Basketball is a topic of conversation that never really ends. Who is the best player in NBA history? LeBron or Jordan? Kareem or Russell? It is discussed with an intensity that seems almost out of proportion to the topic in sports bars, barbershops, and comment sections, but there is something genuinely fascinating hidden within the debate.
Eleven titles were won by Bill Russell. Eleven, with the Boston Celtics for thirteen seasons. In 1957, during his rookie season, he won his first ring, and he simply continued. For comparison, Michael Jordan, who is regarded by many as the greatest player of all time, won six.
Russell averaged 24.9 rebounds per game in the playoffs, won almost twice as many games, and accomplished all of this during a time when the Celtics were a completely different kind of machine than anything that professional basketball has produced since. It’s possible that until you sit with those numbers for a while, their sheer weight doesn’t fully sink in. Eleven titles. Just one participant.
The Russell story is peculiar because of how subtly it is ingrained in the sport’s larger cultural memory. Jordan won the sneaker empire, the films, and the documentaries. No player, either before or after, has been able to match Russell’s winning rate. Sam Jones, who shared the majority of those victories with Russell, ended his career with ten titles. They are both members of the former Boston Garden teams that considered winning to be a yearly ritual.
Each of Jordan’s six victories had its own narrative significance and occurred in a different time period and against different opponents. No other player in history has won six Finals MVP awards. Alongside him, Scottie Pippen won all six, creating a legacy that is frequently overlooked due to Jordan’s long shadow. In contrast, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar distributed his six rings over nearly 20 years with two teams, Milwaukee and Los Angeles, which has its own quiet durability.
Observing how the discourse on success has changed in recent years, it seems that rings by themselves are no longer sufficient to resolve disputes. LeBron James is one of the few players to win titles with three different teams, having won four titles with Miami, Cleveland, and Los Angeles. The dynasty those Warriors teams created between 2015 and 2022 feels like it belongs in a different chapter of the history of the sport than anything that came before it. Stephen Curry has four with Golden State.
Then there is 21-year-old Victor Wembanyama, who stands 7’4″ tall and does things that even seasoned scouts find difficult to explain. He averaged 25.8 points, 12.6 rebounds, and 3.7 blocks per game during the previous season in San Antonio.
The NBA’s record holder of 3,830 career blocked shots, Hakeem Olajuwon, publicly stated that Wembanyama is the only player he thinks can surpass it. Olajuwon’s statement is not insignificant. Wembanyama said he wanted to improve his balance, shaved his head to blend in, and trained for ten days with monks at a Shaolin temple in the Henan province of China during the offseason prior to this season. It sounds strange. It was effective as well.
It has never been easy to define success in this league. Russell’s rings were produced during a time when there were fewer teams and distinct conditions for conditioning and travel. Jordan’s victories occurred during what many believe to be the league’s most competitive time. Curry’s titles arrived in a system that was so cleverly created that it is still being imitated. Even though Wembanyama hasn’t yet won anything, the hardest-to-impress people in the sport are already at a loss for words.
His ceiling is still unknown. However, part of what makes the NBA’s continuous debate over greatness worthwhile is that uncertainty.
