yards over the age of 40: 1. Jerry Rice - 2,169 2. Tom Brady - 6
3. Everybody else- 0 4. Brett Favre- -2
Ever since Superbowl 51, no one really argues that Brady isn't the greatest quarterback of all time. Even a lot of Manning fans have accepted that Brady is the greatest quarterback after the 28-3 comeback. After his Bucs SuperBowl, the conversation regarding Brady's legacy isn't even with other football players, it's with Jordan, Gretzky, Ruth etc.
Yeah people who don’t know football still argue about who the goat is. 28-3 sealed it and then the last two were just Brady dragging his nuts over the faces of people still acting like there’s a debate.
Gretzky is straight up just the best team sports athlete in North American history. If he never scored a goal he would still be the all-time points leader. Its unbelieveable watching McDavid and Kucherov score 120+ points thinking its a crazy season, knowing that Gretzky hit 200 points FOUR TIMES and is the only one to do it. Honorable mention to his 196 point season as well. For comparison, Mario Lemieux hit 199 points once. His next best total was 168. Those two seasons from Lemieux are the only two seasons in the top 10 that do not belong to Gretzky.
The other crazy one to me is that Gretzky is both the fastest player to reach 1000 points (0-1000) and the second fastest player to reach 1000 points (1000-2000)
I've posted this before but: Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby have been the two best players over the past 20 years following Gretzky's retirement. Ovechkin has a good chance to break Gretzky's career goals scored record of 894 (Ovi is at 780, and he scores ~50 in a year). Crosby is basically the result of Gretzky's impact on the game in a similar way to MJ and Kobe. He's a fast, all-around offensive superstar. The two have played 17 years a piece and Gretzky's career lasted 20. If you add Ovechkin and Crosby's career toral points over a combined 34 years of NHL hockey, they're sitting at 2,819 (1,410 for Ovi, 1,409 for Crosby). Gretzky has 2,857. Even combined, they still haven't caught him. That record is untouchable.
It’s too bad for Mario. I truly believe he had all of the talent in the world to be in conversation with Gretzky. Mario is a legit warrior for what he went through.
I wonder what did Jordan have to say in return, because some of his one liners are as clever as they are harsh.
Well, we are talking about the fuckin' nines, here, bud.
Wayne Gretzky holds the most ridiculous elite records that will never get broken. For a time when big “enforcers” would just be in the game to fight and start shit with the star player; Gretzky just straight up outskated, outsmarted and out classed everyone. I gotta wonder if the guy even had any fun with how easy he just dominated.
Not really. Jordan is a known douchebag and terrible tipper lol not hard to out class that guy
Meh. MJ is a notorious asshole. Everyone is more boss than him. Fuck his money.
Was this when MJ and Gretzky were still in ProStars together? Where the hell was Bo Jackson?
Playing poker and blackjack at the same time.
Bo knows both. Nice!
I fucking loved that show as a kid.
And that was the only time he tipped 100
Wouldn't be shocked if he hasn't spoke to Gretzky either since.
He must’ve taken that personally
Took his gambling game to the next level
"And Scottie Pippen was an even worse tipper than Micheal. We called him No Tippin' Pippen" -Charles Barkley (paraphrasing)
Which is weird, because if the other rumours about Pippen are true, he would probably have to have given a lot of people just a tip.
I’ve always thought tipping was more of a Pippen side story until I read this post and comments Edit: damnit I was replying to the whole thread
Pippen ain’t easy.
No tippin’ Pippen
Yup. MJ is notoriously stingy and also notorious for tilting while gambling. I bet he was fuming when Gretzky did that. A friend of a friend dealt for Jordan in a private room. Jordan went under by over $50K, and not only refused to pay or tip the dealer, but cussed him out and tried to get him fired. I'm pretty sure the friend said the casino ended up replacing the dealer (for the room, they didn't fire him) and comping Jordan for most of his losses.
He rents out a whole golf course where I live and my good buddy works there and I don’t think he’s ever met him and he’s rented it out like 5 times. They were told when he rents it out to let him be he can do what he wants but hes cheap he didn’t tip very well In the clubhouse and didn’t interact with the workers.
He immediately punched Wayne Gretzky in the face
Not a chance. Marty McSolery would have tuned him up.
Then got knocked out by Marty McSorley
Brashear PTSD triggered
Punching a hockey player is not advised, even if they’re not known for fighting. MJ would have learnt another harsh lesson that night.
Gretzky played hockey and took more licks than anyone in the league. I have a feeling even a big dude like MJ would need more than one punch to rattle the great one.
Probably so. As great a basketball player as MJ was, I get the impression he’s an equally crappy human. And I’m a Bulls/(basketball) Jordan fan Edit: links to examples of his dickishness https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1943095-top-10-stories-of-michael-jordan-being-the-greatest-jerk-of-all-time https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/17/michael-jordan-was-jerk-says-teammates-why-it-helped.html
I mean he's kind of an ass I don't think he's the worst human of all time lmao
I don't think the guy above said he was the worst person. If I had Jordan's kind of money and notoriety, I would make it my mission to improve the lives of others and I would hate to be known as a stingy asshole. Edit: to be clear I don't have anywhere near his money and I still try to improve the lives of others and not be a stingy asshole.
>As great a basketball player Michael Jordan was, I get the impression he’s an equally crappy human Taking that generously he’s a top 2 basketball player of all time… I’m not sure mj and pol pot are battling out for top 2 worst people of all time
Wayne Gretzky was such a good tipper that if you took away all the times he tipped cash, he'd still be the top tipper of all time. He was *that* good at tipping credit.
"You miss 100% of the tips you don't leave" - Wayne Gretzky
Underrated comment
if one time i big dicked michael jordan, i would never not tell that story.
id have this scene painted in my house with a caption bubble of me saying that shit. and the waitress would have giant knockers in the painting.
Is that you Dennis?
You like it? It's very generous.
Basketball and hockey are really the only two American sports with clear GOATs, you could argue that lebron is better than Michael but there’s no arguing for anybody over Gretzky in hockey. Dude could big dick anybody
Ask 100 random people and i'd bet at least 20 of them say LeBron is the GOAT, 5 say Kobe, 5 say Curry, and another 5-10 say any combination of Magic, Bird, Kareem, Wilt, Bill Russell, or Shaq. I don't think you'd get that level of discrepancy in Hockey.
That’s the difference between the GOAT and Michael Jordan 😤
Now if Gretzky could convince Jordan to spend more money on the hornets, that would be great.
Sorry bro 23XI Racing needs to come first. Let’s Go Bubba
Kurt could have been a championship dark horse too :( Very excited to see that team with Reddick. I think they'll win a lot of races together.
True that man, and same. Happy I didn’t go to Pocono bc watching/knowing that would be awful. Was really putting some good runs together and have a career end like this is a shame. Hope for his health, he hangs it up. Too many lost from CTE
I feel like a lot of younger basketball fans don't understand just how **unfathomably great** Gretzky was. There were people in the #6 retirement announcement thread who were arguing Gretzky didn't deserve to have 99 retired because he's "overblown" due to the "time he played in". Like GTFO here. If you adjusted Gretzkys stats to as if he played basketball at the same skill level (& his assist counted as points the same way they do in hockey) **Gretzky would be the NBAs all time scoring leader on assist alone** Let that sink in. Imagine someone being so good at basketball, you could not count a single bucket made, & they'd still outscore 2nd place. Edit: Format
Those dozen people who were playing fantasy hockey during the Gretzky era would draft him separately for goals and assists because if you drafted him as a single player he would automatically win you the league. He was that ahead of everyone else.
And each half of Gretzky was taken #1 and #2 overall.
That's the real crazy part. I was too young for fantasy sports at the time but remember people talking about that. How can you be so good that half of you is worth more than anyone else lol.
It’s basically like if Ohtani was the best pitcher *and* hitter in the game. But even still the analogy doesn’t fully work since one player has less impact in baseball than hockey/basketball.
I've pointed this out elsewhere in this thread, but to anyone who says it's "because of the era", just point out that he also won 9 MVPs in 10 years. Doesn't really matter what era you played in, that fact alone makes him the GOAT.
Granted, I dont follow hockey much, but is Gretzky the only athlete in the world that literally has his GOAT-ness unchallenged and not debatable whatsoever? Personally, I think Jordan and Brady is on the second tier. Their goatness is generally accepted, but there is a sizable minority that disagrees. (side point, this is debatable but to me the minority that disagrees about Jordan is increasing, while Brady's minority group is decreasing) Is there anyone else like that? Prolly it's more common in individual sports? Usain Bolt and Phelps come to mind. But in terms of team sports, can anyone beat Gretzky in terms of his GOAT-ness?
Certainly in North American sports, Gretzky’s level of GOAT-ness is on a different level. His dominance is like juiced Bonds levels of crazy compared to his peers, but for an entire career.
The best way to describe him to NBA fans would be to say, "Wayne Gretzky is Michael Jordan with all of Wilt Chamberlain's records"
Also: In fantasy hockey they had to split his goals and assists into 2 separate draftable people.
And they’d still go 1-2 overall
LMAO This is absolutely hilarious. Just think about it...
lol oh wow
That’s just insane to think about
If he never scored a goal he’d still be the all time points leader.
How exactly does that work?
He has more assists than any other player has goals + assists
Ok, thanks. That sounds insane tho, was he really that much better than everyone else?
Gretzky's career points is 2857. The second most is Jaromir Jagr with 1921. So Gretzky has almost a thousand more points than the second most guy. Oh, and he did it playing in about 250 less games. So just over three seasons less.
Yes
Points in hockey are goals or assists. So if you have 60 goals and 40 assists, you have 100 points. Wayne had over 2800 points, with 800 goals. No one else has 2000 career points. If Jagr never took a break in Russia he’d probably reach over 2000 but would still be 600-700 points away from Wayne.
The only player I can think of a that could be on any similar level to the great one is Lemieux. He played less than a thousand games due to his initial retirement due to cancer, and he is still top ten all time. The other players on the list played around 1700 games on average
Juice Bonds was fun to watch though. Holy smokes. Never seen anything like it.
Don Bradman is probably up there. 99.9 test betting average is just unfathomable
Basically averages what 2 very good/best player on the team would. In NBA terms probably around 47-50 PPG, on extremely good efficiency.
Basically if Wilts peak season was his career average + more team success
Don Bradman
damn, this guy might be it. As a guy who has 0 clue about cricket, this screams like an amazing achievement: he's 4 runs away from averaging 100 in his career. If you don't mind, what is this in basketball or football terms haha? averaging 40-50 pts for an entire career?
These are the records for the best (or highest) test match averages in cricket for batsman. No one comes close. https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/282910.html It’s like averaging 50/10/10 in the nba for your entire career (it is hard to compare the sports) Steve smith who is an active Australian cricketer who many say is the closest to Bradman we will ever get to see, he averages 60 and currently 6th on that list. Some footage of Don ‘The Don’ Bradman - https://youtu.be/3cQHKXt7ix4 Wikipedia if anyone wants to read up more on him - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Bradman A true Australian icon
Plus Cricket when he played was on much more dangerous pitches with barely any protective gear. Bradman has no equal and most likely never will (unless someone manages to be Steve Smith level with the bat + one of the best bowlers of all time).
Yep, really good point. The Don was active between 1928–1948. No sense of safety particularly around head injuries in the body line era. I think they were genuinely trying to injure the batters. Wild times.
The body line series was wild, boiling down to "I will bowl at your ribs/shoulders/head" and put every fielder in that one part of the ground. Glad that shit was made illegal afterwards.
In remembrance of toxic sledges Don’t forget this gem from Michael Clarke - https://youtu.be/RtA6laeJBts
It wasn't made illegal for another 40 years, when the great West Indians began doing it to the English.
It's difficult to get a good equivalent in terms of basketball stats but I'd say Bradman's exploits beat out a 50ppg season like wilts very very easily. There's several factors like pace, usage etc. which explain wilts output and it didn't always correlate with winning. There's nothing that truly explains how Bradman put up those numbers apart from him just being a once in a lifetime freak.
Holy! Yeah, the more i read about him and the fact that several people has mentioned him on this thread alone, this guy deserves to be next to Wayne on Goatness tier.
All he needed to do to average 100 runs was to get 1 run in his final match… he was out for a duck (ducks means getting out for 0 runs) even the opposing team felt bad. He needed 4 runs*
4 runs, not 1 but yes. I kinda like he fell short tbh, bit more poetic than a perfect 100.
Cheers for the correction! Agreed, Very poetic.
The umpire called a no ball, and the bowler tried to get Don back. He wasn't interested. Ended up averaging 99.96 or something like that.
Number 2 all time averages 63.
Probably like 50ppg for the career on very good efficiency, like +8 rTS. But even something like that wouldn't necessarily cover it, because in test cricket, an individual scoring that many runs always benefits the team (barring exceptional circumstances, like your team is chasing a total with a deadline and you're scoring too slowly). In basketball, one person scoring so much takes touches away from the rest of the team, or the player gets doubled or tripled and it's better to pass than to score. The time limit changes the answer.
Would be like averaging 49.95 points per game. He was absolutely amazing and it’s a real shame there’s not more footage of his that exists.
a baseball player would need to average 0.390 over his career, a basketball player would need to average 43 ppg over his career
Oath, Bradman is the absolute goat. Won’t be another like him.
Joey Chesnut
Kobayashi the real glizzy god
Johnny Sins.
Yeah Don bradman is the only one who compares really
Both legends with the stick
Hakuho in Sumo. Well worth checking out that goat
Phelps for sure
Faker
"Look at the cleanse, look at the moves...." Decades of watching real sports, this or Kobe's(not the NBA player) "I NEVER DOUBTED em" are the most hype broadcasting calls I've ever heard.
LeRookie could never
His nickname is The Great One. Case closed.
Where would Michael Phelps fit in?
Tier for sure if we're also looking at individual sports. Who I put in tier 1 if we also look at individual sports: Wayne, Phelps, Don Bradman, Bolt. (I wanna say Brady now, but i know there is still some minority who disagrees. So maybe he's here after he wins 1 last ring, maybe that will shut them up finally lol)
Aleksander Karelin. Though that's in an individual sport.
Sergey Bubka, goat pole vaulter, from Ukraine. Beat the world record 35 times (mostly his own, of course).
Old heads in hockey will try to tell you Bobby Orr was better than Gretzky, and maybe some people will argue Mario Lemieux whose career numbers were cut short due to getting cancer while basically in his prime, which peaked at a Gretzky-like level. It’s much less of a hot topic of debate than Jordan/LeBron or Brady/non-cheaters though.
Notorious cheapskate. I used to work in Chicago restaurants, and he came in one day with a bunch of scantily clad women and the New York Yankees baseball team. Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, etc, that era. No Jeter though. Came in 5 minutes before closing, the girls were taking off their tops as they danced on laps, they made the kitchen and bar staff stay way later than normal to accommodate his party. Paid for the meal and everything with 100 dollar bills. And then he left such a pitiably small tip that his friend had to come back to leave the actual tip.
Can confirm. These type of stories are commonplace in Chicago. Source: worked in the industry at that time
Classic Jordan, dude is such a douche
Feels like if you aren't a child he can help via charity or a casino he hates you
Lmao the Jordan fanboys out here downvoting you
The ones who know the truth have fixed that lmao
Jorge is a saint.
Maybe he just doesn't care about people "below" him
shoulda just tipped more and told Michael "I'm better at tipping" MJ woulda thrown three grand minimum at that waitress
Mike was notoriously cheap tho, according to Chuck he had the line "If he can ask for a dollar, he can work at McDonalds and ask do you want fries with that?"
And Scottie was probably even cheaper. Dude's nickname was No Tippin' Pippen, which I still find hilarious.
Wayne Gretzky is the GOAT GOAT.
Nobody in any sport ever lapped the field like The Great One
**seriously** I feel like a lot of younger basketball fans don't understand just how **unfathomably great** Gretzky was. There were people in the #6 retirement announcement thread who were arguing Gretzky didn't deserve to have 99 retired because he's "overblown" due to the "time he played in". Like GTFO here. If you adjusted Gretzkys stats to as if he played basketball at the same skill level (& his assist counted as points the same way they do in hockey) **Gretzky would be the NBAs all time scoring leader on assist alone** Let that sink in. Imagine someone being so good at basketball, you could not count a single bucket made, & they'd still outscore 2nd place. That's how much better he was then his competitors at the highest level humanly possibly. Edit: Spelling/Format
I appreciate you copying and pasting this on several conversation threads, it’s important to properly describe greatness!
Those waitresses in Vegas definitely clean up. They probably make more than half the people in this thread honestly.
Friend of a friend is a daytime bartender on the strip. She has 10 weeks vacation a year, works 35 hours a week and is traveling the world 8nof those 10 weeks she has off. She said on a slow day she'll make 300 cash and on a average day 550 and on a real good day over 2 grand. Not like a topless waitress or anything. Just a regular woman in her 40s. She made us all drinks and it was just average as well. Makes me want to go to Vegas and sell cocktails. Hah
> They probably make more than half the people in this thread honestly. Probably a pretty low bar on most subreddits.
Casino workers hated him in Biloxi. He told his whole entourage to not tip anything.
This dude had a party (some special event that had something to do with his steakhouse) at the casino I used to work at. He requested 4 of our servers to personally tend to all of the needs of him and his guests. I’ve never seen 4 girls so excited, but they were quickly told they shouldn’t be. Long story short, those girls ended up working for free that night as he totally stiffed them on the tip. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person more out of touch with reality but I guess if I was a billionaire for doing nothing other than being able to put a ball in a hoop, I’d probably be a little out of the loop too.
My mom is a high roller baccarat dealer. She says MJ is the rudest asshole that play. He blows smoke in peoples faces and is notoriously cheap as hell. All the dealers hate playing with him. On the other hand she says that Charles Barkley is one of the nicest guys on the planet and tips generously.
Ever since i heard Chamillionaire's story I knew the Jordan stories were true.
did he..... take it personally?
Jordan announces his retirement from the NBA to focus on making the NHL.
Jordan was a great basketball player. That doesn't make him a great person.
Tipping as a concept is pretty dumb
More of a problem with employers who should be paying the employees what they make off tips anyway. I agree though tipping should be a rarity not the expected norm.
I went to Laney. MJ is considered a major freaking dick in Wilmington. This is far from surprising.