Let’s get this straight. We are living in the Ringz Culture. It doesn’t matter how great a player is, what their skill set is, how much productivity they brought, or how consistent they were, if you don’t have a ring on it, you’re garbage. Many players like the 50-40-90-shooting-Steve Nash and super athletic big David Robinson get overlooked solely for their lack of rings (Nash for not winning any, Robinson for not winning until Duncan). Garnett immediately gets discounted over Tim Duncan because he has 1 ring, while Duncan has five. It’s interesting to see what Garnett’s ring total would be if he had played in that Spurs system, with the coaching and talent Duncan had. But we’ll leave that for another article.
When watching LeBron lose to the Warriors with Durant, most of us knew he played well, but the Warriors were too good (after all, isn’t that why some of us hated the Durant signing in the first place?). However, some of you children were trying to argue that LeBron still sucks for losing that 2017 NBA Finals and that somehow other guys like Jordan would’ve found a way. That’s nonsense. When he won, he had help from Phil Jackson, Grant, Pippen, and many others. He also didn’t face a team as good as this Warriors team. No one is taking away from how great he is, but let’s not fall victim to revisionist history.
All these players that win have help. Magic and Kareem had each other and Worthy. Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, and Kevin Garnett had each other. Kobe and Shaq played together and were coached by Phil Jackson. Larry Bird was transcendent talent, but those Celtics teams still had Parish, Dennis Johnson, and McHale (who had seasons shooting 60% from the field and 80% from the free throw line, as a big). Irving finally won when he teamed up with Malone. Robinson was great for so long but Duncan came and the two soon won. And Robinson still provided great defensive help to Duncan in Duncan’s vaunted 2003 title run, despite Robinson being a shell of himself. The only player that came close to carrying a team on one’s back was Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1994 and 1995 run. He had some good role players but he went on crazy runs. Even still, one could argue whether they would’ve won if MJ was around with his super team, albeit the Rockets matched up well against them.
[the_ad id=”532″]
The effects of Ringz Culture is why Durant is willing to join a team that he was up 3-1 against. He knows that in 20 years, people will just remember him for how many rings he got and forget the circumstances around it. It’s your guys fault. You bash on players that don’t get rings. Now expect LeBron to go to the Rockets now. Don’t be stunned if the Warriors sign Paul George to counter (I hope not lol).
LeBron James is 3-6 in the Finals, having lost to the Warriors again in 2018 NBA Finals. As we saw, despite how well he played the Warriors, you guys will simply look at the finals record and say that he’s lost as many rings as Jordan has won. It’ll be hard for you guys to let him recover from that. The guy losing to the Celtics in the conference finals preserves his record. It allows him to join the Rockets or Sixers and try to win a few rings to catch up to Jordan before he retires. A 6-5 record (even if the last 2 are with him being the 2nd or 3rd option at age 37) is better than some 5-6 or 6-6 record. Because of you guys, it’s better to lose earlier, like in the Final Four, than to lose in the championship. LeBron scored 42 points, 10 rebounds, and 12 assist in game 2 of the conference finals against the Celtics.
Even though his defense hasn’t been good at times and he hasn’t done a good enough job at closing in on open 3 point shooters, in the end LeBron knows that you all won’t remember those specific facts years from now; in fact, some of you (including the younger people) will just go to basketball reference and see that he scored 42 points with 10 rebounds and 12 assists. You’ll see that aside from Love’s and Korver’s help, no one else did anything. As a result, we’ll just say he didn’t have help despite playing well against an excellent Celtics teams. The bottom line is that if he just threw the series against the Celtics, then he would preserve his record at 3-5 instead of 3-6, and you people would forget all about it. All these players and teams will keep embarking on an arms race because that’s the precedent that has been set.
