I have debated people on the merits of Michael Jordan vs. Lebron James too many times to count. I see people talking about how Kyrie Irving is better than legends from the 70s like Jerry West. These discussions always drive me nuts as they completely miss the point.
The argument used that Kyrie Irving is better than Jerry West is what you would expect - better dribbler, shooter, would dominate 70s basketball. If we follow this logic to its conclusion, however, something like 99% of D1 college PGs and all NBA PGs are better than Jerry West.
Let me give another example. I have an advanced degree in math and took PhD level math courses while I was in grad school for econ. None of you would recognize my name if I told it to you. Yet, despite that, when I was at my peak in math I would have destroyed the likes of Isaac Newton and Pythagoras in a math contest. The math I learned in grad school wasn't even known when they were alive. Similarly, there are probably a lot of average physicists in the world today who actually know more about general relativity than einstein. Yet no one in their right mind would ever claim I am better at math than Isaac Newton or some fresh Physics PhD is better than Einstein.
So, yes, Kyrie Irving would destroy the NBA in the 1970s. People would think he is a wizard. Much like people would think I am a wizard if I went back in time and advanced math by a couple of centuries.
How do we compare the greatness of athletes across generations, then? It has to be a function of where someone falls in the distribution of "greatness" during their playing days. This applies when comparing statistics across generations as well. Someone scoring scoring 50 points in the 90s was more of an accomplishment than someone scoring 50 today. In all of the 90s, there were 55 total 50, 60, 70 point games. There are already more than 117 in the 2020s. They are on pace to have more than 6x or so, and that is assuming the rate of 50 point games doesn't continue to increase.
Just some back of the napkin math, MJ had 13 50 point games in the 90s. Assuming he would have got 3 more had he played the full decade, that puts him at 16.
2020s are on pace to have roughly 5-6x more 50 point games than the 90s. In order for someone to dominate in scoring the way MJ did, they would have to have 80-96 50 point games this decade. So far the leader has 10.
Point being, next time someone acts like players from previous eras are garbage, ask them what grade they learned the pythagorean theorem. It was probably middle school.