What defines greatness?

With the race for the men's basketball Ivy League championship in full gallop, I started thinking about the importance of a championship.

Obviously, it's a monumental team accomplishment, but what does it mean for how players are viewed, especially professionals? Some argue it's all that matters: If a player doesn't win a championship, he can't be great. Others say it's not the key to a player being great: A player can still be great even if his teammates are terrible.

As with all arguments, it's somewhere in between, but I have to lean closer to the first answer. A few rare players can be great without a championship, but you'd better be ready for a long fight if you think a player who hasn't won a championship is great.

First off, let's be sure we know what "great" means. If you feel the urge to say that there are "tons" of great players who fit any category, you're wrong, because there can't be tons of great players. By definition, there are few. I won't give it a number, but if he's not the best player on his team, odds are he's not great. If he's not the best player at his position in his league for several years, he's also not great. There are a few exceptions (Shaq and Kobe for the first, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain for the second), but not enough to toss out these guidelines like an NHL collective bargaining offer.

Okay, back to championships. Inevitably, when people talk about sports, clichés get thrown around like a hubcap on Tonya Harding's trailer. A player has to "make his teammates better" to be great. I'm as sick of clichés as anybody, but they become clichés for a reason — they're usually right.

The clearest sign of a player making those around him better is winning championships. But even that has still been overblown. Players who are not great get that moniker because they were on championship teams, even if they themselves did not make others significantly better. Scottie Pippen is technically one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players, but that's only because the list came out in the midst of the Bulls' championships. James Worthy is in the Hall of Fame because of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (While we're on that, being in the Hall of Fame does not ensure greatness. The Baseball Hall of Fame is full of nobodies from before the Spanish-American War.)

While neither Pippen nor Worthy is worthy of "great," (if the word is given its proper definition), what's the test of greatness for those rare players who are great but don't win championships?

They come around once a sports generation (about 10-15 years), and everyone uses the same example. The exceptions prove the rule. There are so few players who haven't won a championship and are great (and they are extraordinarily great) that it proves championships are nearly vital to make a player great. Name someone other than Dan Marino or John Stockton and Karl Malone.

You can argue that Marino was a great player, but you often have to add the dreaded word "statistically" at the end. I don't want to blame Don Shula for anything, but the complete reliance on Marino's arm for the last 10 years of his career left the Dolphins without a chance to win a ring. Karim Abdul-Jabbar is not nearly the dominating threat in the backfield that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was in the frontcourt.

Some say that Stockton and Malone can't be faulted for having to play in the Jordan era (and you can add Charles Barkley to that list if you must). But they had a two-year window, and they didn't win it.

But I prefer not to deal in what-ifs. What if Jordan hadn't been around? He was gone for two years, and Hakeem Olajuwon proved he was great — no one doubts it. What if Jerry West hadn't won a championship — would he still be great? Uh, he did win a championship. You can't separate the two. That's like asking "If he hadn't been great, would he have been great?"

Parity

Parity in a league is the best way to determine greatness. When Jordan was in his prime and playing, the NBA had no one that could really challenge the Bulls for preeminence. A league like today's NFL, in which anyone can beat anyone, is excitingly equal sometimes, and agonizingly lacking in dominance the rest of the time. That's the place to look for one player to earn "greatness" because he has to beat teams with equal talent to win championships.

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Winning a championship isn't the only criterion to being great, but if you're on the line and have lifted your teammates to championship, you're great.