What is the World Baseball Classic then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Baseball_Classic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Baseball_Classic Look, for the

What is the World Baseball Classic then? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Baseball_Classic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Baseball_Classic Look, for the Heat, the interesting fact isn't whether or not the NBA acknowledges them as World Champions. It's that they referred to themselves as World Champions. That's what's interesting to me, the fact that this type of attitude can even exist. Whether or not a team can be called a world champion is probably up to two factors: 1) Is their league the best league in the world? 2) Is there no truly international competition that would be acknowledged as having a similar or higher level of competition? For example, for soccer and MLS, the answer is no for both questions because the World Cup and the Euro tournament are tops, with the World Cup being number 1. Even the Olympics can't come close precisely because FIFA disallows their best players from competing in the Olympics in order to make the World Cup a more spectacular event. And the MLS certainly isn't up to par with leagues in Europe. For hockey and the NHL, the answer is yes for both questions because the only other regular competition that comes even close is the IIHF World Championship, and it is a sub-par level of competition. The NHL tried to make their own World Cup a regular event with attendance from multiple nations, but failed to sustain it regularly. If they had succeeded, that World Cup event would probably be able to say that they crowned the real World Champions. The Olympics are the only thing that comes close, and that is heavily contingent on the NHL's willingness to send their players to the Olympics, which the NHL has repeatedly stated is an undesirable burden for them. For baseball, I think it's clear that the World Baseball Classic trumps MLB on both questions, and it helps a lot that MLB is a big contributor to the tournament so that the best players are sure to be there. For American football and the NFL, there's no argument. Superbowl = World Champs hands down. I'd say likewise for whoever wins the NBA championship. But there's a difference between knowing that you won in the best league in the world and are probably the best team in the world and actually publicly calling yourself the best team in the world when you didn't compete with anyone from other nations. The debate is further confused when teams have international players, so are players representing their cities (as in league championships) or their countries (as in the Olympics, World Baseball Classic, World Cup)? It's a lot of comparing apples to oranges, so the whole debate is very muddied, and sometimes I wonder why we even care about it. But the debate is what it is. edits for clarity