Tich’s Take

Rings, rings, rings.
When discussing the greatness of sports legends, everything comes back to the simple question of “how many championships have they won?” This is a silly devolution of years of progress in the fields of reasoning and logic. In other words — rings do not really matter. At least, not too much.

In team sports, winning a championship is obviously the ultimate goal. To win that title, a team has to have everything go right — building the team the right way, not running into the wrong team at the wrong time, avoiding injuries, etc. Teams seemingly destined to win it all fall short all the time because of the vast amount of variables that go into winning a title.

We want to judge the greatness of a single player based on his ability to win something that is team dependent, and that is wrong. Was it Charles Barkley’s fault that his prime coincided with Michael Jordan’s? Was it LeBron James’ fault that his best teammate during his first Cleveland stint was Zydrunas Ilgauskas? Ideal circumstance does not always coincide with a player’s prime years.

The reason rings are so important in many pundits’ minds is because it is the easiest way to quantify performing well when the stakes are the highest. But really it is a gross oversimplification. Do not get me wrong, playing big when the stakes are high is important, but winning a championship is not necessarily representative.

Tracy McGrady gets more than his share of flack for never winning a playoff series during his prime, even though his various supporting casts were about as useful as a three-week-old bologna sandwich. From 2000-2007, before knee injuries effectively ended his career, McGrady was one of the best in the game, averaging 27 points, seven rebounds and five assists while boasting a 25.0 Player Efficiency Rating.

His teams made the playoffs during five of those seven seasons, despite Darrell Armstrong and Mike Miller “starring” as his best teammates during his Orlando stint. T-Mac also averaged more than 30 points per game in the postseason during that stretch, his team going just 3-6 when he scored more than 35. What else could he do?

As nonsensical as it is to blame or credit one player in basketball for team success — an individual player probably makes the biggest difference in basketball over any other team sport — it is even more ridiculous in football.

Eli Manning will probably be in the Hall of Fame one day because of his two Super Bowl rings, even though he has been a decidedly average quarterback for the majority of his career, leading the NFL in interceptions three times. Some people really were questioning whether Peyton or Eli was the better Manning after Eli’s second Super Bowl win. This actually happened.

The bling from the trophies and rings tends to skew the vision of many fans, and even experts, but the concept is simple — judge an individual by what he does as an individual. Would it make sense to evaluate a student mostly based on group projects? An intelligent person could make a bad grade because someone in the group did not pull his or her weight. The person is not a bad student because of the incompetence of others.

It is about time we put on some sunglasses and let the bling stop blinding us.

TICHENOR is the sports editor.