The NBA Finals are still days away, yet one player can already make a claim that nobody else in the series can.
Jeremy Sochan is guaranteed to receive a 2026 NBA championship ring.
That sounds impossible until you remember how strange NBA seasons can be.
Sochan opened the year with the San Antonio Spurs before eventually joining the New York Knicks. Now, after San Antonio’s dramatic seven-game victory over Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals and New York’s march through the East, the two teams he played for this season are meeting in the NBA Finals.
No matter who wins, Sochan wins.
If the Spurs capture the championship, he will receive a ring as a member of the organization that drafted him and helped develop him into one of the league’s most unique young players. If the Knicks win, he will receive a ring as a member of the team that acquired him and carried him through the second half of the season.
The Finals will determine whether San Antonio or New York lifts the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Sochan’s jewelry situation, however, has already been settled.
There is something wonderfully bizarre about it. While Victor Wembanyama is preparing for the biggest games of his career and Jalen Brunson is trying to deliver New York its first championship in more than half a century, Sochan occupies a basketball loophole. He is simultaneously connected to both sides of the championship equation.
In a league obsessed with legacy, rings and historical standing, the story feels almost too perfect. Two teams survive six months of basketball, dozens of playoff battles and multiple Game 7s to arrive at the same destination. One player happened to ride with both of them.
Of course, Sochan would be the first to tell you that not all rings are equal. Players want to be on the floor. They want to contribute to the final victory. They want to be in the locker room when the champagne starts flying. Those moments cannot be duplicated by technicalities.
Still, history does not always remember the details. It remembers the ring.
And before a single Finals possession has been played, Jeremy Sochan already knows that a 2026 championship ring is headed his way.
The only remaining mystery is which logo will be engraved on the box.
