Is it more difficult to win an NCAA title or an NBA ring? While clinching both championships requires unparalleled perseverance and talent, this question might start a debate in the basketball world. For Carmelo Anthony and Kemba Walker, the answer is clear. The rigors of winning an NBA championship surpass the arduous task of acing the college competition.
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Walker recently joined Melo’s 7 PM in Brooklyn pod to announce his retirement from the basketball world. Halfway through the show, however, he and Melo started discussing why winning an NBA ring is harder after co-host of the pod, Kid Mero compared the college and pro competitions.
Mero pointed out that the NCAA tournament field is a perpetual elimination minefield that features more teams than in the NBA. A singular loss means the end of the season for a team. So doesn’t that mean that an NCAA title is a harder thing to accomplish?
However, Anthony disagreed by pointing out that beating a team four times in a playoff series is harder than advancing through a singular win.
He argued that by the time the squads have gone up two to three times against each other in a series, they are well-aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Sneaking out a win in such a scenario is much more complex than a single-game elimination scenario.
“It’s hard to beat a team four times. After two games, three games, unless you just got a trick in your bag, you’ve been holding your card in your back pocket. Like ‘It’s nothing you don’t know, it’s nothing I don’t know.’…Now it’s whoever gonna commit the least number of mistakes is gonna win,” Melo said.
Meanwhile, recently retired Kemba Walker, who won an NCAA championship with the UConn Huskies in 2011 but never won an NBA championship, co-signed these comments. He claimed that forget winning four games in a series, to eke out a single win in the NBA is a humungous task itself, since each team is loaded with top talent.
Then Walker pointed out how NCAA tournament games are in neutral venues, which means that there is not going to be outright animosity towards a squad. In contrast, NBA features home and road fixtures. Therefore, when a team hits the road, they have to also deal with the pressure from the home crowd.
Walker stated, “On the road in the league, you might have a few jerseys in the stands but they all going against you, like it’s different.”
Carmelo Anthony, who also won the National Championship in 2003 but couldn’t win it all in the NBA, concluded his remarks by saying, that you have to be borderline perfect in your executions to win the closing games of the series. Because your enemy knows you like the palm of their hand.
Therefore, both former NBA All-Stars argued that the NBA is on a whole different level compared to the NCAA tournament. Apart from the factors mentioned above, one huge difference between the NCAA and the NBA stems from the schedule.
A typical Regular Season is 82 games long, whereas the typical NCAA season has exactly half the number of games. The NCAA games also have a gap of numerous days between them while NBA athletes have to undergo back-to-back scenarios and a ceaseless stream of road trips.
