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…

LeBron James

First and foremost, it should be mentioned that I am not a fan of the NBA in general. There are several players and coaches that I like and a few teams that are (sometimes) enjoyable to watch play. I will admit that I did watch nearly all of Game 7 of the NBA finals this year (keep in mind that I do not have cable so the opportunity rarely presents itself). I figured that my self-imposed NBA exile, which is going on twelve years now, could have a one night hiatus to watch one of my favorite all time teams (Celtics) battle one of my least favorite teams (Lakers).

Before I get on to the meat of this article, I have to pay homage. Game 7 was a brawl. It was the type of game that I enjoyed playing in when I was in high school because while I never seemed to be able to find a shooting rhythm offensively, physical defense was one of my fortes so I loved watching the Lakers and Celtics trade body-blows for 48 minutes and yes, when all was said and done, the Lakers definitely deserved to win that game.

I’ve watched and followed a lot of great players come and go through the NBA over the past 18 years or so. I distinctly remember watching the Chicago Bulls and the Portland Trailblazers in the Finals, cheering for some guy named Clyde “The Glide” Drexler and watching him get beaten by Michael Jordan. Over the next five or six years I began to appreciate Michael Jordan for what he was and what he brought to his team every night. I watched every game of the NBA Finals after the Bulls won 72 games and then beat my Seattle Supersonics (they were mine at the time). I watched every game the next two years as two of my favorite players of the past twenty years, John Stockton and Karl Malone, tried to punch through the wall that nobody could get through between 1991-1993 and 1996-1998. I feel confident in saying that the Jazz would have won back to back titles in 1997 and 1998 if Jordan had been playing baseball; that team had everything.

Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Shaquille O’Neal, and (sigh) Kobe Bryant have been just a few of the magnificent players that have played in front of my eyes in the time I’ve been aware of the NBA. None of them could hold a candle to the physical gifts of one LeBron James.

Here’s a good way to look at it. Karl Malone, one of the best players in league history, was listed at 6’9” and 250 pounds. He had broad shoulders and was light on his feet but he was a forward. He wasn’t the type of guy that could scramble for a loose ball on the floor in front of the basket, rip it away from an opponent, and then elevate and throw down a two-handed stuff over the opposing shot-blocking center. He would still get two points out of the equation but he would leave you thinking “How can he make that shot right under the hoop when he’s only 6’9” and the opposing center is 7’2” and right next to him?” Trust me, I know because I had that thought I-don’t-know-how-many times in the mid to late 90’s.

By contrast, LeBron James is listed at 6’8” and 240 pounds. Just an inch shorter, just ten pounds lighter. James runs the floor like a point guard, light on his feet and ready to change direction at an instant’s notice. Once he gets the rim into the forefront of his mind, there is very little that you can do to stop him other than… no, I can’t really think of anything. Around the rim, he explodes with a size and strength (not to mention a 44” vertical) that few in NBA history have ever had.

Now that we’ve talked a bit about the meat of this post, it’s time to tackle the gristle. By that, of course, I mean “The Decision”.

Does the prospect of having LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh in the same uniform intrigue me? Absolutely. Does it interest me that all three took less money to play together? Not really because even though it’s been reported that they all left about $15 million on the table, the contracts are still worth roughly $105 million (for Wade) and $110 million (for James and Bosh). While a 12% discount may be significant in the NBA, it means nothing in the real world when it comes to sacrifice. If they wanted to make headlines about taking discounts, I would have loved the three of them to signed for $5 million a year and tell the general manager “go out and get all the pieces that you need to put around us so we can be the Celtics (60’s version) of this generation”. Did that happen? Nope.

Last year, James put forth a ridiculous line of 29.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 8.6 assists per game. Combining that with Wade’s 26.6-4.8-6.5 and Bosh’s 24.0-10.8-2.4 does make one wonder. How many times in league history has a team had three 20 point-per-game scorers on the same team? Very good question.

In the history of the NBA, a player has averaged 20 or more points per game 1,131 times, from Joe Fulks in the 1946-47 season (23.2 ppg) to the young superstars of today. The first set of teammates to score 20 points per game or more happened in the 1954-55 season when Neil Johnston (22.7) and Paul Arizin (21.0) accomplished the feat. Believe it or not, there have actually been 16 different sets of three teammates that have averaged over 20 points per game in the same season.

1959-60 St. Louis Hawks
Bob Pettit – 26.1
Cliff Hagan – 24.8
Clyde Lovellette – 20.8

1960-61 St. Louis Hawks
Bob Pettit – 27.9
Cliff Hagan – 22.1
Clyde Lovellette – 22.0

1966-1967 Boston Celtics
Sam Jones – 22.1
John Havilcek – 21.4
Bailey Howell – 20.0

1968-69 San Francisco Warriors
Jeff Mullins – 22.8
Nate Thurmond – 21.5
Rudy LaRusso – 20.7

1969-70 Chicago Bulls
Chet Walker – 21.5
Bob Love – 21.0
Clem Haskins – 20.3

1969-70 Phoenix Suns
Connie Hawkins – 24.6
Dick Van Arsdale – 21.3
Gail Goodrich – 20.0

1971-72 Golden State Warriors
Jeff Mullins – 21.5
Cazzie Russell – 21.4
Nate Thurmond – 21.4

1980-81 Denver Nuggets
David Thompson – 25.5
Alex English – 23.8
Dan Issel – 21.9

1981-82 Denver Nuggets
Alex English – 25.4
Dan Issel – 22.9
Kiki Vandeweghe – 21.5

1982-83 Denver Nuggets
Alex English – 28.4
Kiki Vandeweghe – 26.7
Dan Issel – 21.6

1983-84 Philadelphia 76ers
Moses Malone – 22.7
Julius Erving – 22.4
Andrew Toney – 20.4

1986-87 Seattle Supersonics
Dale Ellis – 24.9
Tom Chambers – 23.3
Xavier McDaniel – 23.0

1987-88 Seattle Supersonics
Dale Ellis – 25.8
Xavier McDaniel – 21.4
Tom Chambers – 20.4

1988-89 Phoenix Suns
Tom Chambers – 25.7
Eddie Johnson – 21.5
Kevin Johnson – 20.4

1990-91 Golden State Warriors
Chris Mullin – 25.7
Mitch Richmond – 23.9
Tim Hardaway – 22.9

2007-08 Golden State Warriors
Baron Davis – 21.8
Monta Ellis – 20.2
Stephen Jackson – 20.1

So in other words, having three good scorers actually share the ball isn’t unheard of. However, for the James-Wade-Bosh marriage, I only see two scenarios for how well it will work out.

1) The three of them start bickering about whose team it is and who deserves the most shots/points/dollars, etc. Halfway through the season Pat Riley realizes the magnitude of his mistake and retires. All three have decent statistical years but the Heat go 41-41 and miss the playoffs. Cleveland and Toronto rejoice while the rest of the league looks on in amusement at the situation in Miami.
2) With the addition of a big bruising, 7’, 300 pound center that can’t score worth a lick, Bosh is free to cherry-pick rebounds, outlet the ball to James, who sprints down the court with Wade and another 3-point shooter filling the lanes. Bosh averages 16-14, Wade averages 35-4-4, and James averages his triple double (25-10-12) as the Heat win 65 games. In the playoffs, they don’t change their style of play and keep running up and down the floor and the young legs of LeBron, Dwayne, and Chris (25, 28, and 25) carry the Heat to another title, the first of several during this threesome’s tenure.

Is it going to work? I honestly don’t know. Dwayne Wade and LeBron James are two very unselfish players so I think that they could coexist peacefully. The only question is how the locker room will react when they lose three or four games in a row.

If I was team president Pat Riley, I’d send these three along with head coach Erik Spoelstra somewhere remote where all they had was a gym and I would get the four of them to start game-planning how these three superstars are going to share just one basketball.