23 Basketball LEGENDS Share Who They Think the GOAT Is

Joe Johnson. 7x NBA-All Star. All-NBA Third Teamer in 2010. Born bucket getter. A career 16.0 point per game scorer. In his prime, he averaged 20.9 points per game with Atlanta. He’s 8th all-time among active NBA scorers (just a shade below Kevin Durant and Pau Gasol, and well beyond fellow vets like Tony Parker, Jamal Crawford, Jason Terry, and Zach Randolph). He’s also 6th among active 3 point leaders (1978 3 pointers made, leading Dirk Nowitzki and his 1917). All that as a way of saying that Joe Johnson just knows how to put points on the board. Put him under defensive pressure and you’ll find that he won’t crack; they don’t call him “Joe Cool” for nothing. Iso Joe is from a bygone era. Back when he was drafted by the Boston Celtics, the league was all about going mano-a-mano and having a guy who could go get his. Joe has every hesi, stutter, drag dribble, pivot, pump, and look off in the book. He’s got a bag and he’s barely ever out of it. Even after 17 seasons in the league, you put him on an island and he could probably find you some points. You’ll see a lot of floaters and fadeaways, but that’s only because the clips are from later in his career and the man knew where his bread was buttered. I strongly urge you to go back and watch as much film on Joe as possible, because you’ll see he was putting guys in jail, using the jab dribble to stall the defense as he loaded into his pullup, and his feet drifted on his jumper about as often as most elite shooters. The point is that when we look at a guy like Joe Johnson, there’s so much to be learned from his game, and that’s in part why I made this video. Basketball Reference has the former Arkansas Razorbacks’ hall of fame probability listed at 50.6%, which is higher (right now) than active players like Rajon Rondo (40.7%), Kyrie Irving (36.4%), Draymond Green (27.3%), Derrick Rose (10.5%), and Andre Iguodala (6.1%). By the way, in case you wanted a list of all the teams he played for: Boston Celtics Phoenix Suns Atlanta Hawks Brooklyn Nets Miami Heat Utah Jazz Houston Rockets https://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/hof_prob.html