NBA fans have gotten used to believing that championship rings give you more or less pedigree or more or less recognition. The number of trophies a player won during his career is often taken as the absolutely true and the biggest factor to decide who had a better career.
Robert Horry, however, a player who won seven titles during his 16 seasons in the league, has stated those chips don’t mean literal greatness.
Horry spoke during the California Strong charity softball game on Sunday:
“All these other idiots who don’t play basketball and never played basketball, when they say you wanna judge a guy’s greatness by number of championships … they’re idiots,” Horry told TMZ Sports.
While championships should have some weight in the conversation, he argued it shouldn’t disqualify players that fell short of that achievement.
“Here’s the thing that people are so stupid about. They measure great players by how many championships they win. It’s the stupidest thing,” he said.
Several factors might or might not lead a team to win the Larry O’Brien, and a lot of players have been forced to retire without winning a trophy.
Still, Horry, who’s won titles with the Houston Rockets (1994, 1995), Los Angeles Lakers (2000-02), and the San Antonio Spurs (2005, 2007), ensured to drop some names to make his case.
“That’s like saying Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing are not great players.”
He’s got a point here, as there are plenty of factors that can take a team to win the championship. It’s not like Horry will suddenly be considered a better player than Michael Jordan because he won 7 titles, one more than his Airness. That’s just crazy.
