Postgame Press: Like it or not, hardware makes your legacy

Sports reflect society in many ways. One way that has been pressing on my mind recently is the critical focus on concrete accomplishments. Just as it is in school or work, titles and end results in sports are what define legacies. While a student looks for an ‘A’ or a worker wants a higher-up title, athletes crave championships. In both, people think more of those that have these accomplishments and less of those that do not. This flaw in society as a whole is expressed explicitly in sports.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about superteams. Why do players join up with other superstars, even if they will get less attention, playing time or stats? It is all about getting that ring. LeBron did it, Kevin Durant did it and many other players throughout the years have decided that sacrificing some of their stardom is worth getting a coveted trophy. Are they wrong for doing so? They are just victims of circumstance. LeBron had to chase a ring. Yes, he did. LeBron to this day is still chasing the ghost of Michael Jordan in the minds of many fans, and that is after winning three championships and playing years of absurdly dominant basketball. What would people say if he had no rings to his name? Exactly. Six (of Jordan’s) to three (of LeBron’s) in championships gives James fans something to work with, but six to zero would create too deep of a gap for any LeBron fan to get a Jordan fan’s support. We value them too much. If LeBron performed twice as well as Jordan but came out with one ring, that lonely ring would be what his fans despised, critics attacked and people focused on. People expect hardware as proof of someone’s talent. In fact, Jordan himself says that Kobe Bryant is better than LeBron because: “There’s something about five that beats three. Now he may be better than that, but Kobe won five championships. LeBron won three.” Jordan’s opinion is not shared by the majority of basketball fans at this point (including me), but the logic is clearly a factor in some minds and arguments.

This is not solely present in sports. Our culture looks fondly upon prizes and awards to which we can point. We gaze in awe at the CEO and shrug off secretaries. Their intelligence or personalities do not matter. All that we see is the title. An ‘A’ student is seen as having a brighter future than a flunk-out, but I do not even have to name more than Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs to disprove that theory. Do accomplishments give us shortcuts to see a person’s success? Surely. Yet, it is absurd to look past someone’s greatness simply because they do not have a title that shoves their accomplishments in our face. This applies in sports and nearly everywhere else in American society. While I am not saying we should ignore people’s proof of achievements, I believe people deserve a lot more credit than we give them for their successes that do not end up resulting in trophies.