{"id":153469,"date":"2022-12-10T03:52:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T03:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/stephen-curry-leaves-lebron-james-off-his-all-time-starting-five-takes-magic-johnson-as-backcourt-partner\/"},"modified":"2022-12-10T03:52:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T03:52:05","slug":"stephen-curry-leaves-lebron-james-off-his-all-time-starting-five-takes-magic-johnson-as-backcourt-partner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/stephen-curry-leaves-lebron-james-off-his-all-time-starting-five-takes-magic-johnson-as-backcourt-partner\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Curry leaves LeBron James off his all-time starting five, takes Magic Johnson as backcourt partner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Stephen Curry was just named Sports Illustrated’s 2022 Sportsperson of the Year, and during his conversation with SI he was asked to put together his all-time starting lineup. There was one stipulation: Curry had to include himself, which isn’t really a stretch as it is getting harder and harder to make a case for anyone else as the greatest point guard ever. <\/p>\n

“I’m at PG, I’m going with Magic [Johnson]we’ll play hybrid guards,” Curry told SI. “You got [Michael] Jordan, you got Dirk [Nowitzki] spacing the floor, shooting the ball, and you got the big man, the Diesel [Shaquille O’Neal], holding it down. So, that’s a solid lineup I think.”<\/p>\n

Curry threw together this dream starting five on the fly, so let’s not put a ton into this, but it is notable that he left LeBron James off. Trivial as this is, I can’t imagine LeBron doesn’t take it as a slight. Curry and LeBron are the faces of this post-Jordan era. Nobody else is in competition with either, and there’s a strong case to be made that LeBron is the greatest player ever. <\/p>\n

Curry’s lineup does fit pretty well, which is the only way you could even begin justify Nowitzki over James for the spacing alone, but even in that case I don’t know how you can take Dirk over Kevin Durant, who was another slight as a former teammate of Curry. If you want a traditional center, I would take Tim Duncan (don’t start with the “he was a power forward!” semantics), but Shaq surely deserves this kind of recognition. <\/p>\n

The one you just can’t justify is Magic Johnson over LeBron, who is basically a bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic, better scoring, better-shooting and better-defending version of Magic. There is only one thing on a basketball court that Magic Johnson arguably did better than James, and that’s passing, and LeBron is an all-time passer himself. Anyone who would take Magic over LeBron is living in a nostalgic dreamland. <\/p>\n

A Curry-Jordan backcourt with LeBron as a point forward is pretty irrefutably the best perimeter trio you could ever form. Form there, you can debate the fourth and fifth players. But leaving LeBron off any all-time starting five, even one listed off the top of your head, is impossible to justify. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n