Championships are the pinnacle achievement in any sport. With team sports, it becomes more challenging to rate the importance of a championship in the career of a single player.

Many fans of Michael Jordan will point to championships when comparisons with younger players are mentioned. Of course, if taken as an absolute measure, that argument must defer to Bill Russell. In fact, it also puts several of Russell’s teammates ahead of Jordan as well, and even old school Celtic fans would not place Sam or K.C. Jones at that level.

To apply a point value to championships for the purpose of calculating total accomplishments, I needed a balancing factor to account for the other talent on the team. So I use a calculation that adjusts the points awarded for each championship according to the number of All NBA or All-Star teammates a player had that year.

For example, the 1963 Celtics had 3 All-Stars in Russell, Bob Cousy, and Tom Heinson, with Russel also winning the MVP that year. So Sam and K.C. had the MVP plus 2 All NBA 2nd teamers as mates, but Russel only had the other 2 award winners to help him.

To account for that, I allot a starting value for a championship, and subtract points for each All-Star teammate. I created 2 separate levels of teammates, with a top level for “MVP or All NBA 1st team”, and a second level for “Other All-Star or All NBA teammates”.

(Although Heinson and K.C. Jones are not included in the player list on this site, I still count Heinson’s All-Star appearance when evaluating the value of that championship for Cousy and Russel.)

For my default values, I’ve assigned 5 points for each championship, less 2 points for the top level teammates, and 1 point for the other All-Star teammates. For Russell in 1963, I would subtract 1 point each for Cousy and Heinson from 5, and award 3 points for that championship. Cousy gets 2 points, since I would subtract 2 for the MVP teammate and one more for the other All-Star. And Jones gets 1 point, after subtracting 2, 1, and 1 from 5.

In Jordan’s case, there was one championship year (1991) where Scottie Pippen did not make the All-Star or All NBA teams (only the All Defensive 2nd team, which I’m not adjusting for), so he gets the full 5 points for that one.