Posts by steelharbor9

Charles Roberts33 said:Starting with the Roman Emperors, I have a real soft spot for those who managed to maintain order and restore even a flicker of the Empire's former glory while navigating chaotic, decadent eras surrounded by complete incompetents—think guys like Aurelian, or our own Valentine. 😉

But if we're talking absolute TOP1, for me, it’s Marcus Aurelius. Purely sentimental reasons.

Good recommendations. Check out GQ; it's some interesting reading.

🤣 🤣 🤣 🙏 🙏

brightpilot6 said:And yet, everyone would probably draft him in the first round. As if they wouldn't just block him immediately ☕

Or maybe user Put99 would grab him, and then he'd probably complain about his whole offensive strategy getting totally messed up.

Oh yeah, I was actually recommending this chess book here recently (The Immortal Game). It has this totally wild little sketch about Napoleon—apparently, while he was stuck on Saint Helena, they sent him a chess set where the escape plan was hidden right inside the design of the board itself, but he just never spotted it. 🙏

I didn't really want to go digging to see if it was actually true, though, because it honestly sounded way too cool to be real. 😁

If you'll let me pivot over to the Middle East for a second, this would probably be one of the better picks, especially when looking at regional criteria. A few years back, they even released a movie about him that absolutely smashed all the box office records there 🙏

brightpilot6 said:Perhaps we could attempt an ATD policy edition. We would select a quintet—a ruler, a general, a chaplain, a philosopher, and a warrior—to form a cohesive unit, if you will. ☕

In terms of value, I guess we'd be looking at versatile picks like George Washington or Saucha.

Charles Roberts33 said:It’s all standing still, but world history is a long game. 🤷

And it isn't just those most famous leagues that actually matter. ☕

If we're going to highlight rulers who were masters at squeezing every bit of potential out of meager resources, then honestly, very few can be mentioned in the same breath as Michael the Brave.
☕

Generally speaking, the Wallachian princes are criminally underrated, if you'll excuse my language. 😉

Yeah, and that's actually a solid Pick! I was just reading up on him recently, and man, if we were playing ATD, he’d probably get banned in the very first round. I guess anyone who made it onto those lists of founding fathers definitely deserves a shout-out. ☕

brightpilot6 said:😂

And honestly, we’re already miles ahead of them in the grand scheme of things.

A royal Goat... hmm... what about Presbyter John? In the glorious Middle Ages, nobody could even touch him, let alone his kingdom, which was easily the greatest of them all.☕

Just your classic case of mythomania here. 🐔

So, did he rule on Sundays too?

William Gomez5 said:man, honestly, French Fries is #1

We're talking about military leaders, or at least people connected to them🤷

But yeah, totally top tier🤣

For the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_French_(murderer).

God, this damn subreddit... every single time I write a post about someone, I get this little wave of anxiety wondering if they've already been picked so I can mention them🤣 🤣

Charles Roberts33 said:Trophies, influence, longevity, style, charisma—and, of course, personal bias. It’s the usual checklist whenever people start bickering over who truly belongs in the GOAT conversation. 🤷

Why is he so incredibly certain about Napoleon? 🤔

What’s your take on the leadership styles of those ancient Persian rulers?

Nader Shah. 🙏 He’s just so powerful that people call him "Napoleon Persia," even though he was actually about a hundred years older than Napoleon himself. 🤣

Managing to hold onto that kind of dominance with such a rough crew from the Afsharid era... I mean, he's a total MVP, I guess! 🙏

It’s honestly tough to pick a single GOAT, but this guy definitely had the most legendary final words ever. 🙏 🙏

He is remembered for his ironic last words: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance."

William Gomez5 said:Back when Alexander was just 21, one of his own knights told him straight up that he was the greatest leader anyone had ever seen

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Noah Roberts46 said:Sure, his field goal percentage was under 40%, but the Lakers fans are definitely exaggerating that one. ☕

I honestly don't get how Stephen Curry didn't take it home.

With an FG percentage under 40% and, like Paul Pierce mentioned earlier, having Juan Dallavedova as the second-best player...

He basically carried that ragtag group to a 2-1 lead. And man, that one loss went to overtime because—I think it was just yesterday I saw this—Josh Shumpert couldn't sink a layup from two feet out right at the end of regulation in game one. 🙏 🙏

The guy probably led in pretty much every statistical category out there. Seriously, give me any player in history—even a 21-year-old Jordan—and they wouldn't be able to take those two games off the Golden State Warriors with that Cleveland Cavaliers squad.

dustyridge3 said:Who, in your estimation, holds the title of the greatest of all time in tennis? ☕

Unless this is just trolling—the guy on my avatar. And honestly, he probably stays there because of what he means to the sport regardless of how his career goes, but I’m super subjective, so maybe take my take with a massive grain of salt.

Now, if we're talking about the absolute best (not even calling him the BOAT, though...)—that really comes down to the major trophies. And I guess all three of them have a legitimate shot at sitting at the very top by the time they retire.

restlesssurfer97 said:GQ has to frame things this way because he knows the truth about that little mini-dictator is going to come out pretty soon anyway, so he’s basically just setting himself up to say he hasn't changed his mind once the dust settles and he can claim he stood his ground the whole time.

The only thing Leo is sticking into himself is a fountain pen needle, I guess.

When it comes to names that just roll right off the tongue, I guess you can't beat El Hadji Diouf.

Jessica Gonzalez said:I guess Lance Armstrong is one of those sports icons where even having a hundred kilos of doping in his system can't erase what he actually achieved. The guy basically beat death and then grabbed seven consecutive Tours, bringing millions of people along for the ride. As far as his personality goes, it’s pretty clear he’s just an arrogant jerk, but as an athlete, he was an unprecedented Miracle. Maybe with enough time, things will settle back into a normal perspective, because history won't just forget him. That's just how this sport works; everyone gets caught up in it.

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It’s honestly tough to put into words how you managed to claim someone was the greatest basketball player ever at age 21 and then immediately surpass that on the very same day, but hey, you did it! Congrats, I guess. But seriously, he is never going to be seen as a respected athlete again. Never.

Matthew Young35 said:If we're being honest, Carl Lewis is a much bigger deal than Usain Bolt when you look at the whole picture. It wasn't just about matching records in one discipline; he shattered the long jump record and dominated more events than Bolt ever did. Plus, he had incredible longevity, and unlike others, he never faced those doping allegations.

I’ll never forget that competition—I think it was a World Championship—where Lewis smashed a world record in the long jump that had stood for over twenty years. Then Mike Powell steps up and breaks it. Then Lewis goes back and breaks it again, only for Powell to take it back one last time to win.
By then, Lewis was already getting a bit older.
Look, maybe I'm slightly off on the exact sequence of the record breaks, but I know for a fact those two were trading world records at the very same meet.
At the end of the day, Carl Lewis is undoubtedly a far greater track and field icon than Ben Johnson.

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I mean, O.J. wasn't proven to have killed his wife, and Jeffrey Epstein wasn't proven to have been murdered. Am I playing this game right?

Susan Kim2 said:Actually, it's quite the opposite. Curry choked in two Finals. First, when Andre Iguodala deservedly took the Finals MVP away from him while LeBron James kept them on edge with that absolute unit Matthew Dellavedova acting as his second-best player and bench focus. Then, the following year, after they went crazy with that 73-9 run, they completely fell apart in the big Finals. And of course, because that "super" 73-win team had to bring in three of the league's best players just to try and take down the Cavaliers.
The media never calls Curry out for stuff like that, mostly because he's just so likable and has such a fun personality.

Man, you just don't get it; I mean, John Stockton, Shawn Kemp, and Scottie Pippen are the literal definition of charisma, which is something Curry just doesn't have at all.

Btw, I don't really agree with calling it "rightful" on one hand, but on the other, I honestly have no clue who else I'd give it to. For that specific Finals, realistically—it's just LeBron James.

Elizabeth Mendoza said:What kind of argument is 🙏

Just tell me—when was the last time you saw some kid out on the street wearing a Diego Maradona jersey?

Now you aren't even making full sentences anymore—just fragments to try and keep those crazy arguments going. Just keep at it, though, champ. 🙏 I guess when you can't actually counter anything, you might as well just keep talking.

Ethan Cook said:So go ahead. Draw some parallels between today's players and the ones I just listed. Tell me who has more character, who actually carries more charisma? Be my guest.

The guy below pretty much nailed the whole point of this story.

dustyviper8 said:Social media has a massive impact on the NBA today—it's being tracked more than ever before. You find out what a player had for breakfast in a split second, let alone anything else. I’m convinced that if social media and this kind of constant monitoring had existed back in Michael Jordan's era, everyone would have looked at them in a completely different light.

Twenty-five years ago, even for Americans—let alone people over here—Charles Barkley and his crew were basically mythological figures. You’d stumble upon a newspaper clipping and read it fifty times. If you were lucky with the local news stations, maybe you’d catch one game or at least a couple of highlights. That was it. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong; I wasn't actually there, after all.

Nobody is walking around wearing a John Stockton or Shawn Kemp jersey these days, but it’s obvious why people growing up back then saw them as gods. It's for the exact same reason kids today will look up to Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook, or the youngest ones will worship Luka Dončić—and I'm sorry if you don't want to see it that way! There isn't really a "correct" answer to who was the bigger legend. Everyone's hero is just whoever they spent those nostalgic moments watching. I guess Stephen Curry's shimmy against OKC in 2016 is more iconic than Scottie Pippen's dunk over Patrick Ewing—but if I say that to someone ten or fifteen years older, their blood pressure might hit 200 because of the blasphemy!

For me, the 2002 World Cup is still the strongest memory, even though everyone older than me says it was one of the worst ever. Man, it was the first one I followed live. I watched every single second they showed, and even now, I can remember most of the scorers and results. Nothing will ever hit that emotional level for me again, I guess.