Weekly Countdown: Tough to crack this group of championship players

Larry Bird won three NBA titles in his first seven seasons with the Celtics. Manny Millan/SI Ian Thomsen's Mailbag Ian Thomsen will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

In honor of the extended holiday, here is an extended look at the simplest way I know to gauge NBA championship potential. Search the roster of any team for an MVP-level talent with the leadership and drive of Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas, Hakeem Olajuwon or (to cite the newest example) Kevin Garnett. Well more than half of the NBA teams are absent this kind of star, which means you can essentially write them off as championship contenders (unless they are the Detroit Pistons of a few years ago, as you'll see below). Here's a look at who makes the biggest difference in the biggest games -- and who may be next to join them.

5 Dominant players since the Magic/Bird era began

Over the past 29 years, 28 of the championships have been hoarded by nine elite players. All but one have been league MVPs and all are (or will be) in the Hall of Fame. Here is the top of the list ...

5. Larry Bird (three championships). Before Bird arrived with Magic Johnson following their 1979 NCAA championship game, the NBA was a poorly attended league injured by suspicions of widespread recreational drug use and an absence of meaningful star power. The dominant players were centers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone, who neither sought nor received public love; Julius Erving was the game's most popular star, yet he was unable to lead his Philadelphia 76ers to a championship. The NBA Finals were relegated to delayed late-night broadcasts, and there was talk of franchise consolidation that would shrink -- rather than grow -- the league.

Magic and Bird would instantly win eight championships during their first nine years in the league, reclaiming a standard of leadership that gave extraordinary importance to the rings they would win. They were good enough to do whatever pleased them on the court, which means they could have played selfishly and no one could have done anything to stop them. But Bird and Magic were loved because each chose to make the world (i.e. his team, as well as the NBA in general) a better place.

The NBA may have lost its way during the cheerless 1970s, but ever since Magic and Bird came along the best players have been focused on winning as a team (which thereby excluded the selfish talents from consideration among those most important few). This was the principle that drove the ensuing careers of Thomas and Michael Jordan: That their efforts would have amounted to very little unless they won a championship.

"I've always said there are stars and then there are superstars,'' said Bird, now president of the Indiana Pacers. "On every one of them championship teams, there was at least one superstar.''

By that standard, there are very few superstars roaming NBA arenas today. The question is, Where do you draw the cut-off line?

T-3. Shaquille O'Neal (four championships). Shaq is the only player among the nine to win with two franchises. He is also the only major unrestricted free agent to lead his new team (the Lakers) to the championship. He was the dominant force in his sport during that run in L.A., and he remains its most influential personality. You can see both teammates and opponents gravitating Shaq's way during timeouts to laugh at his latest joke, boast or accusation.

Before taking this any further, I fully admit that the biggest flaw in this list of nine champions is its failure to include superstars like Kobe Bryant or Dwyane Wade. Every champion has had starring assistance -- whether it was Paul Pierce and Ray Allen or Scottie Pippen or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy -- but an exception must be noted in the case of Shaq's two teammates.

b. Wade was the leading scorer and the driving force of the Heat's 2006 postseason run. It is more than coincidence that the Heat won two years after acquiring Shaq, as he is one of those special players around whom championship teams are created. But Wade deserves recognition in his own right.

a. Bryant wasn't the leader of those Lakers championship teams -- Shaq was -- but he has since emerged as a league MVP and leader of a team on the verge of winning the championship around him. The larger point of this assessment is to demonstrate that a few players dominate the NBA; Bryant has already proved he is one of those players.

T-3. Tim Duncan (four championships). Duncan may turn out to be the last four-year collegian to prevail over the NBA. He has served as the stoic, introverted opposite to Shaq while they have shared all but two of the last 10 championships.

There is a chicken-or-egg aspect to the successes of these nine winners. In Duncan's case, have the Spurs won four titles because of him? Or did they win because he was paired initially with David Robinson, and later with Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker? In all cases, these players could not have won without the help of complementary stars and other teammates of character (as well as coaches who understood their strengths and weaknesses as players and people). But the larger lesson of the last 30 years -- and of previous eras as well -- is that pro basketball operates to a different dynamic than the other sports.

Relative to football or baseball, there are few players on a small court playing to a free-flowing pace. Peyton Manning is on his field only about half of the time, and Alex Rodriguez receives only four or five or six opportunities to bat. But in the NBA playoffs you can expect LeBron James to play 90 percent of the minutes and to be involved in everything at both ends of the floor. That's why you're unlikely to win an NBA championship unless you have one of these special players who not only produces statistically, but also commands his four teammates to perform at the highest level.

"Let's say it's freaky when it doesn't happen,'' said Orlando Magic senior VP Pat Williams, former GM of the 1982-83 champion 76ers and prolific author of 54 books (the latest, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inside Basketball, is due out in February).

Breakdown Of NBA Championships Player Titles Bill Russell 11 Michael Jordan 6 George Mikan 5 Magic Johnson 5 Tim Duncan 4 Shaquille O'Neal 4 Larry Bird 3 Wilt Chamberlain 2 Willis Reed 2 Dave Cowens 2 Isiah Thomas 2 Hakeem Olajuwon 2 Bob Pettit 1 Bill Walton 1 Moses Malone 1 Kevin Garnett 1

Williams recalls the run of five championships in six years by George Mikan through 1954, and the 11 titles in 13 years swept up by Bill Russell through 1969. Over the 62-year history of the league, a case can be made that 52 of the championships have been hoarded by 16 elite players (see chart, right).

In Duncan's case, his unifying style of play -- defensively as well as offensively -- has brought out the championship qualities in his teammates. He will go down as the greatest power forward in the history of the game.

2. Magic Johnson (five championships). "They changed the league in a lot of ways,'' Celtics coach Doc Rivers said of Magic and Bird, against whom he played in the NBA's golden 1980s. "I give Magic the most credit -- and this gets debated a lot in my circles -- because he brought joy back to the game. He made it OK to show enthusiasm and excitement as a player.

"I always go back to Magic's first game with the Lakers -- it was a tape-delayed game against the San Diego Clippers, and [Abdul-]Jabbar makes the shot to win it and Magic jumps in his arms, and you could see how uncomfortable Jabbar was. I thought that signaled a change in how we act and play, and that now it was OK to play with energy.''

Not only did Magic win big -- five titles in nine years before his initial retirement at 32 upon contracting HIV -- but also his open-court Showtime style established L.A. as the entertainment capital of basketball while attracting new followers to the league. In the two or three years preceding the arrival of Magic and Bird, fans detected very little heart in the NBA.

"We still get that moniker at times,'' Rivers said. "I'm always amazed to hear the college broadcasters say we don't play defense in the league, and then every player who gets here realizes he didn't play defense in college. But that started the good trend: Those two coming in at the same time was the perfect storm.''

It's also worth remembering the diverse paths that brought them to Boston and Los Angeles. The Celtics acquired Bird by exploiting a loophole (since excised) that enabled them to draft him a year before he turned pro; to land Magic, the Lakers exploited the New Orleans Jazz, who sent their first-round pick to L.A. as compensation for signing Gail Goodrich as a free agent in 1976. (The Lakers then won a coin flip for the No. 1 pick overall, leaving the Chicago Bulls to take David Greenwood at No. 2.)

1. Michael Jordan (six championships). Before Jordan came along, only once had a player -- Abdul-Jabbar with the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks -- led his team to a championship while leading the league in scoring. In theory, a deep moat divided scorers from winners -- the biggest scorers were selfish and the biggest winners were selfless -- until Jordan came along. He led the league in scoring throughout all six of the Bulls' championship seasons.

Not only did Jordan build on the audiences created by Magic and Bird, but also he embodied some kind of evolutionary peak in the game, as if all of the rising trends of leadership and athleticism and showmanship and marketing were all cresting in him. (Like Tiger Woods is to golf, for example.) When Jordan was all done playing for the Bulls, there followed an extended vacuous sigh throughout basketball, as if no one was ever going to top what he had done. Of course now, a short decade later, we find ourselves looking at LeBron.