Djokovic Could Become GOAT of all Sports GOATs

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I believe Novak Djokovic could have a crowning 3 to 6 year run that will establish him as the GOAT of all sports GOATs. I make predictions about the future at Metaculus and I am right about 90% of the time on almost 1000 resolved public predictions.

I think it is now clear that Novak is going to win won the 2023 finals of the French Open. He will then break broke a tie with Nadal for most individual grand slam wins. Novak could likely have won two more titles if he was not kept out of the Australian and US Open during COVID.

UPDATE: Novak took the first set of the final in a tiebreak and leads 2-0 in the second set. Novak Djokivic has won the French Open. 

Career Grand Slams
Novak Djokovic  23
Rafa Nadal 22
Roger Federer 20
Sampras 14

Since 2015, Djokovic has lost in the finals of a major to Nadal, Wawrinka and Medvedev. Wawrinka has had injuries and has not won a major since 2016. Nadal is going to retire next year and also has injuries.

The Big 3 in tennis (Federer, Nadal and Djokovic) were an amazing elite trio who each won as many grand slams as Pete Sampras (14) and Andre Agassi (8) combined. If Novak wins in two days he surpass the combined titles of Sampras and Agassi.

Nadal is retiring next year and will not be able to beat Djokovic. Although, next years French Open could be interesting.

It would be amazing if any of the up and coming players could match being a Sampras or Agassi. Djokovic has elevated himself battling Federer and Nadal. He should have a grand slam this year and he could have two to five more grand slams if no one else can elevate their game to the level that the Big 3 were playing.

If Djokovic lasts at a solitary level to the end of 2025 then he will have double Sampras titles and if he lasts to 2027 or 2028 he will have more titles than Nadal and Federer combined.

As a superGOAT, Djokovic also has been competing against the best competition. In Sports discussion of GOATs, there is what was achieved and domination beyond other greats in statistics but also level of competition. Djokovic has immaculate elite competition with Federer and Nadal.

Other SuperGOATS in Sports

Who are the SuperGOATs in sports that distance themselves from other greats? There is Michael Phelps.

In football, there is Tom Brady who has 7 Super bowl rings while Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw each have four.

Men’s tennis has the advantage of any winning achievement being achieved solely by the individual. The team aspect of basketball dilutes the achievement of Bill Russell winning 11 championships.

Wayne Gretzky in hockey has the scoring titles and a lot of championships. He won all four his championships with the Edmonton Oilers.

A SuperGoat needs to clearly and obviously be the GOAT in his own sport and also have the largest separation from many other true greats in his sport.

Commenters are mentioning Don Bradman cricket. He had the clearly highest test score average. His average was 99 while second place is 61.87. However, Sachin Tendulkar has most test runs scored with 15921 versus second place 13378. Bradman is 39th on total test runs. It seems the voting is not definitive that Bradman is the greatest cricket batsman ever. The recent voting of cricket fans is that it is in dispute if Tendulkar or Bradman is greatest cricket batsman ever. I have seen Tendulkar play for a season. I watched cricket when I was living in Hong Kong in 1995-1996.

Djokovic is not there (greatest sportsman ever) yet (in an unarguable way) but he can get there with an epic run of winning this year and the next few years. Djokovic is in the discussion with by winning this French Open and then completing a slam this year at the US Open and Wimbledon.

Future projections for other players. Lebron James could be highly productive for 3-5 more years. Lebron is already the career scoring leader. He could pad this lead by another 7000-10000 points.

However, a long run of elite performance is great but it is not just statistics. It is winning. Djokovic having a dominant number of Grand Slams will be a measure of individual winning greatness.

Wilt Chamberlain average 50 points per game in one season and has many of the top points per game for a single season. This looks like what Don Bradman did in cricket. Cricket fans and Australian fans can dispute why this is not the same. The case can be made that Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest NBA player ever. His statistics for several seasons are great. However, his career points per game was surpassed by Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan is considered by most to be the best basketball player ever. It usually is Jordan or Wilt Chamberlain. However, Bill Russell and other players get added to the conversation. This dispute about greatest ever in a sport makes it tougher to call them the greatest ever in all sports. There is not enough dominance over other greats in the same sport.

Djokovic will move to 23 Grand Slam wins this weekend by winning the French Open. Federer was dominating at Wimbledon with the most career titles with 8. However, Djokivic has 7 and if he wins this year will have 8. Federer won 5 in row before he was interrupted by Nadal in 2008 and 2010 and then Djokivic. Djokovic could run off seven in row by winning this year for 3 in a row and then the next four.

It will be tougher for Djokovic to win multiple US Opens. He has won three so far. Nadal won 4.

23 thoughts on “Djokovic Could Become GOAT of all Sports GOATs”

  1. You can’t compare Team sports with Individual sports.
    For instance, Jordan didn’t win championships until Scottie Pippen, Rodman and Kerr
    positively contributed.

    Individual sports are much easier to compare wins/losses without other players as factors.

  2. soccer is a peasant sport??!! that’s why it is so big in countries like England, Germany, Spain, France, whole Europe??!! please…

  4. And with the added bonus that he didn’t take the compulsory genetic injection, or most likely he is the goat precisely because he didn’t take it.

  5. I think I get the gist of the article, though this thing is way out of left field.
    I would say that a good definition of real GOAT is that which has been accomplished which is unlikely to be accomplished again in the foreseeable future, in an international level sport with near universal ‘high level’ participation whci is weird since most high end US professional sports are at such a low level comparably elsewhere.
    That being said, I have such a pedestrian interest in sports that I can’t guess which ‘athlete’ has accomplished such an incredible lifetime feat as to be unlikely to have it beaten.
    Most unbreakable feats??
    MLB: Cy Young’s 749 career complete games
    NHL: Wayne Gretzky’s 2,857 career points
    College basketball: UConn women’s 111-game win streak
    Tiger Woods is still pursuing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major championships, but his record number of weeks at World No. 1 will never be touched.
    weeks as of October 2022 – 683 weeks at World No.1.
    Tennis: Rafael Nadal’s 14 French Open titles (and counting)
    He won his 14th championship in 2022 at the age of 36. Nadal is also the all-time leader in Grand Slam singles titles with 22, but that record is still within reach for Novak Djokovic.
    NASCAR: Richard Petty’s 27 wins in a season
    —
    mostly american stuff – but I know what I know.

  6. It is not about how many runs, titles, goals, medals you have earned. It is about in which scenario they were earned. Individual sports has indeed advantage over team sports. Team sports is played based on team’s requirement. Do not forget, Sachin Tendulkar, who has scored 100 centuries in international cricket, played almost 25 years with the expectation to perform well in front of noisy 60K people in stadium and carrying the expectation of billions back at home watching him on television. How much focus you need when you have opponents constantly sledging, when you have 60-100K noisy people in the stadium. One person on Tennis ground say a letter A in between rally, next minute that person will ask to go out.

  8. You always look for a single winner among a horde of losers, this is not predictions but an acid communication.

  9. Look up Marion Tinsley. Utterly dominate. Though, if I was actually going with the title of the article, I would say Jim Thorpe. He played 3 professional sports, 4 football positions, and won 2 gold metals, decathlon and pentathlon in 1912. Oh, and he also won the intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship. If he had not been an alcoholic, I am sure his achievements would have been even greater.

  10. The statistics quoted for Bradman by others here were only his games for Australia in international cricket. Most players only play for their own nation in international cricket! That is a minority of cricket he played in those days. He played for other teams in non international cricket known as first class cricket. He missed 6 years of career opportunity because of World War 2. He came back after that and played for Australia again in his late 30s and early 40s and was still one of the best players! There are around 30 million registered cricket players globally. There are 33 million registered baseball players.

  11. The only way to compare apples and pears is by what they fetch on the market. Therefore the GOAT of ALL sports should be who has earned more money.

  12. No… How can you be the GOAT of all sports when you don’t play the other sports? This article makes no sense for that title. This is probably meant to get people to talk and argue about a meaningless title. I get the same issue with making Tom Brady, in Amercian Football, to be the greatest in all US sports. The GOAT of your specific sport, yes and nothing more unless you feel he can win outright in all combative sports. I am sure heavy to feather weight boxers would agree he is the Greatest Of All Time in boxing.

    • Agreed on this. It’s hype and phony comparisons.

      Also several sports, not even mentioned. Soccer, world’s most popular sport: Pele, Maradona, Messi? Mixed martial arts, the sport which decides the toughest man on earth: Fedor, Jon Jones, Ngannou?

      For whatever it’s worth, IMO the sports player ever — if there is one — is Michael Phelps.

  15. Wayne Gretzky
    GP Goals Assist Points
    1,487 894 1,963 2,857

    That’s almost 2 points/game
    His +\- was 520.

    There was no player in any sport who had such impact.

  16. Mate how about educating yourself in sports played outside the US. There’s a sport called cricket played by about a billion people and if you want statistical outliers then look up Donald Bradman. He is exactly what you’re talking about.

    • Have a read of what I wrote about Bradman above. His stats are indeed remarkable but in fairness cricket is not a particularly accessible sport. I doubt very much a billion people play it. Also Bradman got his scores mostly playing one team.

      • The statistics quoted for Bradman by others here were only his games for Australia in international cricket. Most players only play for their own nation in international cricket! That is a minority of cricket he played in those days. He played for other teams in non international cricket known as first class cricket. He missed 6 years of career opportunity because of World War 2. He came back after that and played for Australia again in his late 30s and early 40s and was still one of the best players! There are around 30 million registered cricket players globally. There are 33 million registered baseball players.

      • Agreed that soccer and cricket are mostly peasant sports, but there is a bit more ‘athleticism’ in those than golf or baseball for example. I suppose that Olympics is most relevant. Topic way out of left field, but hey maybe the Advertisers need more page views. Who knows?

        • soccer is a peasant sport??!! that’s why it is so big in countries like England, Germany, Spain, France, whole Europe??!! please…

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