Do You Have to Win a Ring to be Considered the Best Ever?

The recent playoff performance put forth by Dirk Nowitzki has reignited this topic amongst sports enthusiasts everywhere and I have decided to put in my two cents.

The main problem with this question is that it is asked universally across sports and in some contexts it is a valid question while in others, it doesn’t hold water. In the NBA, this question has some merit and in the NFL, it has merit as long as we’re only talking about one position (more on both of those later). However, one place where this question doesn’t belong at all is baseball.

Quick! How many World Series titles did Babe Ruth win?

Barry Bonds?

Ty Cobb?

Willie Mays?

Hank Aaron?

There is little debate that four of those five players (with the obvious exception being Bonds) are among the best position players in the history of baseball. Anyone who doesn’t at least include them in the conversation is out of their minds and you should tell them so. My goal here is not to say who the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) is, I’m simply saying that if you were having that discussion, these names would be a part of it.

So, back to the question, how many World Series titles do each of those guys have? The easiest is Bonds since he has played recently and the answer for him is 0.

Willie Mays – 1 (1954)
Hank Aaron – 1 (1957)
Ty Cobb – 0
Babe Ruth – 7 (1915, 1916, 1918, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1932)

Here’s the thing though; when you think of the G.O.A.T. in baseball, you don’t think of the number of World Series titles won or the number of World Series MVP’s they won, you think of numbers like 4,189 hits, 714 (or 755) home runs, 511 wins, 5,714 strikeouts, and so on and so forth. The regular season in baseball is such a huge sample size compared to the postseason that players are defined to a much greater extent by their regular season numbers than whether or not they performed well in the postseason.

Ty Cobb is one of the best hitters that has ever picked up a bat. His career .366 batting average is the best all time and his record of 4,189 hits stood for 62 years (from 1923 when he broke Cap Anson’s record to 1985 when Pete Rose broke his). However, for all those of you who say that championships are the measure of a player, it might interest you to know that the Georgia Peach became downright pedestrian in his three World Series appearances (all losses) with an OPS of .668 compared to the league average of .611 for those three years. While he was above average, when you compare that mark of .668 to his career OPS of .945, it looks significantly worse.

The biggest reason that this question doesn’t apply to baseball is just the nature of the sport. While a starting pitcher has the ball in his hands at the beginning of every play, on average, 15-20 outs are recorded without the pitcher being involved. As for a position player, they are cursed to somewhere between 8.6% and 14.3% of the total plate appearance for their team. In the field, they might be in on half of the defensive outs recorded but that still leaves 8-10 outs that the rest of the team must account for.

To use one of my favorite metrics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR), consider this; the best season (since 1900) by a position player is 14.7, by Babe Ruth in 1923. His line that year was nothing short of preposterous as he hit .393/.545/.764 with 41 home runs and 131 RBI (and 13 triples). Arguably more amazing is that his 1.309 OPS was only the third best of his career… but I divulge. That year he was worth (essentially) 15 more wins than a replacement player. If your team was made up of replacement players and one 1923 vintage Babe Ruth, you would still be a terrible team. If memory serves, most WAR calculations use a 40-win level when they talk about replacement players. If your entire team was made up of replacement players, your record would be 40-122 (NOTE: I can’t remember the exact numbers so please don’t hammer me on that one).

So even with the best season by a position player in the past 112 seasons, your team’s record would be 55-107. That is why baseball players are judged by individual statistics far more than team results.

But the next question that needs to be asked is whether or not it is fair for players in other sports to be judged by the performance of their teams? When it comes to football, the only position that gets this kind of pressure is the quarterback position and let’s consider this example.

Completions-Attempts-Yards-TD-INT
Players A/B/C
4491-8252-55664-313-312

Player D
4967-8358-61361-420-252

We’ll call Players A, B, and C Group A… they played 291 NFL games and had a completion percentage of 54.4% and a combined quarterback rating of 72.4. Group B (which is made up of only Player D) completed 59.4% of his passes over the course of his career and put forth a quarterback rating of 86.4. If you have any knowledge of the career record book for quarterbacks, you know the guy that I’m talking about in Group B but let’s play along.

When you look at these numbers, it is obvious that the three quarterbacks in Group A are nowhere near the caliber of Player D. So why am I making such a big deal about this? Because Trent Dilfer, Jim McMahon, and Doug Williams (Players A, B, and C) all have a Super Bowl ring and Dan Marino (Player D) does not. Of those three, only Dilfer managed to pass for as many as 20,000 yards (20,518) and he finished his career with more interceptions than touchdowns (113 TD vs. 129 INT). To say that a player is better than another because they have won a championship is ludicrous. Throughout professional sports, it is said that the playoffs are an entirely different animal than the regular season and given that, how can we judge players on their postseason performance without at least acknowledging that their regular season performance means something?

Here is another example from the NBA. I firmly believe that this question is more legitimate in the NBA than any other sport because I believe that a single player has the ability to affect more change in the NBA by themselves than in any other sport. A quarterback has the ball every play but does not play defense or special teams. A pitcher is involved in the beginning of every play but when the ball is put in play, there is roughly a 5% chance that the pitcher will be involved in the play (based on 2010 numbers across baseball). A single player in the NBA can touch the ball on every offensive possession and can guard the man with the ball on every single defensive possession. In that sense, they can affect a game more than any other single player in another sport.

I would consider these four guys some of the best power forwards in NBA history but the obvious question that I’m teeing up is which one is the best?

First of all, a look at the numbers:

FG% = Field Goal Percentage
3PT% = 3 Point Field Goal Percentage
FT% = Free Throw Percentage
PPG = Points Per Game
RPG = Rebounds Per Game
APG = Assists Per Game
BPG = Blocks Per Game
SPG = Steals Per Game

FG%/3PT%/FT%/PPG/RPG/APG/BPG/SPG

Player A – 50.8/18.2/68.8/20.6/11.4/3.1/2.3/0.7
Player B – 49.8/28.2/78.8/19.5/10.7/4.1/1.5/1.3
Player C – 54.1/26.6/73.5/22.1/11.7/3.9/0.8/1.5
Player D – 51.6/27.4/74.2/25.0/10.1/3.6/0.8/1.4

As you can see, their numbers are remarkably similar. Their shooting percentages are all high (disregarding the 3 point shooting since they are power forwards) with a little variance in the free throw shooting. Still, 68.8% free throw shooting from a 6-10 guy who gives you 20 and 11 every night is good.

Their scoring is similar with one exception and their rebounding and assist numbers are very comparable. It does look like the first two might be slightly more defensively inclined (at least when it comes to the counting stats) but it’s not by a lot when you factor in steals as well as blocks. So to separate these guys, let’s take a look at how they performed when the most was on the line; in the playoffs.

Player A – 50.2/16.7/67.8/22.7/12.4/3.4/2.6/0.7
Player B – 47.2/29.8/78.2/19.6/11.1/3.8/1.4/1.3
Player C – 51.3/25.5/71.7/23.0/12.9/3.9/0.9/1.6
Player D – 46.3/16.2/73.6/24.7/10.7/3.2/0.7/1.3

If you put all this together, it paints a picture of four players that have very similar numbers, both in the regular season and in the playoffs. Would it help the discussion at all if I told you that Player A has four championship rings, Player B has one, and neither Player C nor Player D have one?

For me, it wouldn’t really change the way I rank these four players.

Karl Malone (Player D)
Tim Duncan (Player A)
Kevin Garnett (Player B)
Charles Barkley (Player C)

Bill Wennington and Kurt Rambis combined to play 1,600 games in the NBA and scored 7,904 total points (4.9 points per game). Patrick Ewing scored 24,815 points in 1,183 games over his illustrious career. Which of those three was the best center? Ewing never won a championship while Wennington won two with the Bulls and Rambis won four with the Lakers.

I know that I am cherry-picking the most extreme examples but I’m trying to make a point. I want the people who write about and follow the NBA and the NFL to take a lesson from Major League Baseball; championships define teams, and they should not (completely) define players. Would Bill Russell have been a different player if he had won two rings instead of 11? Would Wilt Chamberlain be considered the best center ever if he had never won a championship?


All of this circles around to the comments that Scottie Pippen made about LeBron James having the potential to be considered the best player in NBA history… yes, even better than Michael Jordan. There has never been a better scorer than Jordan in the league’s history and despite the fact that it’s not the best measure of a scorer, all you have to look at is the fact that he is one of only two players to average better than 30 points per game for an entire career and he managed to stay ahead of Chamberlain (30.12-30.07). However, LeBron James does things that Jordan does not. He is much more of a pass first type of player than Jordan and this is a huge reason why the Miami Heat have done so well. He is perfectly happy being a facilitator and while some of Jordan’s most famous plays were assists in tough spots where he did not take the final shot, he is much better known for the shots he took and made than any passes he made. LeBron’s legacy might be closer to that of Magic Johnson, taking big shots when he had to but also making numerous highlight reel assists.

Will LeBron end up being better than Mike? I have no idea. Is it possible? Absolutely.

If you look at the counting stats and project LeBron having five productive seasons from this point on, that would put him at 28,161 points (against Jordan’s 32,292), 7,220 rebounds (6,672 for Jordan), and 7,078 assists (vs. 5,633 for Jordan). Again, Jordan was the better scorer but James does other things that Jordan doesn’t.

All in all, it is way too soon to even be having this discussion but it is one that we won’t be able to escape from until LeBron wins a title and then again until he starts approaching counting stats that nobody in the history of the league has gotten close to. After all, only three players in NBA history have accumulated 20,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, and 6,000 assists over their careers. Magic isn’t one of them and neither is Larry Bird or Michael Jordan. Those three are John Havilchek (26,395-8,007-6,114), Clyde Drexler (22,195-6,677-6,125), and the guy who doesn’t quite get enough credit for all the things he did, Oscar Robertson (26,710-7,804-9,887).

Depending on how long he plays and how healthy he stays, LeBron James has the chance to surpass them all…



Who knows, he might even win 7 rings…