Paul Pierce Says We Need To Rethink The GOAT Debate: "Why Is Kareem Never At The Top?"

beIN SPORTS

View the original article to see embedded media.

Nowadays, whenever someone talks about the greatest basketball player of all time, only two names really come up: LeBron James and Michael Jordan.

For years, the two have been connected in this "dance" of greatness and as LeBron continues to add more to his resume, the debate has only gotten hotter.

But is it time we give some more consideration to another basketball legend? According to Paul Pierce, the answer is yes.

In a duo of tweets, the former Celtics star posed a question to the NBA community, suggesting that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar should be taken more seriously in terms of his claim to being the GOAT.

It's certainly an interesting and unorthodox GOAT pick, but Pierce is hardly the first one to make such a suggestion.

“I definitely feel that he’s the greatest player of all time. Clyde is right with that weapon. There was no defense against Kareem and that weapon," said Bobby Dandridge on SiriusXM NBA Radio.

"And then he had a lot of information about the game. Kareem played with good players throughout his career, going back to Power Memorial and on the playground of New York City.

It didn’t take Kareem maybe 5 or 6 years to win a championship. Kareem has been a champion at every level, and a distinctive champion, cause I think at UCLA they may have won at least 2 maybe 3 national championships. And then in his second year in Milwaukee, he was able to win another championship, and then he won another couple championships with the Lakers," Dandridge concluded.

Kareem isn't just the leading scorer in basketball history. He's also a 19x All-Star, 15x All-NBA player, 6x MVP, and 6x NBA Champion.

And while he might not have been as flashy as Jordan, LeBron, or even Kobe, the guy was a force in his own right and deserves to be included in the GOAT conversation.