Response to a comment on a recent post:
Here is a further response to the Favre-is-overrated issue. You say he’s overrated because he only won one championship. We all know he won 8, but I’ll respond to your “one win” scenario.
Barry Sanders was one of the greatest running backs ever, if not the greatest. He played on teams that didn’t win anything. As a leader of the team, even by example, does this mean he was overrated? It’s not his fault he was on teams that didn’t win, and he did everything he could to help his teams win. I don’t think that makes him overrated at all. It’s not his fault he wasn’t on better teams.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Barry Bonds’ statistics are legit. He was a leader of the team. Does that make him overrated since the Giants never won anything? Of course not. He did everything he could to help his team win. If he’s on the Yankees, he wins championships. Does this make him a better player?
One thing that has always bothered me is when MVP awards are given to players on winning teams when that is the reason stated. For example, Derrek Lee did not win it a few years ago because the Cubs didn’t win it. Why don’t they have two awards–MVP on a winning team and MVP? Michael Jordan was probably the most valuable player in the league before the Bulls won championships. These sports are not individual sports. What more did they want Derrek Lee to do? He had better stats than the winner. He had a lot of clutch hits. If Lee was on the team that won and the winner was on the Cubs and they both had the same years, Lee would have won. That’s ridiculous. I’m only using Lee as an example, as this happens in other circumstances.