Listen up. Sports are hard, plain and simple. It takes winning the genetic lottery just to have a chance of making it to the highest level, and it takes even more talent, work, discipline and luck to become one of the greats.
Ever since sports debates, newspapers and random websites like this one started discussing and ranking athletes, one of the biggest downsides has been the way we talk about all time great players who never won a championship. No ring? Suddenly something is missing.
You can have an incredible career, win MVPs, break records, dominate your position and become one of the greatest players your sport has ever seen. But if you never win that final game, there will always be somebody waiting to dismiss everything you accomplished with two words.
No rings.
That is why we are going to try to change the narrative.
Championships Matter, But They Are Not Everything
Before going any further, let’s make something clear. Championships absolutely matter. The entire purpose of competitive sports is to win, and performing at your best when the stakes are highest should absolutely add to a player’s legacy.
The problem starts when we treat a championship like an individual statistic. Basketball players do not win championships alone. Quarterbacks do not win Super Bowls alone. Baseball players cannot win the World Series alone. Even in motorsports, where the driver’s name receives much of the attention, the car, engineers, mechanics and strategy team all contribute to winning a championship. Yet when we debate individual players, we constantly use team championships as if they belong entirely to one person.
Charles Barkley is one of the easiest examples. He won an MVP, made eleven All Star teams and became one of the greatest power forwards in NBA history. In 1993, he led Phoenix to 62 wins and the NBA Finals, where he happened to run into Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Barkley losing that series did not suddenly make him a worse basketball player. If Phoenix had won two more games and Barkley finished his career with a championship, his individual ability would have been exactly the same. Yet the way people discuss his career would be completely different.
Dan Marino gets the same treatment in football. Marino threw for 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns in 1984, won an MVP and became one of the greatest quarterbacks ever, but he never won a Super Bowl. A quarterback cannot block for himself, catch his own passes, play defense and kick field goals. He can play brilliantly and still lose because the other team was simply better.
That is the reality of playing a team sport. Sometimes an all time great does everything he can and still never gets the ring.
The Russell Westbrook Conversation Says Everything
We do not even need to reach decades into the past to find an example. Just look at Russell Westbrook.
When Westbrook retired, what should the conversation have been?
Wow, what a career.
An NBA MVP. Nine All Star selections. Nine All-NBA selections. Two scoring titles. Three assists titles. A member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team and the all time leader in triple-doubles.
The man averaged a triple-double for an entire season.
Then he did it four times.
Instead, one of the first things people wanted to bring up was what he did not accomplish. He never won a championship. Then comes the question of whether Russell Westbrook is a Hall of Famer.
Give me a break.
Is Russell Westbrook seriously a Hall of Famer?
Of course he is.
If we have reached the point where a championship is so important that we are questioning whether a former MVP who rewrote the record books belongs in the Hall of Fame, then ring culture has completely distorted how we evaluate individual greatness.
A championship could have added something to Westbrook’s résumé. Its absence does not erase everything already on it.
Rings Should Be Part of the Argument, Not the Entire Argument
None of this means championships are meaningless. Michael Jordan winning six championships and six Finals MVPs matters. Tom Brady winning seven Super Bowls matters. When athletes repeatedly perform at an elite level deep into the postseason, that deserves to strengthen their legacy.
If two players have incredibly similar careers and one consistently elevated his game on the biggest stage, championships can absolutely help separate them. But a ring should be part of the argument. It should not be the argument.
There are role players with multiple championship rings and all time greats with none. Nobody actually believes that the role player was better simply because he happened to play on championship teams. So clearly we already understand that championships require context.
For some reason, we forget that the moment we start comparing superstars.
Only One Team Gets to Win
Only one team can win the championship every year. Think about how absurdly difficult that makes winning one. An athlete can spend fifteen years playing professionally and have only a handful of legitimate opportunities. Maybe his best team runs into a dynasty. Maybe a teammate gets injured. Maybe ownership makes terrible decisions. Maybe another superstar produces the game of his life at exactly the wrong time.
Sometimes you can do almost everything right and still lose. Stockton and Malone repeatedly ran into Jordan’s Bulls. Barkley’s best opportunity ended against that same dynasty. The Buffalo Bills reached four consecutive Super Bowls and lost all four.
Instead of appreciating how incredibly difficult it was to get there, history often reduces those stories to what they failed to accomplish.
Winning deserves to be celebrated. Losing should not automatically erase greatness.
Ring Culture Does Not Even Let Us Enjoy Winning Anymore
And here is where I think ring culture has really polluted our minds. We have become so obsessed with championships that we cannot even properly enjoy them when they happen.
Patrick Mahomes wins another Super Bowl?
“Has he gotten closer to Tom Brady?”
LeBron James wins another NBA championship?
“Well, Jordan has six.”
Think about how ridiculous that has become. A championship is supposed to be the ultimate celebration of a season. Years of work, injuries, practices, regular season games, playoff battles and pressure finally result in reaching the top of the sport. Yet instead of appreciating what we just watched, we immediately pull out the all time rankings and start counting jewelry.
Mahomes cannot simply win a Super Bowl. It has to become another piece of evidence in the Brady debate. LeBron cannot simply win a championship. It has to become another chapter in the Jordan debate.
Not every championship needs to answer the GOAT debate. Not every playoff loss needs to destroy someone’s legacy. And not every great athlete needs to be compared with somebody who came before him.
Sometimes we should be able to watch an all time great accomplish something incredible and simply say:
Wow. That was special.
Appreciate Greatness While It Is Here
Sports debates are supposed to be fun. I run an entire website largely because arguing about athletes, rankings, predictions and history is fun. But our obsession with rings has reached the point where we sometimes spend more time looking for what an athlete has not accomplished than appreciating everything they have.
A championship should enhance a legacy. It should never be the sole requirement for having one.
Charles Barkley was great without a ring. Dan Marino was great without a ring. Russell Westbrook was great without a ring. Countless athletes across every sport have been great despite never reaching the very top of the mountain. And when somebody does reach it, maybe we do not immediately need to ask how their ring total compares with another legend.
Championships tell an important part of the story.
They do not tell the entire story.
So the next time somebody tries to end a sports debate by simply asking, “How many rings does he have?” maybe ask a better question.
How great was he at actually playing the sport?
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