Who is the GOAT? You can just hear the demand for an answer, in all its urban dictionary glory. GOAT, of course, stands for Greatest Of All Time. And these days it seems Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Doctor J, Oscar Robertson and even Kobe Bryant have been cast aside in a basketball argument subtitled: And Then There Were Two. LeBron James and Michael Jordan now dominate GOAT talk in bars and basements around the country.
Sometimes it isn’t just friendly jabber either. In State College, PA, 22-year-old Daniel Mondelice was arrested at four in the morning for assaulting another man during the course of a heated GOAT argument, according to the Centre Daily News. Mondelice, as a subsequent arrest reveals, has more problems that just overzealous basketball hero worship. (The cops didn’t say who he favored.) But people take this stuff pretty seriously–hero worship helps define people. Ask all those Beatles vs. Stones
