The greatest of all time is always understood to mean the greatest of all time so far. Nobody is pretending this is predictive of the future. There might be a 9 year old out there right now that is going to grow up and destroy Jordan's legacy. But as of now, no other player to play the game has surpassed him.
Honestly, I'm a bit bummed that the 'greatest of all time' era was when this stupid 'illegal defense' rule, which is probably the stupidest rule ever in basketball, was deciding games.
Basketball isn't really a 5 on 5 sport with this rule. It's a 2 on 2 or a 3 on 3.
I remember in 2004, my brother's coach gave him a VHS collection of 60s and 70s NBA games because "that's when the US played team basketball, that's how I want you to play". I think he also gave him the spurs games of that year and a couple of eurobasket DVDs.
Yes and people try to put Lebron side by side with Jordan but he's not even the best Laker in my opinion. I'd pick 3 Lakers ahead of him if I was doing an all-time draft.