There is only one man who can answer these pondering’s, that being “Big Shot Bob,” otherwise known as Robert Horry, who made a living with the Rockets, Lakers, and Spurs, en route to seven rings by nailing the clutch shot.

Why does this matter? He was never a star, but he has rings galore bronzed on his swish- svelte fingers. 

In today’s NBA we judge  all-time greats by how many rings they’ve won and whether or not they led their teams to title town. But is this a fair assessment, considering a life-long bench guy like Horry can be carried to seven?

Never was Horry the franchise guy. In fact, as great as he seemed in closing minutes, Robert Horry never became the player we expected him to be after his timely three point shooting for Houston’s 2nd title run.

Horry’s brief stint in Phoenix after a trade in 1996, proved he was not endowed with a star motor. A hot tempered, dramatic and aloof head case, Bob languished averaging 6.9 points at a career low shooting clip: 41.8%. A trade by mid-season to the L.A. Lakers–a team filled with Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Elden Campbell, and Cedric Ceballos changed the trajectory of his failing career.

So why then is Bob a champion? Why not franchise guys like Barkley, Malone, Stockton, Dominique, Ewing, or Reggie Miller?

Each of those listed above were worthy of winning gold, were they not? All of them were respective franchise pieces with the heart, skills, and late game heroics to hold the O’Brien.

The answer to their problems was Michael Jordan’s Bulls: a team of role guys surrounding the king of the sport with that IT factor needed to win it all. Something today’s critics use to gauge greatness and rank the all time elites.

So what is the issue then with the tautness of this old-time equation? Why not turn a blind eye and allow this to be the answer to everything?

Simply because it just does not add up. It does not offer enough answers. If Big Shot Bob has seven, or the likes of Jack Haley–former twelfth man for Jordan’s final three peat has three, the equation’s a bit off. We need something else, a new perspective when thinking of the greats and why and how they never hung the O’Brien.

And I believe individual luck IS the partly the answer, luck, a maddening machine random like the California Lottery. Historians prefer the term historical happenings–a notion that choices are made for no other reason except that they were made, and the dominoes re-arrange the cosmos of a world more closely inter-connected than we might wish it to be (think guy who smells like farts at the movies, or the swine flu victim winding a cough onto the back nape of the neck.)

Luck.

To think Michael Jordan fell to number three in the 1984 draft could be easily overlooked for a variety of reasons: Sam Bowie, the number two pick before MJ, was a  college superstar and a big man compared at the time to the greats. The Blazers already had a gifted wingman in Clyde Drexler andat the time the league was built around bigs: Kareem, Sampson and Olajuwan, Robert Parish, Patrick Ewing, and Moses Malone.

But that doesn’t make things less ludicrous.  Look at how the draft shaped the NBA forever. MJ goes to an ordinary Bulls team built in perhaps the greatest city in America, where he wins ROY, ultimately five MVP’s, slam dunk contests, becomes the games biggest mogul, and wins six titles. Alongside Oprah, MJ is easily the greatest name in Chicago history and can be attributed for an economical explosion that saved the lower West side of the city once run with crime: drug abuse, gang wars, and prostitution.

Bowie, in the annals of the NBA, is known as ‘the bust.’ He never won a thing in the pros: no all star games, no shoe deals, thus injuring the once bright ideal the Blazers had in trading their franchise Center Bill Walton to Boston.

This, my friends, is the Sam Bowie, a supernatural element that cannot be ignored.

Luck.

Yet like so many children born into inner city poverty without the tools necessary to change their lives, we cannot judge the stars through the a similar bias, because not all players are born lucky into a posh franchise. The gift of playing in Los Angeles or Boston does not come to everyone. Not every player is born into a showtime era, a team so deep they make the ocean look like a kids pool.

For some, seeking a new home is like divorcing an abusive wife. In order for Mitch Richmond to adorn gold, the talented and true shooting guard had to eventually break ties in the perils of Sacramento. Karl Malone found it necessary to join with Kobe and Shaq in 04′ after a long tenure in Utah. And even the humble Clyde Drexlerleft a hell of a situation in Portland to win it Houston. All three of which were great with or without (Sing it Bono) a championship.

The reality of the situation is heart breaking for most. We as childish dreamers wish our favorite player could be greater than the others, but this is not real. Embracing a pragmatic approach to the sport tied less to your heart strings will allow you to see greatness wrapped in many different packages. 

Reality 1: Great players DO NOT win championships, great TEAMS win championships. The 2004 Detroit Pistons are a perfect example of this. A team of role guys without a future hall of famer, the Pistons had the momentary IT. Call it faith, hard work, purity, and any other beautiful thing you want, but to explain why they won a title over an L.A. Laker team stocked with four future hall of famers would be absurd.

Reality 2: Like the stars in the sky, NBA STARS need other STARS. Think for a moment about the teams who’ve won championships the last thirty years. All of them have one thing in common: team depth and stars surrounding stars. Magic had Kareem and Worthy; Bird–Mchale and Parish; Dr.J–Moses Malone; Isaiah–Dumars and Rodman; MJ–Pippen; Hakeem–Clyde; Shaq–Kobe and Wade; Duncan–Robinson, Parker, and Ginobili; Pierce–KG and Allen.

Reality 3:  Winning titles does mean a lot, but it does not mean everything for a myriad of reasons. If the 1919 Chicago Blacksox or dirty referees like Tim Donaghy can throw World Series and playoff games, then how serious can we take this thing? Not very. Take everything with a grain of salt and learn other decided facets when it comes to judging all-time greats: MVP’s, All Star appearances, Career Totals, Game Winners, Ability to close, Athleticism, Re-defining the sport, dominance-ometer, and sociological affects.

LeBron James is not a sell out because the guy wants to win, he’s a realist. A star unselfish enough to admit that NO star including himself, can win a title completely on his own.

LeBron is stuck in the the Bill Clinton Vacuum. Though he does great things, he is brushed aside because of one unlikeable decision.

But greatness is not a grade school quiz on being friendly, it is brutal giftedness. And likeability is not the twin brother to being great.

LeBron made a  decision to better his career andhis life. Leading a Cleveland Cavs team the last seven years, that never boasted anybody better than a has-been version of Antawn Jamison warrants James departure.  No it does not warrant the overdone TV cinematic’s regarding “the decision,” nor the Pat Riley blowout introduction party in South Beach. Yet neither should it foster the illogical hysteria across America attempting to deny the man’s sheer dominance and greatness.

This isn’t patty cake kids. We are talking about a production entertainment, where all titles are but a decorative decor. They might help the woman look fine, but if that woman is not fine without the jewelry or the tight fitting jeans, I say run, run as fast as you can.

Drop by the nearest bar and have a scotch on me. Look through the world with freshness and at what is truly great (it is not the girl next to you.). It is the scraggly bartender able to whip up drinks faster than the average Joe.

She is simple: bran cereal, TV, nap, sandwich, nap, garden gallivant, piss off grandpa, sleep.

Her life reminds me of a famous ecclesiastical quote, “Vanity!Vanity! Everything is chasing after the wind.” You see, my Nana’s cotton candy face froze like ice with an eternal half-cracked smirk, is the emblem of what it means to live a long and happy life. In 2001, my aunt took her then peppy seventy-four year old body on a three week excursion into the motherland–France.

Seeing the land of her heritage completed my Nana’s short bucket list. À bientôt. Her life is now one gossip mag after another, a bag of low-fat Orville Redenbacher popcorn, and a fizzy off-brand diet coke.

Last she joked of sexual intimacy, it was followed with such a far and away sense of self, that she spoke of it in third person and in the past-tense.  Life is a game of remembering–finding the story within the story–laughing at the detail she missed oh so long ago.

Like a story about my grandfather, her first husband. We sat at the Madonna Inn in 2005, re-establishing a familiar tradition of hot cocoa.  It was there my Nana’s world turned to momentary magic, as then alive owner, Alex Madonna, greeted us with his icy cool lingua. Before you knew it, a quick hello turned into a fifteen minute conversation. Upon arrival, my Nana asked Mr. Madonna whether he remembered talking business with Walter Lerette. His face lit like birthday candles. “Why yes, of course I remember Walt.” Seeing her partly foggy eyes turn crystal clear for a half-hour or so could turn any pessimistic thinker into a Jesus believing optimist.

The story line? Find the details. Pay attention to the best supporting, supporting actresses. Step back a bit. Take life less serious. View all things like a layered Picasso painting: disjointed till proven otherwise. When stepping back, find the hidden brushstroke between the larger ones. Pause. Document. Revel wildly.

My new game is called name-that-animal. It came to fruition on my twenty-fifth birthday, when I decided it was best to have personal, moral, and worldly responsibilities. Perhaps more focus on starvation in Africa, or the poor educational institutions in the under-funded inner city should take precedence over ultimately, meaningless sporting events.

Which is why comedy is the way in which I watch sports now.

For instance, Michael Jordan is no longer the king of the world–but a prostitute and money is his pimp. Bret Favre is no longer an award winning good-ol’-boy, but an artistic genital exhibitionist.

I think David Stern and Kobe Bryant have been having a gay affair since the split from Michael in 2001. On the other hand, Dennis Rodman is not a crazed lunatic, but a traveling art convention, and a man who Lady GaGa robbed.

Through this abnormal lens,  a new normal is founded: folly. Yes, folly. The grandfather to stupidity. Everything is dumb.  The sporting apocalypse has come through an NBA of montage- twas. Excitement, done. Donzo. Buh Bye.

The game is simple, and makes your world far more fun. Watch any sporting event with me, myself and I, and one up each other comparing each athlete to their animal relative. I thought of selling this game to Mattel, but since I am full of folly, free became the new price tag.

Kurt Rambis is….(give it your best shot)

If a fraggle rock made passionate love to the literary character Waldo, a new breed would be born: a fragaldo. Kurt Rambis is the genetic mutation of such a beast as this.

Most of us ogle over former Laker great, Magic Johnson. But what about the mid-90’s Laker point guard Sedale Threatt?

Threatt had that sloping back neck with a beautifully round and bald scalp. He is clearly a Desert Sand Boa.

A teammate of Threatt’s, and part of a dangerous duo with Shaq in the nineties, Elden Campbell was better known for this animal.

A giraffe. Yep, the long and thin Campbell with those drooping eyes, and a slothful looking face, ambles like a giraffe.

Kobe Bryant may be better known as the black mamba, but homie resembles something way different than that, with his thin face, and extended lower jaw when he gets angry and pouty…

If he baptized D-How, it was with the claws on his wings. Kobe looks just like a carniverous Pterodactyl.

It seems the older I get, the more disappointed I become with humanity. I assumed that every person had a revelation as I did on their twenty-fifth birthdays about life and the importance of worldly things. Boy was I wrong. Does my revelation regarding the ultimate meaningless nature of sports make me a fair weather fan? Maybe, if it means I don’t cry or breakdown when my beloved Angels fall. I oblige all of you to take it easy. Chill on the n0-care pill when it comes to sports, and play a round of name-that-animal. Laugh a little more about things. Brush your shoulders off. Purposely sit in-between a crowd of immature Laker fans and root for the opposite team all night. Promise, by night-end, you will be chuckling with a real kind of story to go to the grave with.