Are Championships Overrated?

Yesterday, I was scrolling through the panelists who voted on the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, and stumbled upon a list made by Larry Berger of USA Today. Berger had a few semi-controversial opinions, putting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ahead of LeBron James, Allen Iverson over Stephen Curry, and Ray Allen a spot above Dwyane Wade. The second half of Berger’s NBA 75 list was very agreeable, and I was ready to say that of the 15 panelists, his rankings were the best that I had seen. Until I saw the player he ranked 75th.

Those are the career stats of Robert Horry, the player who Larry Berger ranked 75th on his all-time list. I tried to identify a decent statistical comparison for Horry, and here’s what I found.

Yes. Nicolas Batum. Batum isn’t even a top-75 player in the league today, and might not even crack top-75 in his own conference. For context, peak Nicolas Batum’s most accurate comparison to a player last season is Scottie Barnes, who averaged 15.3 PPG, 6.6 RPG, and 4.8 APG on 46/28/77 shooting splits.

If you don’t know about Horry, he is considered to be a legend amongst role-players. Throughout his career, he hit several important buzzer-beaters, and always seemed to come through in the clutch, earning him the nickname “Big Shot Bob.” Horry made so many big shots in his career that nba.com created the “Horry Scale” that rates game winning and buzzer-beating shots on a scale of one to five. With all this in mind, you may still be wondering: how did this guy even warrant consideration as a top-75 player ever? Well, above all of his attributes as a player, Horry is a 7-time champion—a feat achieved by few players ever.

Discounting players who won the majority of their championships with the Celtics during their dynasty in the ‘60s, Horry has the most rings of all-time.

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It’s clear to any normal fan that Berger put Horry on his list solely because of the number of championships that he won, because a Nicolas Batum would stand no chance at making any list involving success. But I could give you hundreds of players that have better stats than Horry and didn’t land a spot on Berger’s list. Dwight Howard. James Harden. Tracy McGrady. Klay Thompson. In fact, Tom Heinsohn, who won eight championships with Boston and averaged 18.6 PPG, 8.8 RPG, and 2.0 APG for his career, did not make Berger’s list. Horry fans would argue that their guy showed he could win on several different teams (twice with Houston, three times with LA, and twice with San Antonio. But Danny Green won three championships with San Antonio is 2014, Toronto in 2019, and LA in 2020 with better shooting averages than Horry, and would never be considered an all-time great.

Ultimately, my argument is that Horry doesn’t deserve to sniff the top-75 list. His legacy is overrated, leaving me wondering: do we overrate championships when calculating a player’s legacy?

Imagine if Scottie Pippen hadn’t teamed up with Michael Jordan, and, instead, Clyde Drexler, Jordan, and Dennis Rodman were the Bulls’ trio. The Bulls would have certainly won six championships, and Pippen might have been ringless. Drexler was a more talented player than Pippen anyway, and consistently put up better numbers. However, sometimes in the NBA, it’s all about the luck of the draw, and Pippen was lucky to play with the greatest player of all time. Yes, Drexler was probably the better player, but Pippen finished 21 slots ahead of him on the 75th Anniversary list—all because he was drafted to a team with the future G.O.A.T.

Kobe Bryant was drafted to team that had won 53 games in the season prior to his first. Not only that, but Bryant was coming to a Lakers team that had just acquired Shaquille O’Neal, and ended up winning three championships (2000, 2001, 2002) playing second fiddle to O’Neal. As a side note, Horry was on those teams too. Bryant won two more championships in 2009 and 2010 playing alongside Pau Gasol. The 76ers went 18-64 the year before they drafted Allen Iverson. The best players that Iverson ever had with him in Philadelphia were Jerry Stackhouse and Chris Webber for a couple of years. Both barely cracked 20 PPG. I guarantee that if Bryant and Iverson switched roles, Iverson would be considered a far superior player because he would have won 4-5 rings, while Bryant could’ve won 1-2 at the most. However, Bryant was given the perfect situation when he entered the league, so he finds himself at 10th on the NBA 75 list, while Iverson is 31st.

Damian Lillard vs Stephen Curry is the best recent example. The Trail Blazers front office has failed Lillard in every place but the negotiating room, and the Warriors built the best half-court offense in NBA history, signed Kevin Durant, who brought two rings to the Bay area, and never traded away Klay Thompson or Draymond Green—Curry’s co-stars. The same can’t be said about C.J. McCollum and LaMarcus Aldridge who the Blazers dealt, leaving Lillard to win with the remaining scraps. If Lillard was drafted to the Warriors, and Curry to the Blazers, I’d bet a lot of money on Lillard being the higher regarded player at the end of their careers. Instead, Curry is considered a top-15 player of all-time, while Lillard ranked 75th of all players on the NBA-75 list.

Thus, picture Robert Horry being drafted to a team without a 55-27 record and Hakeem Olajuwon. He’s just your average backup shooting guard. No one learns about his clutch ability because he’s not playing for playoff teams, and he doesn’t get passed around from contender to contender throughout his career. If this was the case, not many of us would know the name Robert Horry. But everything seemed to fall Horry’s way as it did for Pippen, Bryant, Curry, and many others throughout their careers. Much of their legacies come from championships, and much of their legacies come from luck. Using the transitive property, this means that a lot of winning championships comes down to luck for the player, which is why I think championships should be weighed less than they are in professional basketball.