Just for a moment, let’s humor John Starks and give him the chance to play for a contender.
Forget those pesky rules that say you can’t move to another team after March 1 and still participate in the NBA playoffs. Let’s assume Starks is worthy of a grand sendoff, of one final victory tour for all he has meant to mankind (I’m specifically thinking of his work in the field of molecular biology). Let’s pay all his moving expenses and give him the chance to taste the type of success he’ll never get a sniff of with the Bulls. Let’s put him in Los Angeles and get him that championship ring he wants so badly.
Yo, John: It’s not a legitimate ring unless it comes after months and months of blood, sweat and being bored to tears by Phil Jackson’s spiritual sermons. It’s not a legitimate ring if you can’t name more than five streets in your new town. It’s not a legitimate ring if you can’t name more than five teammates on your new team.
If you get that ring, John, it will barely count.
There is something very basic about this, and it goes right to the heart of what sports are or what they should be. Playing 12 weeks with a contender and then collecting the hardware is like collecting reward money for lending your phone to the person who turns in the fugitive.
Playing three months with the Lakers would be only a little better than being a hanger-on. There’s Shaq’s bodyguard, there’s the guy who writes down rap lyrics when the Muse strikes Shaq, there’s the guy who holds Shaq’s pager and there will be John Starks.
Not everyone can do it the traditional way, of course. Not everyone can stay a few years with a team and pay dues with teammates before winning a title. But how fulfilling can it be to latch onto someone’s coattails 5 feet from the altar? Does winning a championship suddenly make John Starks a champion? No. Is Starks the guy who gives the Lakers what they have been missing lo these many years? He is if they’ve been missing a guy who has lost a step and doesn’t know it yet.
In essence, Starks is asking everyone to consider the body of his work and treat him like royalty, even if that body of work has a layer of fat around the middle. It has been awhile since Starks was relevant in the NBA, and even when he was, it was as much for being an erratic-shooting irritant as it was for being a talent. Starks has not reached the much-beloved elder-statesman point of his career yet. Is there such a thing as a much-beloved elder brat?
If we take Starks at his word and believe he wants an NBA title in the worst way, let’s at least give him this: He seems to care about winning. Players talk about getting a “ring” as if it’s just another thing to have, something else to acquire, along with the $80 million contract and the mansion. And if they don’t get the ring, well, they’ll still have their Game Boys. You don’t sense that burning desire to win that gave Michael Jordan a force field.
But just because Starks has the fire doesn’t mean it deserves to be quenched.
Starks isn’t alone in his attempted shortcut to a title. Boston Bruins defenseman Ray Bourque was traded last week to the Colorado Avalanche after saying he wanted to play for a contender. If the Avalanche wins the Stanley Cup, Bourque will get to hoist it like the rest of his teammates. That too will barely count because Bourque will not have done much of the heavy lifting.
“They’ve got a world-class goalie, world-class players and I think we will be competing for a Stanley Cup in Colorado,” Bourque said.
What’s this “we” stuff? How can Bourque spend 21 years with the Bruins and the day after he is traded start calling the Avalanche “we”?
Maybe, having been born in Montreal, he meant “oui.”
John Elway earned his rings the old-fashioned way. His career winding to an end, his skills eroding somewhat, he led the Denver Broncos to two straight Super Bowl victories. At some point when life wasn’t so grand, he chose to finish what he started. And if it didn’t work out, that’s the way it would be, he decided.
If instead he had demanded a trade to, say, St. Louis and eventually backed up Kurt Warner, would that have made him a winner? No.
There’s a line between what’s deserved and what isn’t. Elway could see it. Starks needs to see an eye doctor.
