Melvin Ely Gets a Championship Ring?

Lost in all the hoopla over the Hornets going into San Antonio and crushing the Spurs on Saturday was the fact that current Hornet Melvin Ely received a championship ring for being a member of the 2007 Spurs. Um, what?

Now I follow the NBA about as closely as anyone around here, but I honestly had no idea that Ely was on the Spurs' roster last year. Turns out he was traded from the Bobcats right around the All-Star break, and appeared in a whopping six games for the 2007 champs, thus (barely) earning himself the league's most coveted piece of jewelry.

Not to rain on Melvin's mini-parade here, but shouldn't players have to either be with the team the entire season, or contribute at least something on the court to receive a ring? Delving a little further into Ely's stats with the Spurs, we see that he played a total of 64 minutes, shot 30% from the field, 58% from the free throw line, and averaged two personal fouls in those limited minutes. I don't think it's a stretch to say the Spurs might have been better off had Ely never stepped foot on the court wearing one of their uniforms.

Now of course there's the other side of the argument, which says that hey, everyone who's a part of the team deserves a ring no matter what. And who knows, maybe Ely helped the team by being a locker room leader, or by pushing Tim Duncan really hard in practice every day to force him to take his game to another level. I'm going to choose to believe the more likely scenario though that none of that actually happened, and that Melvin Ely was simply in the right place at the right time. Good for him ... I guess.