NBA legacies heavily involve championship rings. Anyone who has even briefly dabbled in the GOAT debate between LeBron James and Michael Jordan knows this. Winning a ring is the ultimate goal, and therefore, is the ultimate milestone that basketball fans and media figures use when looking back on the careers of players.
When NBA discourse is centered solely around championships, though, it does a great disservice to the stars that were not able to win one. On Draymond Green's show, Hall-of-Famer Tracy McGrady lauded the obsession with championships when discussing players. He insisted that he had the talent to win a title if his teams had the right pieces around him.
"There's a lot of great people that ain't win no f*cking championships"
— Tracy McGrady explains NBA ring culture to @Money23Green (who can't relate 💍💍💍) pic.twitter.com/YOqlME46eH— The Volume (@TheVolumeSports) January 19, 2022
In his 15-year NBA career, McGrady collected seven All-Star nominations, seven All-NBA team selections (including two to the First Team), two consecutive scoring titles and a Most Improved Player Award. During his prime, he was debatably better than Kobe Bryant. The Black Mamba legitimized the debate when he said that McGrady was the toughest player he ever guarded.
Yet, McGrady amounted to very little playoff success in his career, never even making it past the first round. His best days came with the Orlando Magic, where the only high-level costar he had was an injury-riddled Grant Hill. Then he teamed up with Yao Ming on the Houston Rockets, but both of them dealt with injuries that limited the team's ceiling. It was never a matter of talent when it came to McGrady's inability to win a ring. Those who played agianst him back that up.
McGrady touts two other legends, Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley, to make his point that rings shouldn't be the end-all, be-all accomplishment to judge NBA careers on. There are tons of other stars — Allen Iverson, Chris Paul, James Harden, Elgin Baylor — whose accolades don't include a championship ring.
Championships are, of course, the ultimate goal. But they are not the only measure for success that individual players should be held to. Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd aluded to this when discussing Luka Doncic, explaining that even the best superstars can't do it alone.
In a team sport with so many moving parts, winning championships are very tough to do. McGrady's take may come off as whiny but he does make a sound point that it takes more than one star to make a championship team.
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