There’s one question that is one of the most annoying in sports discussions in my opinion as a sports fan and a writer. That question being, “how many rings does he have?” With that main poisoning question it has killed the fun that was those meaningless debates. Ring culture killed the fun all-time NBA player debates. 

Using this as a trump card is lazy and childish. I just hear the endless Jordan-LeBron argument that is a dead horse anytime rings get brought up. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Bad Teacher’ you’ll know exactly where I got this from. To paint the picture, it is where Jason Segel’s character and this kid are going back and forth about Jordan or LeBron being better. The kid says, “LeBron is a better rebounder and passer” to which Segel replies with, “to call him when LeBron has 6 championships”. The kid says, “That’s the only argument you have!” and Segel replies with, “That’s the only argument I need Sean!” For research purposes, you can search ‘Bad Teacher LeBron argument’ on YouTube to gain the full feeling. 

This seems to be only a problem in the NBA. The sport and league where the team’s best player impacts their team’s outcomes in each game and how the season went. Obviously that’s either tanking for the pieces around the guy who could possibly but unlikely be brought in such a debate, a mediocre squad fighting for a playoff berth, the team fighting to get over the hump for a championship, and finally the championship team. 

Of course you play to win the game. You play for championships. You play to become the greatest. You play to make history. It is not the end-all-be-all if you’re not one of the greatest when it comes to debating who is better. There’s credence to bringing up the topic just not as one of the sole reasons for one great to be better than another great. It should be one of the last things brought up due to the scapegoat it can be. That is because you can look deeper and figure out what breaks were caught or not for said player in the debate to have or not have their rings. 

The conversation shows how much love, knowledge and enthusiasm one lacks for the game when that is their crutch. Like damn, I know championships matter the most but that doesn’t make the games that happened before just null and void. On those teams where your GOATs or favorites won those championships, they had help. I promise you they did. They had about 11 teammates that played throughout the regular season and 7-8 teammates that cracked the playoff rotation. 

Sorry for being so literal but it is just such an exhausting conversation to have. That is how I feel because the conversations generally never breed an interesting discourse. I guess the media and mouth breathers are to blame for the debates. All I know is that despite them still being had, the debates are dead when the topic of rings comes up. So RIP to the ring culture topic and if you’d like to engage about this just shoot me a message on Twitter, @_JDiVirgilio.