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Ultimately, when legends in any team sport are judged on how great a career they had and where they rank among the all-time greats of their sport, the deciding factor is how many championships they won.
Individual stats and accomplishments are great, but as former NFL head coach Herm Edwards once said, “You play to win the game,” and championships tend to validate a player’s individual greatness.
Carmelo Anthony was one of the NBA‘s greatest scorers of the 2000s and early 2010s, and while he will undoubtedly be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, he never won an NBA championship or even reached the NBA Finals.
In a recent interview, he criticized what he called “ring culture” and argued that players who never won a ring should still get the same kind of credit that players who won multiple rings receive, per Legion Hoops.
Carmelo Anthony on the toxicity of ‘ring culture’:
“So because we didn’t win the NBA Championship, we shouldn’t get the credit? Like we should just be dismissed on everything?”
(via @ZionOlojede, https://t.co/oPkIxqIXms) pic.twitter.com/RgvAnaey3m
— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) November 8, 2023
When a player reaches the NBA Finals multiple times but loses there more often than not, it tends to hurt his legacy, at least in the eyes of some.
Wilt Chamberlain, for instance, put up the greatest individual stats of any player ever, but he won only two world titles and lost four times in the championship series.
In addition, he lost a few other Game 7s in the Eastern Conference Finals to Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics in years where the East Finals may have been the de-facto NBA Finals.
The thing that should work in Anthony’s favor is that, with the possible exception of the 2009 Denver Nuggets, he never really played on a team that was capable of winning it all.
Thus, he may be an exception to “ring culture.”
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