Which Rings Are Better: Championship or Olympic?

If you grew up playing basketball, your imaginary games always end the same way: You do a killer crossover and shoot a three at the buzzer, with your team down two points in Game Seven of the NBA Finals.

As the shot swishes through the net, you put your hands up in the air in celebration as you imagine David Stern handing you the Larry O'Brien trophy. There is no higher honor in basketball than the NBA Championship. Or is there?

When people mention stars like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, they mention their rings and MVP trophies. Their gold medals are mentioned as an honor, but not as an achievement.

Teams are described as World Champions when they win an NBA Championship, yet they do not have to beat a single international opponent. It seems a litte oxymoronic, that the team called a world champion only plays at a national level.

Two decades ago, this would not matter because there was no higher level of play than the NBA. This may not be true for long.

Basketball has grown immensely over the last 50 years. What was once considered an American sport is now arguably the second-most popular sport in the world behind futbol.

Unlike soccer though, basketball is not used to the worldwide popularity. It is still experiencing growing pains, including the current crop of mid-level American players leaving to play in Europe.

While this is a new concept to American sports fans, soccer fans know all about players leaving their native country to play somewhere else. If basketball wants to adapt to an international level of play, it should use soccer as an example.

For soccer players, the ultimate achievement possible in soccer is winning the World Cup. League Championships are nice, but nothing beats the feeling of holding that trophy while the entire world watches. They have just proven that they are the best in the world. They have won for their country. This is how the Gold Medal in basketball should be treated.

While basketball has its own World Cup, known as the FIBA World Championship, it is nowhere near as popular as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics. Until the FIBA World Championship increase in popularity and prestige, basketball must treat the Olympics like the pinnacle of basketball competition.

Unlike a League Championship, a player would only get a chance to win a medal every four years. That means a player may only get three or four chances to reach the medal stand in their entire career. They may get as many as 20 chances to win an NBA championship.

Making matters more difficult for the player is the fact that you have to be one of the best two or three players at your position in the country just to make the squad. For NBA champions, even the 12th man, who played a combined total of 12 minutes all season, gets a ring.

Sometimes its all about being on the right team at the right time to win a title. In order to make the USA squad, it requires an intense amount of skill. With all these factors, it makes a gold medal much harder to win—to the average basketball player—than a ring. Case in point: Mark Madsen and Devean George have NBA Championship rings but no Olympic medals. Reggie Miller and John Stockton have Gold Medals but no rings.

If the Gold Medal is more prestigious, then why is it not made into a big deal? The answer has a variety of factors.

Before 1992, NBA players were not allowed to play for Team USA. Therefore, the Gold Medal was a college players' acheivement. Oddly enough, before allowing NBA players to play, the Gold medal had a bit more prestige because it was harder to win.

In 1992, FIBA turned the medals into professional acheivements, albeit not ones hard to win for Americans. We all know that the '92 and '96 squad destroyed their competition. Because of this, we thought little of the Gold Medal because it was so easy to win for them.

So, once again, American players turned their attention to the NBA Finals and payed little attention to international play. Fortunately, international players improved their game rather than get discouraged by the beatings the USA handed out.

In the summer of 2000, the world received a glimmer of hope when Lithuania came within a three pointer of ending the American dynasty. That year would be the last time the USA would be on top of the basketball world.

The losses that followed were just the kick in the pants Americans needed to realize that the Gold Medal was no longer guaranteed. The rest of the world was gonna fight for it, too.

This summer, the Redeem Team proved that the world is not quite yet on our level, but Spain proved that they're pretty close. When the world catches up, then we as Americans have to recognize that their is no higher honor in basketball than an Olympic Gold Medal.

If Basketball ever reaches the worldwide popularity of soccer, then maybe 20 years from now, every child playing basketball will have this dream: You do a killer crossover and shoot a three at the buzzer, with your country down two points in the Gold Medal game of the Olympics.

As the shot swishes through the net, you put your hands up in the air in celebration as you imagine them placing the Gold Medal around your neck while the National Anthem plays and your flag is raised to the rafters.

There is no higher honor in basketball than the Olympic Gold Medal.