Myth of Champions

For anyone who has spent time reading about sports, or really listening to the supposed experts on color commentary of pre-game panels, or going into the weeds on podcasts or talk radio, there’s a familiar discussion about what it takes to be a champion.

The narrative goes that there are attributes that prevent specific teams or players from ever getting over the hump to win a title, be it a matter of maturity or leadership or not having tough enough defense or not having a suitable offensive weapon or system. These narratives are part of the fabric of sport, to suggest that there’s a type of athlete who can win the big one, who has qualities to separate her or him from those who cannot.

I disagree.

There are those consistent champions. To narrow the lens to a sport where I have a semblance of knowledge, I’ll focus on basketball where Bill Russell and Michael Jordan, to name a couple, were great players who led great teams to championships enough times to unequivocally be acknowledged as deserving, meaningful champions.

Let us take, by contrast, the 2019 Toronto Raptors. The Raptors franchise won its first NBA Championship on the back of Kawhi Leonard, a player with two championships to his name already, who only played that one season up in Canada.

I don’t mean to diminish Leonard or the team he led, each of which are quite good—arguably even great. But the defending champion Golden State Warriors team was all but undeniably better if operating at full capacity. The Raptors besting the Warriors for the title, then, was less a story of grit overcoming talent (like the Detroit Pistons grinding down early editions of the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls), nor even of one undeniable force of a player carrying his team over an opponent that should have overwhelmed them on paper (see LeBron James willing the Cleveland Cavaliers to victory over Golden State). No, Toronto’s title win was less a story of champions who couldn’t be denied than one of a team good enough to be in the title mix who competed against a team with multiple serious injuries to top players—a team that likely as not wouldn’t have made the NBA Finals had injuries afflicted them so severely earlier in their playoff run.

So what makes a champion?

I’m here to suggest that for all of the romanticism around championships, and as much as I’ve been drawn into it myself as a fan from time to time—particularly during my most passionate years of following basketball as a teenager—being a champion doesn’t actually mean anything more than winning specific games at specific times.

I can hear the dissent already that athletes work hard and develop not only talent but team chemistry and a healthy mental attitude to win titles. I don’t actually disagree with any of that. I do, however, put forth that there is a myth of champions analogous to the myth of the American Dream—that winning at the highest level is a meritocracy, independent of where someone starts out, various kinds of privilege or lack thereof, and matters as simultaneously simple and infinitely complex as luck.

Most sports, most years, a champion is crowned. We can make arguments as to the qualities of sustained champions or even contenders, but champions of any given season are ultimately the ones whose talent, timing, and luck align to position them to win the right series of contests, nothing more and nothing less. The rest of the lore—the mythology--are the trappings of storytelling, lending grander narrative and lessons to that which defies such thoughtful, fulsome explanation.