Thirty-one-year-old Sasha Kaun retired after one season in the NBA -- a season in which he played 95 regular-season minutes for the Cavaliers, then rode the bench for their championship run. Some players spend decades playing thousands of games for numerous teams trying to earn a ring. Sasha Kaun showed up, contributed very little, and will quit with that ring on his finger. (David Blatt's getting one, too. That's more complicated.)
I love Kaun's NBA career. "Efficiency" in basketball traditionally describes maximum production with minimum error, but I prefer that word for what Kaun did -- the ultimate totem of NBA success achieved with as little work as possible. That is efficiency as Ben Franklin imagined it. Kaun's decision to retire inspired me to dig back through every championship roster to find people who took the same brief, glorious journey. The players I found all fall below what I have named "The Kreklow Line" -- 100 minutes or fewer played in the NBA as part of a championship roster, so named for Wayne Kreklow's 100 minutes with the 1981 Boston Celtics. Naming things is fun.
Digging beneath The Kreklow Line, I stumbled across perhaps the most magnificent NBA career of all time: that of Matt Steigenga.
Total career stats: 12 minutes played, three points scored, a couple rebounds and assists. Oh, and a championship ring. Yes.
Though he didn't play in the postseason, Steigenga traveled some with the Bulls during their Finals run, even joining them in practices. And when it came time to dole out rings for Chicago's championship victory over the Jazz, Jerry Reinsdorf saved one for Steigenga. The Bulls owner was extra generous with rings -- much like owners today, who give eeeeverybody a ring -- so even the guy who played 12 meaningless minutes got to take home some hardware.
That's the best NBA career ever, if you ask me, and it's definitely my favorite story of a player whose career falls (well) below the 100-minute Kreklow Line, but let's go back to the beginning.
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As far as I can tell, the man who pioneered the sub-100-minute championship is John Pilch. After a legendary career at the University of Wyoming, Pilch played 41 minutes over nine regular-season games for the 1951-1952 Minneapolis Lakers. Worthy Patterson played 13 minutes before getting cut from the 1958 champion St. Louis Hawks, but played an important part in the team's efforts to integrate and eventually became a successful record executive.
It's unclear whether those two guys got to take home rings, since they were no longer on the roster when their teams won the Finals.
Not so for Ron Watts.
Watts played three minutes in just one game for the 1966 champion Boston Celtics and stuck with the team all season. That would be untouched career "efficiency," if Watts didn't come very close to crossing The Kreklow Line by playing 89 minutes the next year, plus five in the playoffs -- Boston's only non-championship season of the 1960s. Two (!!) rings in under 100 minutes would have been spectacular, but Watts went on to do plenty of cool things just the same, including a commercial with Bill Russell:
Some more:
- Rick Weitzman played just 25 games (75 minutes) for the 1968 Celtics, but he got to spend a few games in the playoffs and even scored the final basket of the clinching Game 6.
- There's a bunch of guys who played very little with the 1967-1968 Pittsburgh Pipers, won an ABA championship thanks to Connie Hawkins, then didn't stick with the team when they moved to Minnesota for a year.
- Dick Grubar and Jerry McKee each followed dominant college careers with super-brief stints as members of the 1969-1970 ABA champion Indiana Pacers.
- Ed Searcy seems to have gotten a ring even though he played just 12 minutes for the 1976 Celtics. Our Kreklow Line namesake (and Mizzou volleyball coach!) Wayne Kreklow is also said to have received a ring after his 100 regular-season minutes with the '81 Celtics. Even in the days before everyone from the trainer to the social media manager got a ring, Boston was very generous with the hardware. I guess they had a lot to go around.
- Earl Jones played just seven minutes for the 1985 Lakers before they sent him to the Spurs, so he didn't get a ring and surely doesn't count here; but I need to show you that the 43 total minutes he played the following season with the Bucks earned an official NBA highlight video:
- The wonderfully named and much-celebrated Fennis Dembo played just 74 minutes for the 1989 Pistons, then spent the rest of his career overseas (and has reportedly recovered after an extremely scary incident). The Pistons waived Stan Kimbrough after his 50 minutes the next season, and I can't tell if he got a ring or not. Same goes for Ricky Blanton, 10-day member of the 1992-1993 Chicago Bulls.
- Ohio State assistant Chris Jent got a ring after just 78 minutes with the 1994 Rockets, then came back and nearly crossed The Kreklow Line by playing a few minutes with the Knicks.
- Matt Walsh didn't last long enough with the 2005-2006 Heat to earn a ring, but Lakers legend Sun Yue has one from his 28 minutes in 2008-2009. He even let his teammates come along for the parade Los Angeles threw him:
(Jeff Gross/Getty Images)
And now there's Sasha Kaun.
Final thought here: None of this is to belittle the work of a cup-of-tea NBA player. Kaun, for instance, was an elite high-school recruit, a dominant college player, a second-round pick, and a pro in Russia for years before he got his shot with the Cavs. The stuff you and I see on TV is only the tip of the iceberg, no matter the NBA player. It's just that the tips of these icebergs are one inch high with rings frozen into them.