Muggsy Bogues is the shortest player to ever play in the NBA at 5’3. And he did it not by sheer luck, but through a combination of determination and skillset.

Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23). © Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

Bogues enjoyed a 14-year NBA career and played his prime in an era dominated by Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls, who clustered two three-peats from 1990 to 1998.

Jordan is the acknowledged Greatest of All Time (GOAT) by Bogues’ generation.

But LeBron James has come to challenge that GOAT claim with his longevity and a stellar NBA career.

While Bogues’ archetype has become vogue in James’ era, there is one thing he does not want to concede — that James is better than his generation’s GOAT.

The NBA’s shortest player belittled James’s skillset in the GOAT debate compared to Jordan.

“Skill-wise there’s no other than [Michael Jordan], and Kobe [Bryant] was the second coming of that and had that same killer instinct mindset that MJ had,” Bogues said on the Adam Lupis podcast. “That’s what separated him from a lot of guys. MJ was a killer, Lebron is nothing like him.”

But Bogues said it cannot be taken away from James that he put himself in a position to become the all-time greatest scoring player in the NBA with his longevity.

The Los Angeles Lakers superstar is entering his 22nd season, turning 40 in December.

“He’s impacted the game more than ways you can ever imagine but we’re just talking between the [basketball] lines,” Bogues said of James. “[If we’re talking about] the skill set of a basketball player, there was no other like [Jordan].”