In the case of LeBron and others, what should we care about: Titles or Accolades?
Maybe you've seen the trailer for Bad Teacher, maybe you haven't. Admittedly, I'm a pretty big Jason Segel fan, so maybe I'm making too much of this, but the screaming at a kid at the end ("THAT'S THE ONLY ARGUMENT I NEED, SEAN!") is pretty clutch.
In Game 4 of the 2011 NBA Finals, when the Mavs tied it up with the Heat, LeBron James scored eight points. The media crapped all over him. It's kind of unfair in some respects -- people phone it in at their jobs all the time, or have bad days, and no one notices -- but then again, LeBron is on a giant, world-ish ("ish" because I don't really think Poland gives two craps about the NBA Finals, but maybe I'm wrong) stage and his situation has to be evaluated differently. After the game, a reporter asked him if the entire process (i.e. winning a championship) would be for naught if D-Wade won the Finals MVP Award. LeBron got heated. I don't know the word-for-word quote, but it was something like, "I have two MVP awards back home in Ohio. I'm here for a ring."
People attempt to evaluate athletes every single moment of every single day, oftentimes in pubs. Essentially, it all comes down to this: What's more important to you, the rings or the individual performance?
See, prior to last night, through the first three games of these Finals (and the Boston series, and the Chicago series), major media outlets were legitimately comparing LeBron to Jordan. So if you watch the Bad Teacher trailer, whose boat are you in: Sean or Jason Segel's character?
Phrased another way, can LeBron ever approach Jordan in all-time discussions without six rings?
To use another Miami example, can you ever put Dan Marino in a 'best QB of all-time' debate with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw?
Can you call Charles Barkley or Karl Malone of the best forwards of all-time, or must you have Robert Horry ahead of them in the dialogue?
By no means is this a cut-and-dried question. First off, you evaluate different sports contextually. In the case of tennis or golf, individual obviously outweighs any notion of team, since they're individual battles. One among five starters in basketball can have a much bigger effect than one among 11 starters in football, and how much one individual contributes to the leadership of a team is something we can never really know -- just guess at through the eyes of the media, honestly.
In all honesty, they should be two separate discussions: "Best Pure Player Ever" (in a given sport or at a given position) and "Best Player Ever," where the latter discussion would take into account rings. You play most professional sports to acquire championships, whether you're on the Lakers or the Timberwolves, the Steelers or the Seahawks. The fat contracts are nice, but the goal for most is titles. That simply has to be part of any broader sports debates.
The thing is, though, people will never separate those discussions into multiple parts, especially not in a bar. "MJ vs. LeBron" is significantly more fun, and easier to play out, than "Best Player Ever When Accounting For Height, Supporting Cast, Head Coaches Served Under, Rings, And Other Assorted Models."
Here's a two-part question to anyone reading, though:
1. In a sport such as baseball, football, basketball, hockey, or soccer, what matters more in assessing greatness -- individual performance or how that drives the team?
2. Where do you rank guys like Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, Charles Haley (most SB rings won as a player), Herb Pennock (Google it) and others all-time? Do they even rank? Must they rank because of their appearance on and contributions to championship teams?
3. How funny is Bad Teacher going to be? Is it a Vince Vaughn issue where all the funny stuff is in the trailer? (Sorry, No. 3 was a throw-on.) Let us know your thoughts, though.
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