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Michael Jordan dropped out of the NBA for two entire seasons to putter around playing minor league baseball - and many have speculated that he did so as a result of his considerable gambling addiction - abandoning his teammates and likely costing them at least one championship. Do you believe this should disqualify him from discussion as the NBA’s GOAT? I think Simone Biles is certainly on Jordan’s level for her respective sport, and her dropping out of those Olympics doesn’t seem to have impacted her teammates to quite the extent that Jordan’s dropping out did, since the U.S. still won 6 gymnastics medals at those Olympics.
I don’t see it. Jordan allegedly quit because his dad was murdered. That is a bit different from “I felt pressure whilst performing.” And Jordan was actually starting to turn into an okay MILB player (probably never would’ve been good enough to be in the majors).
Jordan’s probably most iconic game was the flu game. Biles quit over anxiety. Jordan dropped 40+
Biles didn’t just drop out because of “anxiety”. She was, allegedly, experiencing something gymnasts call “the twisties”, wherein she was literally losing her sense of spatial orientation during aerial twisting events. When an NBA player of Jordan’s caliber has a bad day, it means scoring 15 points instead of 40. When an Olympic gymnast has a bad day, it can mean landing the wrong way and ending up with a career-altering injury. Like, I get why people shit on Biles at the time, especially because the morons in the feminized sports media decided to use it as an opportunity to celebrate her bravery rather than just recognizing it as a somewhat unfortunate and embarrassing setback in what has otherwise been an incredible, historic career. Still, if we’re talking about greatest athletes, very few have had the sustained level of dominance in a particular sport that Biles has.
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