Michael Jordan and Tom Brady are comparable in the fact that they stand at the top of their sporting mountains, being called the GOATs of the NBA and NFL respectively.
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Michael Jordan finished his career with an incredible 6 NBA titles, and Brady right now has 7 Super Bowls and counting. While we know how difficult it is to win these championships, sometimes fans can overlook just how much effort they take to win.
Salary caps, improvements in competition, and other factors all make it very hard to win multiple championships. Tom Brady won three rings in his four or five years in the NFL, seeming to defy all common sense of how hard it was to win that much.
However, after his third title, he wouldn’t win again till 2014. Michael Jordan also had his struggles winning an NBA title. He was bounced out of the playoffs in the first and second rounds numerous times before he finally hit his stride with Scottie Pippen.
Now, when we consider the fact that Brady and Jordan have a combined 13 titles, it’s something to be absolutely appalled by. Nobody may ever come close to those numbers again.
Michael Jordan Wasn’t Invincible & Neither Is Tom Brady, But The Two GOATs Come Pretty Close
Back when Tom Brady had only won his third title, questions about his legacy and all-time status started to overwhelm. The young quarterback didn’t know what he was getting into at the time, but he could’ve never imagined having the kind of success he does now.
In fact, after his third title, he very defiantly said that he’s not going to win six or seven Super Bowls.
Funny that you saw that now. Kind of jumps off the page. Tom had three titles when he said that to me. I talked about that line in one of the final episodes of The GOAT podcast. https://t.co/HfD5B52vrf
— Gary Myers (@GaryMyersNY) February 19, 2021
Well, someone might want to tell young Tom Brady how wrong he would turn out to be. Brady won his seventh Super Bowl last year in his 21st season in the NFL. That’s historic. It’s also unprecedented. Before Brady, the greatest quarterback to play the game was Joe Montana who had 4 titles.
That’s still incredibly impressive, but in the salary-cap era that Brady’s played in, nobody has even come close to touching 7 rings. Peyton Manning retired with two Super Bowls, Drew Brees retired with one, and Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes both have one a piece (although Mahomes still has a long way to go).
Michael Jordan also stands at the top of the mountain when it comes to modern day NBA players although he has a little more competition. Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant each have five rings and LeBron James is still playing with four titles under his belt.
The difference is, each of these legends have lost a championship or more. Jordan was undefeated once he made it to the final stage. He was also always the man, winning Finals MVP six out of six times. Again, that kind of winning is simply unprecedented.
It speaks volumes to us when we see how superstars like Kevin Durant and even LeBron James have to move around different NBA teams, and in a way, turn into a player and a GM together in order to assemble the perfect team to win a championship.
“It’s hard to win” like Brady said.
