Many sports fans that watch the NBA and NFL often fall into 2 groups: those who generally use rings to judge players (they put a LOT of weight on rings), and those who generally don’t like to weigh rings as highly, and prefer to weigh stats much more. (In the NFL, this is usually pivoted towards the QB position, since it has the most impact.)
(There are few others that may use some combo of both.)
The 2nd group – that weighs stats and accolades more – typically points out how rings are a team accomplishment – that football and basketball are team sports, and that lots of luck is also involved. Therefore, it is stupid to weigh rings heavily. In fact, many of them even imply that luck plays a very LARGE role in having any type of playoff success, let alone winning rings. For the NFL, they like to point out how QB Trent Dilfer has a ring, but Dan Marino – unanimously considered one of the greatest to ever play – does have one.
Well, to be frank. The reality is that players who have rings, usually were good enough to win and had qualities that landed them success. And most players who didn’t win rings, usually weren’t good enough or had qualities that prevented from winning.
The key word is usually. As in, most of the time. Generally speaking. Not always, not all the time. So no one reading this should get emotional and bring up Joe Flacco vs Matt Ryan. Because this take inherently acknowledges exceptions.
To illustrate this example, it’s best if we analyze “good” players who did not win a ring. There’s no point in spending time on players like Trent Dilfer because we all know players like him are anomalies. We can look at players across the NBA and NFL, throughout this article.
We can look at the NBA for this especially.
James Harden is a great NBA player, easily a hall of famer without question. He does not have a ring, and many of his ardent supporters point out that some of his Rockets teams weren’t particular great, and that in 2018, his Rockets were up 3-2 against the Warriors but Chris Paul got hurt and that the team missed 27 straight threes.
Is that true? Yes. But it’s also true that Harden has objectively had a large amount of really bad playoff games. He has the most playoff games shooting under 30% – while also have a lot of turnovers. And this has been the case across each of the teams he has played for – OKC, Houston, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. And that’s with him playing alongside players like Kevin Durant and Joel Embiid. In short; he’s had some good teams to play with. He has played bad enough, enough times, that you can tell he wasn’t going to win anyway. The reality is that even if Harden was unlucky in 2018, him not having a ring at all has a lot more to do with him than it does luck.
In the 2023 ECSF against Boston, Harden had some great games in games 1 and 4. But Harden ended up going out on a complete whimper in games 6 and games 7. Keep in mind, they were up 3-2, with Tatum playing terribly the first 3 quarters.
Harden’s performances in these spots can cast reasonable doubt on whether he would have played well enough to win a championship if his team was better.
In the NBA, players that have good teams, still have to play well to win majority of the time to win. We still give credit to LeBron for winning with the Heat and Lakers because he still had to play out of his mind on both ends of the floor for them to win. And if we need anymore proof, we can just look at how Harden performed in the 2012 Heat Finals.
One can also look at Stockton and Malone. Were Stockton and Malone great players? Yes! Many lament that they would have won a ring if they didn’t run into the Jordan. Is this true? Not really. Why? They lost enough throughout their careers (including series where they were favored, against lower seeds, and blew 2-1 leads) beforehand that you can cast reasonable doubt on whether they actually would have won. Keep in mind they would have played the 1997 Miami Heat (with Alonzo Mourning, Tim Hardaway, Bruce Bowen, etc. strong defensive team), and the 1998 Pacers (Reggie Miller, Mark Jackson, Jalen Rose, etc.).
Chris Paul is unique in that he wasn’t really choking in a lot of his losses. We can bring up injuries, but often times, most of the playoff series he lost (when healthy), he was just never the best player on the court/capable of having the most impact. In the 2021 Finals… Giannis was a freak of nature. In the 2022 WCF, Luka was putting up trouble doubles in his sleep. Nothing CP3 could do about that, but that’s the point. It’s not just bad luck that he “ran into Giannis” or “ran into the Warriors” or “ran into Luka” etc. You have to be the guy others run into, a large majority of the time, so that it’s easier for your team to build around you, most of the time.
Overall, at least with the NBA, some players don’t have skillsets that a) hold up in the playoffs, or b) are easy to build around.
Your Skillset Can Determine Your Supporting Cast in the NBA
This is the case for a lot of NBA playoff jobbers. Damian Lillard is an excellent player – and yes, it is hard to win, and yes it is a team game… but the fact of the matter is that how far the team goes still rides on him.
Dame is a great scorer. But he relies a lot on the Pick & Roll: Sort by Freq%, Possessions, Points, etc. Notice how Dame is high up there in those categories. (Also notice Trae Young.) Dame relying on this to score affects the roster construction mightily – it makes it so that they have to roll with big men like Nurkic and, in the past, Kanter. Which then also hurts their team’s defense as well.
Additionally, Dame’s own individual defense is… some type of way. Are other guards like Steph Curry great on defense? No. But Curry has been a really good team defender for quite some time, and his on-ball defense has steadily gotten solid. And this matters because it makes it much easier for the Warriors to protect his other defensive limitations.
Dame on the other hand is much more loose defensively – both on-ball and off-ball as a team defender. This has hurt his teams ability to be good defensively over the years. It’s why they were still bad in 2023 when they added Jerami Grant.
This also applies to many other players as well. Jimmy Butler is a great player, but his skillset also has it made it difficult for Miami to build a great team around him – which is why Butler always needs to go crazy in the playoffs for them to win games, and why Miami seems outmatched and are underdogs in their later playoff series. Butler relies a lot on getting to the rim and pump-faking and drawing fouls – which is smart – but it requires Miami to not really have traditional big men on the roster (as they may clog up spacing when Butler gets to the rim) and it also requires Miami to have to acquire smaller, nimble guards that can move a lot off-ball (as bigger 3&D wings may not always have the stamina to cut off-ball as much). As a result, Miami can struggle against teams with elite big men (Davis and Jokic in the Finals), and that also have elite non-bigs.
That’s what it comes down to. Luck plays a role in individual years. But over a large sample seasons, you are who you are most of the time. You enter each season with a flawed skillset that dictates how the team builds around you and dictates the team’s scheme/system, and which can be exposed and stifled against the competition in the playoffs.
