There are different kinds of smart.

I have had this same conversation with friends in the past, and I've developed a bit of a theory, here. There are simply different types of smart. Everyone has friends who got all the plaudits in school, worked extremely hard, got the 4.0 in school and then fell flat on their face in the real world.

Everyone has friends who bombed school, skipped their finals to get high, drank every weekend, barely stumbled across the stage for their diploma and ended up making a million dollars in two years because they invented the Snuggie.

Is person A smarter than person B? No, they're just different kinds of smart. There's street smarts and then there's book learnin' and there's just not much in between.

Then there's Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is like a great point guard, he makes everyone around him better. This is a longwinded introduction to what you've probably already read (his back and forth with Bill Simmons for espn.com), but I felt it had to be said. I feel smarter when I read what Malcolm Gladwell has to say.

They should assign his books for every college class, not because he has written anything about those subjects of interest, but you'd just have such an intelligence bump from being exposed to his takes on the world that you would perform better on the test.

I just finished reading that ESPN article (a few days late, I know, I'm graduating so I'm busy with finals and such) and I thought to myself, "Damn, if only I was one-tenth as smart as that guy." That got me thinking; Can you really fractionalize intelligence? What about greatness?

I didn't even know fractionalize was really a word until about five minutes ago. I thought I made it up. This is the effect Malcolm Gladwell has on the world.

Anyway, so here's my theory on greatness after having a lengthy, heated, and all-around lively debate about Jordan and Magic last night at work: there are levels of greatness, but they're not on any sort of normalized scale. There's no "black belt" or "yellow belt" of greatness. Jordan isn't a 10 while Magic is a 9 and Bird is a 9.5, they're all just great.

Now, you can argue that, among that level, Jordan stands out because of what he accomplished, but Jordan isn't 10% better than the guy who would be at level 9, he's infinitely better. There's no comparing Jordan to even, say, Pippen, in my book because Jordan is just Jordan and there's no two ways about it.

I'm of the opinion, though, that the Greatest of All Time arguments, while fun and a good way to really respect players from older generations, are ultimately pointless. It's like the Pele vs Maradona debate. When you reach that level you can no longer be passed, you can only be joined.

The only exception is if, in certain cases, a player simply uncovers a whole other level that nobody even knew about. That's where we should be having the debates. Not "How much better was Jordan than everyone else?" or "Who's the greatest between Woods and Nicklaus?" but, are these guys on a separate level from everyone else? Has Woods pushed greatness in golf to a different level? Will we know? Can we?

I'm going to grade him an incomplete there, because we don't know yet but if Woods continues on this torrent pace and passes Nicklaus, I think you have to say that he's on a new level and the only argument is whether Nicklaus, on further review, was there also. But beyond that, I think it's clear that they're far and away the best two players in the modern game.

Going back to my original point though: there are different kinds of greatness. Simmons and Gladwell touch on this but they don't really give it the full treatment. There are different levels of great, but there's different kinds, too.

There are guys who make everyone around them better, but aren't individually all that great. (Nash, I'd say. Never the most lauded guy individually for most of his career, but he deserves those MVPs because, although it was partly the system, he consistently got the best out of guys who are anything but consistent.) Then there are guys who are individually great, but struggle to really get anything extra out of their teammates. (Kobe. Enough said.)

Then there are the guys who are both. Sticking to basketball, you have Jordan, Bird, Magic, Russell, Duncan, Garnett, etc. Now, they all are individually great, but they also got the best out of their teammates. Now some did it because they just scared the crap out of their teammates (Jordan, Garnett), some did it by simply going out and gutting it and dragging their whole team up by their bootstraps (Bird, Russell), and then there are guys who did it by being there for their teammates, bringing it every night, occasionally having a huge game, and generally just being that fun to play with. (Magic).

Lebron, I think, has a real chance to join that third category. He's so fun to play with that it's fun just watching them play basketball. If they were just playing around, on some random playground, I would enjoy watching them play. Lebron is fun to watch because he's just a phenom, but the Cavaliers, as a team, are just fun. Period.

If you look at that group, though, (and there are probably plenty of guys that I'm forgetting) they all have two things in common: they all won MVPs and they all won titles.

Lebron just won the MVP. Guess which is next?

These are the things Malcolm Gladwell does to my brain. Thank God he's only in his mid-40s. He could pump out another 15 books, easy. It's like watching Lebron.

It's just fun. Period.