Basketball On The Internet.

WHO is the GOAT of the NBL, the GOAT of the NBA, the GOAT of FIBA? These are perennial debates (except maybe not as much the last one) that lean into your personal favourites, recency biases, the state of the sport at the time and can never satisfactorily be answered. So why try? Because it IS a perennial debate.

Everyone has an opinion. But in a team sport such as basketball, continually evolving and not always for the better, it is frankly impossible for most to remain objective.

The key word in that sentence though was "team", as in team sport. Cricket may be the only team game where - apart from One Dayers and 20/20 - little has changed, the mark of Test success still the most relevant barometer. So yes, Sir Donald Bradman can definitely be declared and hailed as its GOAT.  

But is Muhammad Ali the GOAT of boxing or Pele the GOAT of soccer? It's all about your perspective.

If you're from my vintage or older, Sean Connery is most likely your definitive James Bond, with maybe Daniel Craig running second. If you're in the next age bracket back, you probably swear by Roger Moore as your definitive 007, with Pierce Brosnan your close second. 

What's my point? We can never resolve such opinion differences but team sports adds an entirely different and difficult dimension to it.

There are a number of positions on a basketball court for starters. How do you compare a point guard to a centre?

And of course there's the other variable - eras.

Times change. Sport changes. What was once a violation, today may be a cherished skill. 

I was fortunate enough recently to be a guest on Bruce Palmer and Steve McLeod's "The Reverse Pivot" podcast - I'll post further details when it goes online - and we briefly touched on Adelaide 36ers and former Perth Wildcats superstar Bryce Cotton and the media now wanting to install him as our NBL GOAT - the Greatest Of All Time.

Understandable, yes. But mildly amusing too.

I have him in a separate category altogether. He is my GOTE - Greatest Of This Era.

If I was selecting a TEAM today from NBL players, he would be my first choice immediately, with daylight second. This is a 33-year-old savant coming off his sixth season as MVP of the NBL.

In his first season at his second club, he took the 36ers within a missed shot (in regulation) of the 2026 Championship, previously amassing NBL titles at Perth in 2017, 2019 and 2020.

Twice this slender 182cm guard was named Grand Final Series MVP and he is a 9-time NBL All First Team selection. He is exceptional by any standard.

But does that make him better than Leroy Loggins?

Leapin' Leroy - the man who coined the quote "I don't predict, I produce" - was a 196cm "coat-rack" forward Cal Bruton often said "had to run around in the shower to get wet".

He arrived in 1981 and took a Brisbane Bullets team to the top four playoffs in his first season, only to be beaten by Launcestion in their semi final 71-69 after contentious free throws were awarded at the siren to the eventual champions.

No-one not named Dave Claxton could today name two of Leroy's teammates on that team, he was just so good he carried those Bullets. West Adelaide player-coach Ken Richardson, the best import in the country when the NBL launched and its 1979 MVP, told me he just saw the best import in the league after his Bearcats' first game against Brisbane.

(Sorry, no. If you thought Larry Sengstock or Bruton were with Leroy in 1981 you have the wrong years. Larry was at St Kilda, and Cal left the Bullets after the 1979 season, bound for Geelong.)

Richardson wasted no time recruiting Loggins to West Adelaide, relegating himself to the bench as the league's best sixth man so Leroy could do his thing.

And do it he did, winning NBL First Team selection as West Adelaide claimed the 1982 championship, Loggins the grand final MVP with 32 points in the 90-84 success over Geelong. (It helps to remember these were still the days of 40-minute games and no 3-point lines. And Leroy had range.)

In 1983, he again was West's best as it succumbed 73-75 to Canberra in the Grand Final.

He would be denied the championship by a basket again in 1984 when, having returned to Brisbane, the Bullets lost the Grand Final 82-84, also to Canberra.

In 1985 the Bullets beat Adelaide 36ers for the championship but for some forgotten reason, there was no Grand Final MVP named in that one. On the night though, television coverage voted Loggins as "player of the match" for his 41-point contribution to Brisbane's win. 

Come 1986 and Brisbane lost the first best-of-three Grand Final to Adelaide 1-2. Game 1 at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre at Boondall set a then Australian indoor attendance record of more than 11,000. Loggins now has a statue outside that venue.

Brisbane bounced back in 1987, sweeping Perth 2-0, Loggins collecting his second official Grand Final MVP award.

That's six straight years the championship had to go through Leroy Loggins, and after a two-year hiatus for a fierce Canberra-North Melbourne rivalry, he was leading Brisbane back into the 1990 Grand Final.

A three-time league MVP (1984, 1986, 1987), his mesmerising all-court brilliance was so taken for granted, he was extremely unlucky not to also enjoy that accolade in 1981 and 1988. He was NBL First Team nine times, All Star Game MVP twice and Defensive Player of the Year twice.

Melbourne Tigers were admitted to the NBL in 1984 and a scrawny kid who was about to blossom into a seven-time league MVP was recognised as the Rookie of the Year.

Within two years Andrew Gaze was leading the league in scoring, delivering at 36.9ppg. A year later in 1987 he established the NBL's greatest single-season scoring average with 44.1ppg.

In 1991, Drewey won his first MVP award, following it with further wins in 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998.

Along the way, Gaze was part of two Tigers NBL championships (1993, 1997), and perhaps the only negative of his career can be levelled at the fact Melbourne should have produced at least two more championships.

But don't buy into that tiresome TV commentary narrative spun by his former teammate and buddy Lanard Copeland and longtime opponent Derek Rucker regarding Gaze supposedly not playing defence or never meeting a shot he didn't love.

That's Gaze throwing all those lobs for Copeland dunks on the ageing highlight reels and in his prime, he was easily the best Australian basketball player any of us had ever seen.

He could kill you from range, take you on the drive, play the passing lanes for intercepts and lay-ups, backdoor you while you took your eye off him for a split second - the man was perpetual movement and every rival gameplan started with ways to restrict Andrew Gaze.

There weren't any ways. Gaze led the league in scoring in 14 seasons (career average 30.8ppg), is a 15-time NBL First Team selection and in 1999 even snuck over to the NBA to collect a championship as part of the San Antonio Spurs roster.

It's easy to let such milestones fade from the memory but here's the stark truth - if you could select a team of NBL superstars from their prime, Loggins, Gaze and Cotton would be the first three anyone with half a clue would select.

There's your automatic three heads for any supposed NBL "Mount Rushmore". But all three displayed such diversely different styles of game that comparing them head-to-head is just folly.

Why even compare them? Loggins and Gaze's eras crossed over, with Cotton's 20 years further along. All three are GOTEs - Greatest Of Their Eras. Can't we now just enjoy Bryce without trying to build a pedestal or accolade of superiority for him?

If Michael Jordan won't be drawn into any conversation about the NBA's GOAT, why do we need to have someone definitive in our little NBL?

And the same rule of thumb applies to the NBA.

Is there a greater single athlete than the 216cm (7ft1in) Wilt Chamberlain? This man not only produced a record number of NBA records (72 to be precise!), he has the league's only 100-point game.

Don't buy into that rhetoric pedalled by a number of the racist sportswriters of the era who simply couldn't handle Wilt's dominance and tried every way possible to diminish his achievements.

He was only playing against butchers, bakers and candlestickmakers. That's just straight up BS. He was up against men such as Bill Russell, Nate Thurmond, Willis Reed, Walt Bellamy, Elvin Hayes, Wes Unseld and even a kid named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

A seven-time league scoring champion - including a season where he averaged 50.4ppg - he then was ridiculed for shooting the ball too much!

So for a season, this 216cm beast led the league in assists. He had 55 rebounds in a game. Seriously, he could anything. (Except maybe consistently hit free throws.) But like Gaze, the biggest knock on Wilt is the fact he won only two championships in a 14-season career.

There was a team called the Boston Celtics which stood in his way, with his great friend Bill Russell manning the middle. Russell is the most successful winner of all-time. But he had some pretty talented Hall of Famers running around with him.

Off the top of my head I can think of Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Tommy Heinsohn, Bill Sharman, Don Nelson, KC Jones, Sam Jones ... the list goes on. Now, quickly, name two of Chamberlain's teammates from his 10 years at Philadelphia. 

Exactly. Past his prime at Los Angeles, with the Lakers he had better support and won one of his chips there.

If Wilt was the best athlete - and he spent his off-seasons playing with the Harlem Globetrotters on their European tours - then Abdul-Jabbar was the first complete basketballer.

Kareem's skyhook shot remains the greatest weapon in basketball history, virtually unstoppable without a double-team. And then he was a willing passer, this 218cm (7ft2in) giant who won six NBA MVPs, six championships, setting a host of records to set him apart from the other great centres.

Then came the aerial acrobatics and freakish flying abilities of Dr J, Julius Erving before the duo who saved the NBA arrived.

You can't talk about the dazzling career of Earvin "Magic" Johnson without mentioning his nemesis Larry Bird. They changed the NBA for the better.

Why are these guys so often left out of the GOAT discussion?

Magic revolutionised point guard play while Bird was able to not only beat opponents but good enough to tell them how he was going to do it.

If you want a guy taking a shot your life depends on, it was always Larry Bird.

And then comes Michael.

The most perfect basketball player.

If you wanted to create a blueprint for a basketball player, fed those requirements into a computer, Michael Jordan would be who the program would deliver.

It is so easy to label him the GOAT, and then also remember Kobe Bryant was a carbon copy. Of course, a carbon is never quite as good as the original but when the GOAT discussion jumps from MJ to LeBron James, count me out.

I loved the guy at Cleveland, endured him at Miami, then loved him with Delly back at Cleveland when the greats of the game were his role models. But once he swung to James Harden as his role model and brought along a flopping, whining, play-phantom-D entitled demeanour, he fell right out of this conversation for me.

Don't care how many records his longevity brings him, for me they will always be tainted by who his on-court persona became. 

Give me Larry Bird every day of the week ahead of this fraud.

That's not the King James of yesteryear I'm referring to, it's the Cringe James of today.

So how much weight do you give to championships?

Is Charles Barkley less of a star for having no NBA rings?

Was Wilt for only boasting two?

Wilt was a GOTE, so is Kareem, so are Magic and Bird, MJ and Kobe.

Have to give Steph Curry a nod too now, for changing the game so dramatically ... though it's an argument whether everyone jacking up threes has made for a better spectacle.

Brazil's Oscar Schmidt, the all-time leading scorer at Olympic Games (our man Drewey is second by the way) has to be among the first players mentioned in any FIBA GOAT conversation.

Can you go past Argentina's Luis Scola?

Lithuania's Arvydas Sabonis?

That's three prolific scoring machines and a superlative big man who could pass the ball like a PG.

How can you compare them then? In truth, you cannot.

Just as comparing MJ to Wilt is a debate which has a destination to nowhere.

OK. I'll give you this. Our NBL does have one genuine GOAT. But his name is Brian. And he's a coach.