The new Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance, throws down a marker in the GOAT debate. Here's how Muhammad Ali popularized 'the greatest' moniker and how it grew to touch everything in culture.

• ESPN's 10-part documentary on Michael Jordan, "The Last Dance," is an education for younger generations who never saw "the greatest basketball player of all time" play during his 1990s prime.
• Athletes calling themselves "the greatest" predates Jordan, though, most famously in the boastful words of the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
• The "GOAT" (as in, the "greatest of all time") term has begun to transcend sports, finding itself in the pop music world and even on game shows like "Jeopardy."
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Long before the crying Jordan meme, when Michael Jordan retired from professional basketball (the second time, not the third), he was widely considered "the greatest basketball player of all time."

In the years since, the "greatest" debate has intensified in the context of basketball, as LeBron James, who wears both of the heir apparent nicknames "the chosen one" and "King James," built an impressive resume that made a comparison with Jordan legitimate. Still, it rankled many in the basketball community in 2018, when James said, "That one right there made me the greatest player of all-time," in reference to his 2016 championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Somewhere along the way, the phrase "greatest of all time" mutated into the acronym "GOAT," and it invaded sports fan culture, as indicated by the fallout from James' GOAT comments. You see, there can only be one GOAT, and the Michael vs. LeBron debate is growing increasingly heated as one generation's GOAT squares off against another's.

Into the fray enters "The Last Dance," an epic 10-part documentary series on Michael Jordan's 1997-98 Chicago Bulls season. It was originally scheduled to air on ESPN in June to coincide with the NBA Finals but brought forward due to the absence of other sports programming. No less an authority than Bill Simmons, best-selling basketball book author, onetime ESPN writer and current leader of Spotify-owned TheRinger.com, has floated the idea that the series is a GOAT gambit of sorts: Jordan's attempt to shore up his GOAT case against LeBron's. (Simmons should know. He reportedly liked the suggestion by his friend and colleague Chuck Klosterman that he choose "The Goat" instead of "Grantland" as the name for his now-defunct ESPN sports and pop-culture website.)

But the GOAT debate isn't limited to basketball or even athletics. You can find it increasingly far afield from barroom debates about who was better, such as this Reddit thread on who the GOAT esports athlete is. And it's even losing its status as a superlative, with some members of Gen Z using it as slang for something that's just really great.

Read on to see how far back the concept of the GOAT goes, who has worn it over the years, and how much of our culture is pervaded by GOAT-ness.