It's hard to say that a player who already has three championships needed a vindication win, but Kobe is a rare breed.

He won three titles with the Lakers, but he wasn't the top dog there. Shaq took top billing on the team and won all of the Finals MVP awards.

When Kobe finally chased Shaq out of town to be the undisputed star of the team, the Lakers never reached those kind of heights again.

And after Shaq won a title with Dwyane Wade, it made Kobe need his even worse.

After coming up short in 2008 to another vindication win candidate, Kobe finally prevailed for his fourth title this year, and that one was easily the sweetest.

Jordan, like Kobe, already had three NBA titles under his belt when he got his vindication win.

Jordan had been retired for two years and when he came back halfway through the season, the Bulls were demolished in the playoffs. MJ was too competitive to let that stand.

With Jordan leading the way, that Bulls team won 72 games and cruised to a title.

Jordan needed it after taking time away from the game to prove to everyone and himself that he was still the best. And, if you know MJ, nothing was more important.

The only thing harder than being an NFL quarterback is taking over for one of the most successful and beloved quarterbacks in the game.

Steve Young won two Super Bowl rings as Joe Montana's backup, but when Joe left, so did the Super Bowls.

Steve Young was no slouch, by any means, he's a Hall of Famer, but in his first four years as the starter, Young failed to take the Niners to the Super Bowl, which the fans had come to expect, especially with the talent he had around him.

Finally, Young had his moment. In 1994 he won the league MVP and the Super Bowl and finally stepped out of the giant shadow left by Montana and became his own legend.

In 2004, the Yankees had just been to their sixth World Series in eight years.

However, they had lost the last two, so they added arguably the best player in the game: Alex Rodriguez. A bevy of World Series victories was bound to follow.

Nope, the player who became known as A-Fraud would shrink in the clutch and come up small in big moments. With him on the team, the Yankees never even made it back to the World Series until this year.

Finally, A-Rod had a decent playoffs, had some big moments, and won the one thing needed for someone who may end up with the best numbers in baseball history: a championship.

The aforementioned validation win candidate in 2008 was Kevin Garnett. For years he has battled Tim Duncan in the Western Conference, putting up similar numbers as a man who many call the greatest power forward of all time. But Duncan had one thing KG clearly lacked, titles.

Duncan had three already and seemed like every other year he picked one up like it was on his grocery list. To someone as hypercompetitive as Garnett, this was torture. This is the same man who wept in an interview with John Thompson because he was losing.

When he got shipped to Boston and paired with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, KG took advantage and led the C's to the title. Nobody was happier than Garnett.

Peyton Manning needed a championship. He was supposed to bring Tennessee to a national title in college, except they won one only the year after he left.

Then with Indy, Manning put up incredible numbers and kept the Colts in the league's elite for years, only he never quite came up big in big games.

Meanwhile, Tom Brady came into the league two years after Manning and became the definition of clutch and a winner.

When they went head to head, Manning never seemed to be able to knock him off. Bill Simmons even went as far to designate the Manning Face as a sure symbol of losing.

So when Manning finally put it all together and got his team to the big game, he took advantage of it. Ever since then, Manning has been on a tear.

He won the MVP last year and has cemented his status as the NFL's deadliest quarterback. You can say he definitely needed that vindication.

Phil Mickelson had become the definition of a lovable loser. One of the most popular players on the Tour, he was still without a major after 14 years of trying, including 17 top-ten finishes.

One of the biggest reasons was Tiger Woods, who had been kind of hogging the wins.

The Masters especially haunted Phil. He had finished in the top-ten there for five years in a row, including three straight third places.

Finally, with an 18-foot putt on the final hole of the 2004 Masters, Phil got that green jacket and just like that, he lost the title of "Best player never to win a major."

John Elway was considered one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, even had a reputation as a clutch quarterback, but was still 0-3 in the Super Bowl.

He was near retirement with a giant blemish on his resume, when the Broncos managed to put a talented team together in his final years.

When Denver knocked off Green Bay in the Super Bowl for his first championship, you could see on Elway's face the relief and joy that completely washed over him.

To everyone else he was already great, but to Elway, he needed that trophy.

You want to talk about loved? Ray Bourque was hockey royalty, but while he was setting defenceman records in Boston, the Bruins only got to the Stanley Cup twice in the 20 years he was on the team and never won it.

They eventually traded him to Colorado for one last chance to win a Cup.

In his first full season with the Avalanche, as well as his last ever, Bourque got his Cup.

It was hard not to get a little choked up watching the man skate around with the trophy he had worked for so long to finally obtain. Nobody needed or deserved one more than Bourque.

This isn't just one player, it's a team. Nobody needed a World Series worse than the Red Sox. Their last title had been 86 years ago and they had suffered some stomach-wrenching defeats in that time.

After losing to the Yankees in the 11th inning in Game 7 in 2003, the Sox were down 3-0 the next year, looking like they would come up short once again. But then Dave Roberts stole second, Big Papi came up big, Schilling pitched on a bloody foot and everything turned around.

When they finally swept the Cardinals in the World Series the entire organization, nay, the entire city had a weight let off its shoulders the size of Kirstie Alley.

That win, that vindication, was 86 years in the making. It's hard to top that.