The 50 Greatest Living Athletes

Let the arguments begin! It’s much harder to pick just 50 than it looks. (Or 49, plus LeBron.) Fifty-one to 100 are all legends, too. So what’s the formula? A blend of physical perfection and split-second creativity—talent so limitless it’s enough to re-invent an entire sport.
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The entire point of making a list like this is to argue, so to begin, a plea to give us some credit: no, we did not simply forget about Larry Bird, or Dan Marino, or Joe Montana (or Kohei Uchimura, the best male gymnast in the world, or Sachin Tendulkar, the world’s greatest living cricketer). Inside the walls of GQ, we did what you’re about to: we argued, and argued, and argued. Heck, before we argued about names, we argued about definitions: what does "greatest athlete" even mean? Titles and honors and stats, yes, but also a pure physical dynamism—the creativity to reinvent your sport. Larry Bird couldn’t jump. Dan Marino couldn’t move. Out of the three quarterbacks who have led the San Francisco 49ers franchise to the Super Bowl, Joe Montana is the third-best athlete. Derek Jeter won five World Series, but he was often not even the best athlete on his own team.

When you’re narrowing the list down to just 50, the names you’re tossing overboard are staggering. If you want to yell at us anyway, join GQ’s executive editor Devin Gordon on Facebook Live at 2 p.m. on Thursday as he attempts to defend leaving off Larry Legend. Or just do what everyone else on the internet does and flame us on Twitter. We are eager for your outrage!

But even within the preposterous realm of sports arguments, some just aren’t worth the time. Which is why this list (wussie alert!) is not ranked. Aside from number one, which belongs to the King, LeBron James, the other 49 are a numberless blob. Sorry. Because while there are fun debates to be had about who’s in the top 50 and who isn’t, trying to decide who the 37th best athlete alive should be—Simone Biles? JJ Watt?—is a pointless apples-to-freight trains comparison. Which sport is more athletic? Who knows. They all seem really hard.


Pari Dukovic

Coat, $7,850, by Dsquared2 / Sweatshirt, $76, by King London / Sweatpants, $580, by Maison Margiela / Sneakers, $170, by Nike x Virgil Abloh / NBA socks, $28, by Nike
LeBron James

In his own words, the King tells GQ's Mark Anthony Green what if would take for him to feel like the greatest living athlete: "If I was the most consistent and was at the top of the food chain more than anybody in NBA history." With all due respect, LeBron, we think you’re already there. For more, read the cover story here.


Walter Iooss Jr.
Michael Jordan

You could start by pointing out that he was nicknamed after a fundamental element (air). Or that he is one of only two athletes whose silhouettes are now world-famous logos (Jerry West, the guy on the NBA logo, is the other). Or that he's such an icon that even his logo has its own nickname (it's referred to as the Jumpman). But it'll all be futile. There's no way to capture the athleticism of Michael Jordan. The best you can do is glimpse it indirectly, like you're looking at an eclipse. So if you want to describe the sun, ask the moon: Dominique “the Human Highlight Film” Wilkins, Atlanta Hawks superstar and live witness to Jordan's Ur-moment—his iconic, soaring Vitruvian Man leap from the foul line at the 1988 Slam Dunk Contest. Wilkins, a future Hall of Famer, had already won a dunk contest, in 1985; here he recalls the legendary night when Jordan put him in a distant second place:

“He did that free-throw-line dunk twice. In the same contest. People don't realize: That's a long way to go. That is a looong way to go. Not only dunking it; he was pumping it in the air. And when you talk creativity, he just needed a basketball and a pair of sneakers. People hear about Michael Jordan, see highlights of him, but you cannot understand how great he was unless you actually played him. Man, he brought out the best in me. The absolute best, that nobody else could. I'm never going to say who's the best. But you gotta give Michael number one.”

—Clay Skipper


Peter Klaunzer/Keystone/Redux
Serena Williams

Here is a thought experiment: Picture any kind of demanding, competitive, even threatening situation. Put Serena Williams at the center of it. And then try to imagine her failing. It is impossible.

Start with 2001, just as she was establishing herself as a top-ten player: Racist fans at Indian Wells boo her during a final; in response, she buries Kim Clijsters, then boycotts the tournament for 14 years. Throughout her time in tennis, her only serious rival has been her own flesh and blood; she looks across the net and sees an older version of herself in Venus Williams, and she wins seven of the nine Grand Slam finals they've played so far. She has made her way to the most Grand Slam wins, 23, in the Open era—the most for anyone, male or female, human or Federer—despite the murder of her half sister Yetunde in 2003; despite watching rivals like Maria Sharapova (against whom Serena is 19–2) collect more endorsement money; despite being eight weeks pregnant as she won her most recent Grand Slam, the Australian Open, in January.

She did the Crip Walk at Wimbledon. She danced next to Beyoncé in a music video and was not outclassed. Whenever she chooses to return to the sport, she'll be one major title away from Margaret Court's all-time record. Imagine her not getting it. —Zach Baron


Al Messerschmidt Archive
Bo Jackson

He never played a full season of NFL football. He never rushed for more than 1,000 yards. He topped 30 homers only once in his baseball career, played in only one All-Star Game. But if you ever saw Bo, if you KNOW Bo, you know that none of that matters. It's the flashes we got that made Bo Jackson indelible to every sports fan age 30 and older. Like the time during his rookie season with the Raiders when he steamrolled through Brian Bosworth into the end zone—after the Boz had vowed before the game to bottle him up. Or that single All-Star Game he played in: He hit a home run, stole a base, made a run-saving catch, and won the game's MVP award.

His NFL career ended after only four seasons because of a hip injury; he retired from baseball three and a half years later. This only boosted his legend. There was no decline, just an abrupt stop, so we're free to imagine him trucking Bosworth a dozen more times than fate gave him the chance to.

Given how specialized sports are now, the way talented kids pick one to focus on and give up all the others, we will never see another athlete who can hit a homer 450 feet in the All-Star Game and then rip off a 91-yard touchdown on Monday Night Football. We'll never see another athlete who was basically a cheat code both on the field and in video games. (No Madden player will ever be as unstoppable as Tecmo Bo.) But the coolest thing we'll never see again happened routinely after Bo struck out: He would break his bat over his knee, and sometimes over his head. That was Bo being Bo, a freak of nature even when he failed. —Drew Magary


David Cannon
Carl Lewis

To this day, the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was the city's greatest moment to many of the people who lived through it. Carl Lewis was the runaway hero of those Games. Here, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles (and the force behind L.A.'s successful 2028 bid), explains how Lewis's win in the 4x100 relay transfixed the entire city.

"I was 13 years old. I remember my mom picked me up one afternoon from camp and said that we had scored some tickets to the Coliseum for the track-and-field finals. I'd been watching on TV this unstoppable force, this incredible American hero. It was the greatest sports event of my childhood. Certainly better than the Rams losing the Super Bowl in '80.

The 4x100 is a nerve-racking race, right? Even the very best can drop a baton. Each leg has its own drama, but the final leg requires the most important part: the ability to close. It's one thing to be endowed, as Carl Lewis is, with the longest winning streak for the long jump, and to know he's a superhuman, to see him win the 100 and the 200. But to close—I kind of felt like that was a gift to the country, and to his fellow athletes. And he kicked! It seemed to me he was racing harder than when he was doing his own 100-meter sprint. It made me proud to have a guy like Carl Lewis represent our country, and it made me proud to have everybody in my city that day.

When I became mayor of Los Angeles, the first thing that I did was write a letter to the U.S. Olympic Committee to say, I want them back."


Harold Filan
Willie Mays

The phone rang twice. “Mr. Willie Mays's residence,” said a woman's voice that reminded me of Hattie McDaniel's character in Gone with the Wind. As I started to explain that Mr. Mays was expecting my call for a radio interview, the McDaniel double mumbled a few uh-huhs and then said, “Yah. This is Willie. I do that for my privacy.”

Lost in the panorama of athletic skills that made Mays the best all-around baseball player since at least the breaking of the color line was the engine behind it: Willie Mays always had a plan.

Hit home runs? Steal bases? Play stickball with kids in Harlem? Get his cap extra small so it would fly off as he ran the bases (“People love that kind of stuff”)? It all happened because Mays was convinced he knew exactly what needed to be done in any situation and equally convinced that whatever plan he'd dreamed up would work.

On July 25, 1967, Mays slapped an apparent easy double against the New York Mets. But mysteriously, Willie stopped at first. Moments later, the Giants' Jim Ray Hart banged a three-run homer. After the game, reporters asked Mays if he'd stopped at first base because he was injured. No, Mays explained. He could've made second easily—but that would've left first base open and the Mets would've intentionally walked Hart to pitch instead to the light-hitting man behind him. That wasn't part of Mays's plan.

“That's some voice you do,” I said as our interview ended, 38 years ago.

Mays said, “I know.” — Keith Olbermann


Greg Trott
Jerry Rice

Why him: He is the best football player of all time, a fact disputed only by Jim Brown nostalgics and everyone in New England. (And he's still got it.)

Holds the record for: Pretty much everything wide receivers do—touchdowns, catches, yards. (And he's still got it.)


Bob Martin
Roger Federer

Already, Roger Federer is fading into the gauzy haze of sports immortality—tennis fans have been waiting to tell their kids about watching him play more or less since the day he began playing. So while the memory remains, let's instead talk for a moment about failure.

Wimbledon, 2008, he loses what is widely considered the greatest match of all time, to Rafael Nadal, a player five years his junior. But the torch doesn't pass. Federer returns the next year, wins the longest (in games) men's final in history on the same court.

Okay. Now, 2011: Semifinals of the U.S. Open, Federer is up two sets to love against Novak Djokovic, a player six years his junior, then loses two set points and the match. But the torch doesn't pass. Federer wins Wimbledon again the next year.

It's 2017 now, and Federer is old: recently 36, with an ailing knee and back. Somehow he wins two more majors, his game as beautifully unstressed as it ever was. So let's not forget how many times, in the past 20 years, this could've—maybe even should've—ended. It isn't over yet. — Z.B.


Jessica Hill
Diana Taurasi

“You can go the famous route, have all the Instagram friends, go to every damn club and pop bottles,” Diana Taurasi says about her approach to personal-brand management. “I gave a big middle finger to the brand and just played basketball.”

Except Taurasi doesn't “just play basketball.” The 35-year-old's still growing list of accomplishments is the Infinite Jest of basketball accolades, one that already includes three NCAA titles at UConn, where she lost only eight games in four years; three WNBA titles; and four Olympic gold medals. (Taurasi has also won five straight titles in the Russian national league, which is where she plays during her off-season: “It's the side hustle that makes sure my family and I are taken care of.”)

But there's only one title you need to know, remember, and shout at anyone who dares disagree: greatest female basketball player of all time. Not just for what she does on the court, but how she does it, with a ruthless fire. She says, “I still wake up every morning and think I suck.” And when she set the WNBA scoring record this past summer, she found herself being compared to Kobe Bryant, who (it's been said) has a competitive streak.

“I heard I was the self-proclaimed White Mamba, which I can say I have never self-proclaimed myself anything. The only thing I can say is that I'm a kindhearted asshole.”

Maybe it's not such a great brand strategy—unless your brand is being better than everyone else on earth. — C.S.


Neil Leifer
Wayne Gretzky

Why him: The Great One. More goals, points, assists, and hat tricks than any other player in NHL history. Amazing hair.

His trademark: Breakaways. Alone with a puck, Gretzky was a death sentence for goalies. He didn't even have to skate fast.


Focus On Sport
Pelé

Jesus. Charo. Drake. True legends are always able to go by just one name. Edson Arantes do Nascimento—a.k.a. Pelé—is one such great. In the 1970s, the most soccer-phobic American knew his name thanks to his stint as the face of the New York Cosmos. Yet the United States only witnessed a Pelé cameo in his twilight, long after the immortal striker had broken through as a scrawny 17-year-old at the 1958 World Cup and became the scorer on a Brazilian team that won the World Cup three times in 12 years.

For me, his career highlight came in the John Huston movie Victory, alongside Sly Stallone; Pelé pretty much played himself, predictably scoring an otherworldly goal in the clutch game. But his best moments in competitive soccer now exist only online. For those who want to experience his peak, watch the 1970 World Cup Final against Italy. See the ball floated over toward the back post. Pelé is tightly marked by his defender, yet he will not be denied, leaping like a salmon from a stream to head the ball past a stunned goalkeeper. He knows he has scored the second the ball leaves his head, reeling away to celebrate. Snug of shorts, golden of shirt, he leaps into his teammates' arms, the embodiment of the joyous soccer fantasy that was the Seleção Brasileira in their prime. — Roger Bennett, Co-Host, Men In Blazers


Tony Tomsic
Jim Brown

Even now, at age 81, he's still scary. Maybe it's because he's still built like a bank vault. Maybe it's because of the righteous fury that made him a social-justice iconoclast long before Colin Kaepernick was born. Maybe it's because he's a living artifact of a meaner brand of football. Maybe it's because of the time a would-be tackler jammed a finger inside Brown's face mask and Brown bit it nearly clean off because, as he later told Richard Pryor, “Anything inside the face mask belongs to me. Anything outside he can keep.”

Or maybe it's because he has a very real history of violence off the field, particularly with women. In a phone interview once, I asked him about the time he allegedly threw a woman off a balcony, and I felt like he could've reached through the phone to kick my ass. Brown is considered by many to be the NFL's greatest ever. (They're wrong, but hold that thought.) His presence here is a reminder that this list would be very different if we hadn't decided to eliminate all the players who cheated or, worse, behaved intolerably off the field. Tyson, O.J., Vick, Lance, Bonds, Pete Rose—let's let Jim Brown stand for all of them, a brief nod at the reality that the greatest athletes aren't always such great people. — D.M.


Adam Butler
Tiger Woods

His arrival did nothing less than split a sport into Before and After. Before Tiger, golfers were athletes but not athletes. Before Tiger, golfers had nicknames like Fuzzy and Duffy and Walrus and Bear, and even the healthiest were known to smoke cigarettes during the heat of competition. After Tiger—after the introduction of the biceps and the tunneled gaze and the fist pump and the red shirts on Sunday—golf became many things it had never been before, not least of which was a spectacle of legit athleticism. This may be Tiger's most enduring contribution to the sport—the way he changed the literal shape of the professional golfer.

He was miles beyond anyone else when he arrived on tour in 1996, a 20-year-old comet, not just more dominant physically but somehow psychologically, too. (His father was a Green Beret who trained his only son with mind games meant for war.) For a decade, he thrashed a generation of golfers who had had the misfortune of coming up Before Tiger.

But the young guns today? They don't remember Before Tiger. They hardly remember Tiger at all. All they've known their whole playing lives is what came A.T.: golf as a sport of skillful shotmaking, sure, but also of powerful arms and legs, of weights and wind sprints, of psychological fitness. A sport of athletes.

Everything about golf as we know it today—the power, the popularity, the money—is because of one man. At least that's the inarguable truth from where we sit in this, the year 21 A.T. — Daniel Riley


Adrian Dennis
Usain Bolt

Why him: He is the fastest human who has ever lived.

His athletic peak: The 100-meter dash at the 2008 Beijing Olympics—he easily won gold, running it in 9.69 seconds with his fucking left shoe untied.


Francois-Xavier Marit
Michael Phelps

Why him: No one in any sport has won more gold medals in a single Olympics (8) or in a lifetime (23). He is god of the seas. (Read our 2008 profile of him here.)

His finishing move: Coming back from a very public DUI to earn another batch of golds in Rio and emerging as an unlikely elder statesman.


Focus On Sport
Julius Erving

Why him: He basically invented the thrilling, soaring, above-the-rim era of modern basketball.

His superpowers: Thrilling, soaring.

His athletic peak: The 1976 ABA dunk contest, when he did the exact same foul-line dunk that Jordan made iconic 12 years later.


David Madison
Mia Hamm

Why her: She's the greatest soccer player, man or woman, the U.S. has produced.

Her superpower: Surreal knack for finding the back of the net. Also: Winning. Four NCAA titles. Two gold medals. Two World Cups.


Walter Iooss Jr.
Magic Johnson

Why him: The showrunner of Showtime, the blueprint for LeBron James.

His superpower: Magic, obviously.

His athletic peak: 1980, when he led the Lakers to the NBA title as a rookie. He was so thin!


David Madison
David Madison
Deion Sanders

Why him: Because the three most notable recent players to play in the NFL and MLB are Drew Henson (blah), Brian Jordan (fine), and Deion Sanders (WOW), and only Sanders played both sports simultaneously.

Unreasonable stat: Grabbed 53 interceptions in his NFL career, and at least two every year. He played 14 years.

Unbeatable record: Scored a touchdown and hit a home run in the same goddamn week.

His greatest near miss: 1992, when Sanders nearly played in a Falcons football game (in Miami) and a Braves playoff game (in Pittsburgh) on the same day. He played in the Falcons game and was in uniform for the Braves that night, but he never got into the game, because Braves manager Bobby Cox clearly did not have his priorities straight.


Focus On Sport
Ken Griffey Jr.

At 47, the Kid is hardly old, though nowadays he's a young retiree in Florida. But in our mind's eye, he'll always be Junior—in motion, at full speed, running up walls, launching moonshots with that sweet looping swing. He was a human video game, which is why Nintendo turned him into an actual video game.

The notion that one of baseball's deadliest hitters (630 home runs) was also one of its smoothest outfielders (ten Gold Gloves) is a miracle that people delight in pointing out—even to Ken Griffey Jr. Fans will stop him in order to describe what it felt like for them to watch him do the improbable. “It catches you off guard,” he says. “People remember everything about a certain play, every detail. And it takes me a moment when it happens. Whether it's scoring from first against the Yankees, or a catch over the wall in Detroit—you're connected to people by the details of this memory, and that can feel pretty special. To make people smile.” — Geoffrey Gagnon


AFP
Lionel Messi

Why him: He joined Barcelona's youth academy at age 13. He was nominated for the Ballon d'Or, soccer's highest honor, when he was 19. He won it at 22, then again at 23, 24, 25, and 28. He is now 30.

His superpower: Running circles around the best defenders in the world—which is crazy because he has a ball and they do not.


Tony Duffy
Jackie Joyner-Kersee

Why her: Until Serena came along, many people considered her the greatest female athlete ever.

Her superpower: Hang on, let's back up—do you even know what the heptathlon is? It's a ridiculous seven-event competition involving hurdles, sprinting, high and long jumps, shot put, and fucking javelin throwing. Throughout the 1980s, JJK crushed people in this event, to the tune of two Olympic gold medals, one silver, and two world championships. Her world-record-setting heptathlon points total at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul still stands to this day.

Her athletic peak: Those 1988 Olympics, where she also won the long jump—no one else has won both, and no American woman had won either before. She leaped 24 feet 3 1/4 inches. Think about that! Get up off your butt and walk down the hall. She jumped that.


Elise Amendola
Tom Brady

Why him: Has one more Super Bowl ring than all of the Mannings combined, so suck it, Manning family. Rakishly handsome. Married Gisele. The best quarterback ever, and he's still infuriatingly good at age 40.

Why not him: Is more like it, to be honest.


Focus On Sport
Barry Sanders

Why him: You can argue all day long about who is the greatest running back in history, but you sure as hell can't argue which one was the most fun to watch. It's Barry. It will always be Barry.

His athletic peak: Breaking the 2,000-yard mark in 1997, then playing one more year and disappearing from view entirely. No one ever really caught him.


Bob Martin
Martina Navratilova

Why her: Dominant, machine-like consistency—six straight Wimbledon titles (18 Grand Slam singles titles overall), 156 straight weeks at No. 1—that only Steffi Graf has matched.

But also: Off-the-court social impact only Serena has matched.


John W. McDonough
Hakeem Olajuwon

Why him: A soccer prodigy in his teens, he could've been the first seven-footer to play goalkeeper in the World Cup...but then at age 17 he picked up a basketball for the first time.

His superpower: Footwork. Like Baryshnikov, only Nigerian and enormous.

His trademark: The Dream Shake—pivot one way, get the defender to bite, then reverse the other way for an easy hoop—humiliated more grown men than Donald Trump.

His athletic peak: His back-to-back NBA titles with the Rockets always get an asterisk because Jordan was briefly retired; Jordan should get the asterisk, though—he got to dodge peak Dream.

Amazing true fact: Named the NBA's Player of the Month for February 1995, though Olajuwon, a strict Muslim, was observing Ramadan and didn't eat or drink during daylight hours for the entire month.


Adrian Dennis
Rafael Nadal

Why him: Simply put, he's the most powerful player ever to step on the court—and the most mentally tough, too.

His superpower: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever quitting on a single point, until his opponents quit just to end their misery.

His athletic peak: Easy. His epic Wimbledon win over Roger Federer in 2008. Afterward, John McEnroe wept real tears.


Peter Yang/August
Mike Trout

Why him: Because he's Mickey Mantle incarnate.

His superpower: Theft. Trout treats warning tracks like trampolines and walls like suggestions, robbing more homers in a season than most guys steal in a career.


Lars Baron
Cristiano Ronaldo

Why him: You're not allowed to have a celebration unless you score a lot. And that celebration definitely cannot be stripping off your shirt unless you're one of the 50 greatest athletes alive.

Scouting report: Blazing speed, body-by-Equinox power, a rocket launcher where his right leg should be.

His craziest muscles: Those bulging ones under his armpits. What are those, lats? They look like gills.


Courtesy of USC Athletics
Cheryl Miller

Why her: Because Miller—a three-time national player of the year at USC—was the best athlete, by far, in a family that also contains former MLB catcher Darrell and ex-NBA assassin (and Hall of Famer) Reggie.

Amazing true fact: Once scored 105 points in a high school game.

By the way: Cheryl's in the Hall of Fame, too.


Andrea Marks
Shaquille O’Neal

Why him: A sui generis super-freak—seven feet one, 325 pounds, and during his time at L.S.U. and with the Orlando Magic, nimble as a ballerina in (size 22 men's) pointe shoes.

His superpower: Shattering backboards.

His athletic peak: His early squads in Orlando with Penny Hardaway, when Shaq was detonating rims and dribbling coast to coast on fast breaks—the only team to beat peak Jordan in the playoffs.


Cityfiles/Newspix.pl/Icon SMI
Kelly Slater

Why him: The best competitive surfer of all time. The youngest to win a world championship, at 20, and the oldest, at 39. In between he won nine more.

His second act: Slater semi-retired in 1998 after his sixth world title, then came back in 2002 after a friend needled him about forgetting what it felt like to win. So he jogged his own memory by winning five more world titles.


Ronald C. Modra/Sports Imagery/Getty Images
Rickey Henderson

Why him: The best leadoff hitter and base stealer in baseball history. And his trademark “snatch catch” was stupid cool.

His unbreakable record: In 1982, he stole 130 bases. One hundred thirty. That's a real thing that actually happened.


Bettmann
Bill Russell

Why him: The one guy every NBA player, MJ included, reveres. Led Boston to 11 titles in 13 years between 1956 and 1969.

His superpower: Being a black guy in Boston between 1956 and 1969.

His athletic peak: His seven playoff clashes with his chief rival (and lifelong friend) Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt only beat him once.


Boston Globe
Michael Johnson

Why him: He was so dominant in the 200 and 400 meters—winning both with staggering ease at the 1996 Olympics—that he made America forget for a while about the sexier 100.

His trademark: That stiff, upright form, the one that still looks like it shouldn't work. And those golden shoes.


Saurabh Das
Abby Wambach

Why her: The all-time leading scorer for the U.S. Women's National Team. FIFA's all-time leader—for women and men—in international goals. Two-time Olympic gold medalist. World Cup champ. All-world maniac in the box.

Her superpower: A combination of height, hops, and a gold-plated, heat-seeking head—no woman has ever been a greater aerial threat.


Barnard Brault
Mario Lemieux

Why him: Bigger, stronger, more unstoppable than Gretzky, but lost years to injury and illness.

His superpower: Stickhandling! He made pro athletes feel like ghosts.

His athletic peak: New Year's Eve, 1988. He scored five goals in five different ways against New Jersey: short-handed, on the power play, at even strength, on a penalty shot, and into an empty net.


Fred Kaplan
Hank Aaron

Why him: Glimpsed at the end of his career, Aaron's gaudy cumulative stats (like the legendary 755 home runs) obscure the monster numbers he put up every year (he topped 30 homers in a season 15 times) and his pure skills as a hitter (he batted over .300 in a season 14 times).

His superpower: Quick wrists. Still lean and mean when he retired at 42.


John Iacono
Sugar Ray Leonard

Why him: He was champ in an era when it was hard to be champ. He beat Durán, Hearns, Hagler… Damn, remember when good boxers used to willingly box one another?

His superpower: Hand speed! You never saw the punch that got you.

His athletic peak: Making Roberto Durán reportedly cry out “No más” in 1980. Durán knocked out 70 men in his life. Make him surrender and you are truly the sweetest.


Vitti Guido
Allen Iverson

Why him: Pound for pound, inch for inch, the most electric scorer ever. (He was barely six feet and around 165 pounds, even with the chains.)

His superpower: Rolling out of bed after 18 minutes of sleep and a night of drinking tequila at strip clubs, and still dropping 48 the next day.

His history-book moment: Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals, when he dropped 48 on Shaq, Kobe, and the Lakers, playing with a starting lineup of me, you, your mom, and Tyrion Lannister.


Leo Mason/Popperfoto
Nadia Comăneci

Why her: Just dig up the grainy VHS-transferred YouTube video of her uneven-bars routine at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics—a 14-year-old girl wrecking history in the most graceful way possible.

By the way: She scored six more perfect 10s in Montreal.


Paul Spinelli/AP Photo
J. J. Watt

Why him: Disruptive to a degree the NFL has never seen, hence three Defensive Player of the Year awards in his first five seasons.

His athletic peak: 2014, when he somehow scored five touchdowns—two off turnovers, three as a pinch-hit receiver on offense.


Mike Nelson
Kobe Bryant

Why him: Five titles across two Lakers eras. No one has come closer to filling Jordan's shoes, as both a rainmaking scorer and a merciless competitor.

His superpower: Black-mamba venom.

His athletic peak: The early 2000s, when he and Shaq formed one of the NBA's great duos and it was a coin flip over whom the Lakers should keep once they got sick of each other. (They kept Kobe.)


J. Grant Brittain
Tony Hawk

Why him: He made skateboarding a sport. Good enough?

His trademark: The 900—as in, two and a half revolutions, which seems like a lot—a trick he first landed in 1999, at age 31, and most recently landed in 2016, at age 48.


Paul Popper/Popperfoto
Björn Borg

Why him: The early master of modern tennis's baseline-oriented game was also one of the coolest, most graceful athletes in any sport—still the model for how to look and move, on a tennis court or in a nightclub.


Walter Iooss Jr.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Why him: He's the NBA's all-time leading scorer. By a lot.

His superpower: The skyhook—a seven-foot-two guy reaching up 11 feet and dropping the ball in the hoop from anywhere. It was unfair. The most unstoppable move in sports.

His athletic peak: 1971, when he won the MVP, led the Milwaukee Bucks to their only NBA title, and changed his name (from Lew Alcindor) the very next day. That is how you drop a mic.


Clive Rose
Lindsey Vonn

Why her: Alpine racers are lunatics—the sport is like NASCAR, only near vertical and without a big car around you—and Vonn's had her share of crashes. But when she's been upright, she's won more World Cup titles—20—than anyone else.


Dylan Buell
Aaron Rodgers

Why him: At his peak, he's played QB better than anyone else.

His superpower: Throwing a dart 40 yards downfield with sniper-like accuracy from any position: on the run, off one foot, back across his body, duct-taped to a goalpost, etc.


Bob Thomas
Jack Nicklaus

Why him: He won more major titles than any other golfer, including you-know-who. It once seemed inevitable that Tiger would eclipse Nicklaus; the fact that he never did underscores the magnitude of Nicklaus's 18 wins.

His finishing move: The 1986 Masters, when he notched No. 18 at age 46—a post-prime high we'll likely never see again.


Lennart Månsson
Aleksandr Karelin

Why him: Nicknamed the Russian Bear because he looks like…a Russian bear. He's the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler ever, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, with a lifetime record of 887–2. Folks, he lost twice. In his entire life.

His move: The Karelin Lift, in which he picked up his opponents—260-pound men, lying facedown on the mat, actively trying not to be picked up—and threw them backward over his shoulder. Five points for the Bear!

Best known for: Losing 1–0 in his fourth and final Olympics to American wrestler Rulon Gardner, who is best known for losing a toe to frostbite after a snowmobile accident.

This story originally appeared in the November 2017 issue with the title "The First Fifty."