In College Basketball, Michael Jordan is not the GOAT
It's time y'all get familiar with Breanna Stewart.
To pass the time and feed the content machine, ESPN put together a bracket to determine the greatest college basketball player of all time. Fans voted on Twitter and Instagram and — shocker — they got it wrong.
Michael Jordan was voted as the greatest college basketball player of all-time, and here’s the thing: while Jordan rose to unimaginable heights in the NBA (and made Space Jam, perhaps his greatest accomplishment, obviously), his college career simply doesn’t stack up with some of the other all-time greats.
And yes, I know, that shot Jordan hit to win the national championship was incredible, but several others have hit game-winners, from Kris Jenkins to Lorenzo Charles to Arike Ogunbowale — and we’re not talking about them, are we?
Here’s what MJ did at UNC in three seasons:
One national championship (and he wasn’t the best player on that team that beat Georgetown in 1982. That was James Worthy’s team and Sam Perkins scored more per-game than Jordan).
One Wooden Award
One Naismith Award
Two-time All-ACC
1984 Player of the Year
Two-time All-American
Career averages of 17.7 points, five rebounds, 1.8 assists per-game while shooting 54 percent from the floor.
Pretty good, right? But certainly not the greatest of all-time.
ESPN’s bracket featured men’s and women’s players and the one who has the best resume is UConn’s Breanna Stewart. Even Dick Vitale pegged her as the greatest of all-time, over Lew Alcindor, Patrick Ewing and Cheryl Miller.
Earlier this year, I put together all-time starting five’s for a few women’s teams at NCAA.com, combing through record books from Tennessee, Notre Dame and UConn. Here’s what Stewie did for the Huskies, much of which is unmatched by any man or woman:
Four straight national championships (2013-2016).
Awarded the Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four in each of those four seasons
24-0 in the NCAA tournament
151-5 record at UConn
Three Naismith Awards
Three-time AP National Player of the Year
Two-time winner of the Wooden Award
Three-time AAC Player of the Year
Three-time All-American
UConn career records for free throws made, blocked shots
Leader of two undefeated UConn teams in 2014 and 2016
Only player in Division I history to record at least 300 blocks and 300 assists in a career.
Career averages of 17.2 points, 7.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.6 blocks per-game while shooting 52.6 percent from the floor.
Yea, that’s incredible, right? There’s no debate. Stewart had a better college career than Jordan.
UConn head coach Geno Auriemma once said the difference between the Huskies and the other teams in the early 2000s was simple: “We got Diana (Taurasi) and you don't.” A decade later, he could’ve easily made the same declaration about Stewie.
(What’s wild is that Stewie fell in the fan-voted bracket to Allen Iverson, another player who was far better in the pros than in college. I love Iverson as much as anyone, I had a SLAM poster of him in my cubicle at the Delmarva Daily Times, but he spent two seasons at Georgetown and never made the Final Four. The crossovers were phenomenal, but sorry, that doesn’t make for a G.O.A.T. resume.)
And even if you want to take women’s hoops out of it, there’s a few men to make an argument for, chiefly Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul Jabaar). At UCLA, he averaged 26.4 points and 15.5 rebounds per-game while shooting 63.9 percent from the floor. He won three national championships and two national Player of the Year awards. Alcindor only lost two games in his three-year career at UCLA and his dominance led the NCAA to ban dunking to level the playing field. That didn’t stop him and neither could any defense in college basketball.
Next time someone brings up the greatest college basketball player of all-time debate, show some respect for Stewart and Alcindor.
Stats
“College? Those guys from Seton Hall were seven-feet tall, some of them.”