How much credence do you give to championship rings?

Super Bowl Sunday is on the horizon with the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos meeting at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA. Winning this game changes the perception of franchises and players.

Being a member of a championship team can change how a player is perceived and can effect one’s Hall-of-Fame candidacy. Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning owns astronomical numbers but only one Super Bowl ring despite this being his fourth appearance. While Manning will be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, getting another title would elevate him in stature among the all-time greats.

How much credence do you give to the idea of how many championship rings a player has when it comes to evaluating their greatness? Let’s not kid ourselves, they carry some value. If Ken Anderson, Steve McNair or Donovan McNabb quarterbacked one Super Bowl winner, they might be in Canton, Ohio today. If Phil Simms hadn’t gotten injured in 1990, he would have quarterbacked two Super Bowl winning teams, which might have led him to a bust in Canton, Ohio. Simms, who led the New York Giants to a Super Bowl title in 1986, sustained a broken foot and gave way to Jeff Hostetler, who then led the Giants to their second Super Bowl title.

However, championship rings alone do not make a player great. There are many Hall-of-Fame players that never got a championship victory shower: Dan Marino, Dan Fouts, Barry Bonds, Ernie Banks, Karl Malone, John Stockton and Charles Barkley to name a few.

Conversely, there are plenty of middle-of-the-road to bad players that have championship rings. For example, John Paxson has three NBA championship rings and John Stockton has zero but if you think the former is better than the latter because of that alone, you need to be institutionalized.

There are other ways I frame the championship rings evaluation. Joe Montana, Tom Brady and Terry Bradshaw each have four Super Bowl rings. Montana and Brady, however, are Hall-of-Famers on numbers alone. However, there are quarterbacks with fewer or even no rings I would rate ahead of Bradshaw. I don’t think Bradshaw is even the best Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback of all time.

Ben Roethlisberger has led Pittsburgh to two Lombardi trophies since. Sure, both played in different eras and with different rules but I can debunk that argument on two fronts. With Roethlisberger’s toughness, he could have played in any era. Secondly, Roethlisberger had far less talent around him than Bradshaw and had to carry the Steelers to more wins than Bradshaw ever did.

The other ways to layer this argument. Trade places with contemporaries:

Put Joe Montana on the Miami Dolphins and Dan Marino on the 49ers, what happens?

Marino was not surrounded with Hall of Fame talent. Those Dolphin teams were mediocre to bad defensively. On offense, he handed the ball off to guys like Tony Nathan, Woody Bennett, Ron Davenport and Lorenzo Hampton – not Larry Csonka or Mercury Morris. At receiver, he had the Marks Brothers (Duper and Clayton). For a couple years, those guys were dynamite but were just a flash in the fan. Translation, it’s not like Marino was throwing the ball to Paul Warfield.

Montana was blessed with better surrounding talent. Those 49er teams were underrated but great defensively led by Hall of Famers like Ronnie Lott, Fred Dean and Charles Haley. Montana also had Jerry Rice, who is in the Hall of Fame, and Roger Craig, who is a border-line Hall of Fame candidate. However, it would also be foolish to say Montana won only because he had such talent. He led the 49ers to two Super Bowls before Rice arrived and one before Craig arrived.

Put Montana on the Dolphins, he probably makes them better similarly if not more so than Marino but I doubt Miami wins a Super Bowl. Keep in mind, the NFC was the vastly superior conference to the AFC in those years. Put Marino on the 49ers, I think they still crush Miami in 1984 and Denver in 1989 because San Francisco was vastly superior to those teams. San Francisco also had two close Super Bowl wins over Cincinnati (26-21 in 1981; 20-16 in 1988). Would Marino have led the team to wins in those situations? You can’t definitively say yes or no.

Did the player do everything he could to put the team in position to win?

This is an argument I frequently think of with Barkley and Malone. I consider it bigger strike against Malone than Barkley. The former had one appearance in the NBA Finals, the latter had three.

Barkley’s Phoenix Suns reached the Finals in 1993, losing to the Chicago Bulls 4-2. The Suns reached the finals by beating Seattle 4-3 in the Western Conference Finals. In Game 7, the Suns won 123-100 with Barkley scoring 44 points and grabbing 24 rebounds. He also averaged 26.6 points and 13.3 rebounds the entire postseason. Those Suns were also making their first finals appearance. True, they had homecourt advantage but the Bulls were making their third straight finals appearance.

Malone’s Utah Jazz lost to the Bulls in both 1997 and 1998, both 4-2. I give the Jazz a mulligan for 1997. It was their first finals appearance and the Bulls were loaded with finals experience. In 1998, the stars were aligned. The Jazz beat the Bulls twice in the regular season, had homecourt advantage and a year of Finals experience. They also won Game 1 88-85 in overtime. The Jazz lost Game 2 93-88 and led 73-70 entering the fourth quarter. Malone’s finals numbers were good, averaging 25.5 points and 10.5 rebounds but he was awful in the first two games, converting on a combined 14 of 41 field goal attempts.

Malone finished his career with the Los Angeles Lakers, taking a minimum contract in an attempt to get a ring. The Lakers brought in Malone and Gary Payton to join Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. That Lakers team reached the Finals but got boat-raced 4-1 by the Detroit Pistons. That Laker team embodied dysfunction while the Pistons embodied teamwork. Malone did not play the last two games because of a knee injury.

As for evaluating players based on having championship rings, it’s not a one size fits all argument.

Translation, whenever I hear someone say, “(insert random player/coach/team) can’t win the big one.” I say, “Let me know when there’s a little one.”