I can’t believe I have to say this, but no, Michael Jordan is the God of basketball

I must admit that at the beginning I was furious when I saw the wave “We’re done with 90s TikToks. This is currently one of the hottest trends in the app. These are young Gen Z men who make entire videos arguing that Michael Jordan wasn’t actually very good at basketball. (It’s really hard for me to even write that sentence.) They show clips of Michael Jordan missing a goal or losing the ball and say, “See, he’s actually trash.” It took me a minute to understand what was really happening.

I now see it as intergenerational psychological warfare. Young boys are rejecting the God of basketball that Generation X anointed long before they were born. That’s like saying: Fuck you old heads, get off our lawn. They over-troll the older generation and get clicks through rage bait.

It can also be generational pride and the assumption that human progress implies that the whole lot is best now than it was years ago.

It’s also about elevating LeBron over Jordan. This is the true subtext of claiming Jordan is trash. This means LeBron is the GOAT. For a long time, Gen Xers and Millennials have argued over Jordan and LeBron, comparing numbers and nuances to give you arguments about who’s the best of all time. Gen Z has entered this debate like Bill Laimbeer attacking Jordan flying down the road. Just like Laimbeer deserved a technical foul, Gen Z deserves a technician for this bullshit opinion. But I understand and support their subcutaneous intentions.

The kids definitely knew Gen X could be furious about this. According to athletes, Jordan is a form of god. Watch these delicious clips of Jordan and scream, “Garbage!” when he misses a shot, it’s painful. I watched Jordan’s entire profession, from his winning shot at UNC to his winning shot within the championship in Utah. (The whole Wizards thing didn’t occur). When he played, Jordan was the most well-liked athlete within the country and was considered the epitome of getting all of it as an athlete – physically gifted, mentally strong and the toughest employee on the team. If you played any sport, Jordan was supposed to be your role model.

I could spend tons of of words listing Jordan’s accolades, but no, I’ll just indicate one thing: In 1992, when the U.S. Olympic Basketball team, also referred to as the Dream Team, went to Barcelona and trial runs took place, consisting of the longer term farmers’ hall – one of the best players on the earth on the time – it was clear to these players that one of the best of one of the best was Jordan. It was unanimous.

But now we have kids who barely saw Jordan say no. All your memories are flawed. He was actually offended and played against the plumbers. Wow. The lack of respect is disgusting. Certainly, today’s NBA players are, on average, more expert than players from a long time ago. But while the common NBA player today is best than the common NBA player of the Nineteen Nineties, the truly elite players of the Nineteen Nineties – Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird – would still be stars of today’s game. Truly elite players will shine in any era.

If prime Jordan was within the NBA right away, do you actually think Devin Booker or Donovan Mitchell could slow him down? He was the one who would cover it. In Boston, he would probably draw Jrue Holiday, which many insiders believe he’s one of the best defender within the NBA. But Holiday, like Alex Caruso, Desmond Bane and Dillon Brooks, couldn’t stop him.

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The game has definitely evolved – most players today are higher at handling the ball and shooting than they were a long time ago. They are also fitter and stronger. Moreover, the sport itself has modified – within the Nineteen Nineties, there have been still centers who played with their backs to the basket and wingers who liked to shoot from the middle and even closer to the basket. These days, it’s all about shooting from beyond the arc, even should you’re a middle. There’s not as much physical play as we used to have. It’s more of a finesse game. In the Nineteen Nineties that they had to play man-to-man defense, but now teams can play zone. Anti-Jordan Gen Zers conveniently keep in mind that the league is made up of higher players, but they ignore the proven fact that the principles have also modified things to create more offense.

Many people repel and the claim that “We Done With the ’90s” is totally flawed. Among them is JJ Reddick, who actually played within the NBA (unlike anyone who pumps out the “Jordan is garbage” narrative). He is currently the lead NBA analyst for ESPN. In a recent episode on his podcast “The Old Man and the Three,” he said“We often speak about what an awesome figure from the NBA’s past would appear like in today’s modern NBA. I think it’s no secret that Michael Jordan, with all of the space that the three-point revolution and analytics and all that stuff has created, would absolutely destroy him in today’s NBA. Did you hear that, kids? Destroy.

So the essential argument that Jordan wasn’t actually a great player or that he would not make it in the trendy NBA is, yes, bullshit. But the true thing these young individuals are doing is validating themselves and their generation. They say we can’t accept the opinions of the older guys. We will remake the world in our image. While I cringe on the ahistorical nature of their bizarre anti-Jordan argument, I understand that every generation has to prove itself, and that sometimes means rejecting the bullshit of the previous generation.

When I was a child, hip-hop got here out and scared lots of boomers. It was an inherent rejection of the music they loved. While R&B was all about singing, melody and love, hip-hop was all about rapping and rhythm and the way hard life was in New York where there was broken glass in every single place. I remember the older generation telling us that hip-hop shouldn’t be music. I remember them complaining that while their groups had aspirational names like The Supremes, our groups had nihilistic names like NWA. Hip-hop was such a revolutionary approach to music that it took many oldies years to catch up.

In early hip-hop, we showed the center finger to the whole lot the boomers cared about musically. This is what young boys are doing with us now. Part of growing up is standing up to the older generation. All right. I respect this. But a part of being an adult is realizing that Michael Jordan continues to be the GOAT.