NADIA COMANECI at the 1976 Olympics (Wikipedia).

LeBron James, certainly one of great greatest basketball players in history, remarked recently that Shohei Ohtani’s 2025 season with the Dodgers may be the greatest athletic feat ever.

He’s certain have enough insight to make some pretty creditable suggestions, and I have a few nominations of my own.

My first pick would be Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain, whose pro career included the Harlem Globetrotters, Philadelphia (later San Francisco/Golden State) Warriors, Philadelphia Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers.

He won two NBA championships (76ers and Lakers). When with the Lakers he led the team to 33 consecutive wins and many other accolades and accomplishments, including being the first (and only) player ever to score 100 points in a game, and the first (and only) player ever to average 50 points a game in a season.

Perhaps just as important was the impact on how the basketball rule book was altered and how the game is played on all levels.

Due to his mastery (and 7-1 height) basketball lanes were widened, “offensive goal-tending” was banned, as was – believe it not – inbound passes over backboard. Additionally, free throw shooting now require that both feet remain at the line, since Wilt could “dunk” from there.

Next up is Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast who won seven Olympic gold medals, earning seven perfect (10.0) scores, starting in 1976 at the age of 14.

She dominated in an era of Cold War rivalries, in which politics influenced judges to sometimes change scores to alter the awarding of Olympic medals.

Nadia defected to the United States in 1989 and married American Olympic medalist Bart Conner. And to add to her resume, Nadia and Bart were the grand marshals of the 1993 Garden Grove Strawberry Festival Parade.