“He had exposure … that’s why they say he is the greatest” – Walt Frazier says MJ is only called the GOAT because he got the most nationally televised games
The “Greatest Of All Time” title in sports has always been a slippery slope, tangled in nostalgia, highlight moments, and generational bias. But every now and then, a legend of the game speaks plainly enough to force a pause.
One name that always seems to come up is Michael Jordan. For his role in leading the Chicago Bulls dynasty and his impact on the game in general, MJ is often labeled the greatest. But not everyone shares the sentiment.
Jordan’s exposure
Walt “Clyde” Frazier, the two-time NBA champion and Hall of Fame guard who orchestrated the New York Knicks’ golden era in the early 1970s, took a different approach to explaining why Michael stands as the definitive figure in many people’s minds.
“He had exposure,” Frazier said. “At the time Jordan played, [the NBA was] bigger than football. [The NBA’s] ratings were higher than football. That’s why they say he is the greatest.
“Who saw Wilt Chamberlain? How many people are alive that saw him play? It’s the same thing with the Heisman trophy; the guys on the West Coast weren’t winning it because we were sleeping. In the East, when they’re playing, the people that vote are sleeping,” he added.
It wasn’t about sheer dominance alone — although Jordan had plenty of that. It was about when and how he dominated. Frazier’s point was that visibility made the myth.
When cable TV was booming and the NBA’s global push was just beginning, MJ became a walking brand. He arrived at the right time, just as networks began televising more games nationally and Nike launched the Air Jordan line that would transform both footwear and athlete marketing.
But Frazier, who played in the 1960s and ’70s when the NBA Finals were broadcast on tape delay, said that this wasn’t always the case. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game, averaged over 50 points in a season, and collected rebounding titles like trading cards. Yet his career, filled with feats that still seem unreal, unfolded primarily in a shadowed corner of sports media.
Without televised broadcasts, some players and games couldn’t be seen. For decades, the Heisman tended to lean heavily toward players in the Eastern and Central time zones, where voters were more likely to have seen the games live. Visibility, once again, shaped greatness. One had to be seen to be remembered. Literally.
A different era
MJ was impossible to miss as the face of the NBA.
From the mid-1980s to the late 1990s, he appeared on national broadcasts at a frequency no other player could match. The 1993 NBA Finals between Jordan’s Bulls and Charles Barkley’s Phoenix Suns drew an average of 17.9 million viewers, outpacing that year’s World Series and nearly matching the Super Bowl. And that was just one chapter in Michael’s media dominance.
“The exposure of players and the publicity can make you [the greatest],” Frazier said.
It was less about denying Jordan’s brilliance and more about unpacking the factors that helped elevate his legend. After all, the NBA has seen a revolving cast of generational talents — Bill Russell won 11 championships, Chamberlain set many records, and Oscar Robertson averaged a triple-double before the stat line became a thing.
Even in the later years, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson redefined rivalries, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired with the most points in NBA history — a record that stood for nearly four decades. Yet none of them became the cultural icon Jordan did.
Jordan’s greatness, of course, wasn’t a fluke. Six championships, five MVP awards, 10 scoring titles, and a two-way game that terrified even the most elite opponents. But Frazier’s argument doesn’t dispute the résumé. It challenges the criteria by which it’s mythologized.
