The subtle difference between the G.O.A.T. and a unicorn

Today's sports question is what's the difference between a goat and a unicorn? Well, one is an acronym and the other is a myth but here they are, like riddles in a rowboat, being used to define distinction.

I have gotten used to goat, or to punctuate it properly, G.O.A.T, greatest of all time, and have a fair idea of who is and who is not. But unicorn is new to me, and still shapeless, like "woke" or "poke."

Apparently, Victor Wembanyama, a French teenager, is a unicorn as well as a basketball player, so talented that he needs to be identified as something that does not exist. LeBron James, maybe a goat, denied Wembanyama's unicorn-ness and simply called him "an alien."

This is to be taken as a compliment, I suppose, meant to elevate the next big thing (NBT, to those texting) to something even bigger (SEB).

This is the time we live in when language must be reduced to initials and riddles, so that we know what a POTUS is and what a SCOTUS is not. These are the times when you do not ask a new acquaintance "What's your sign?", you ask, "What's your pronoun?"

Ah, we will adjust. We always have. I have no idea what "23 skidoo" means but my grandparents did and try talking to a teenager today without having to explain "dude" or "disco."

Apparently, this French unicorn is going to be with us for a while. Wembanyama has already been given his own "era," this coming from assorted gushing at the NBA draft carnival the other night when players who will likely be part of the "Wembanyama Era" learned which NBA team they had, without permission, become the property of.

Looking at my notes, which I kept out of habit, I see that "excitement" was "palpable" at the draft. Well, it was heavily costumed anyhow.

Video clips of Wembanyama ran and reran, showing a skinny kid - who seemed to grow from 7-foot-3 to 7-foot-5 the longer the draft dragged on - dunking and dribbling and shooting and blocking in Paris against, I assume, other Parisians, and having been to Paris myself, I will say they had it coming.

But it is the variety of things that Wembanyama can do that makes him a unicorn, the same things that Denver's Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo have been doing for some time, while winning championships, without anyone accusing them of being unicorns.

"Unicorn" seems to belong mostly in basketball whereas other sports must have unicorns, too. In baseball, for instance, Shohei Ohtani does more than one thing very well, meeting the unicorn criteria, and I guess Babe Ruth was the first baseball unicorn, something no one had ever seen before, and all anyone called him was fat.

I think of Bo Jackson as a two-sport unicorn and Deion Sanders, too, where probably the original unicorn was Jim Thorpe, who did every sport very well. When receiving his Olympic gold medal for the decathlon from the Swedish monarch who told him he was the greatest athlete in the world, Thorpe said, "Thanks, king." That's my kind of unicorn.

Michael Jordan tried to be a unicorn but failed at baseball, settling for being the GOAT in basketball, a pretty nice consolation prize.

The Bulls did find somebody deep into the night, trading to choose a non-unicorn from Tennessee named Julian Phillips, a "multi-positional defender," whatever that is.

Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls executive vice president (EVP) or chief basketball executive (CBE), maybe both, did what he could with what he had, which was nothing, to make the Bulls the same team that has ossified before our eyes the last couple of seasons.

The news of the night for the Bulls was that Lonzo Ball, the once promising Bull, while never a unicorn, may never have two working knees again. This is the sort of local story that has no legs, no pun intended.

But, back to the unicorn. All basketball is atwitter, again no pun intended, about the future, what with the past - the aforementioned LeBron - fading into the past where arguments about GOATs go.

And unicorns, too, I'm guessing, not that anyone has ever actually seen one.