- I think about the nights that we slept in the factory
in sleeping bags because we didn't have the manpower
or infrastructure necessary to take on a project like this.
I remember drinking seven Red Bulls a day
because I was afraid we were gonna fall asleep.
I think I stayed up 72 hours straight along
with lots of other people
in our company to actually be able to finish this
because we're kind of learning on the fly.
To be quite honest with you,
we faked it till we made it.
Hi, my name is Jason Arasheben and CEO
of Jason of Beverly Hills
and we are the go-to jeweler for some
of the world's biggest celebrities in sports organizations.
And today I'm gonna let you in on the NBA championship ring.
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I always grew up as a huge sports fan and I always
wanted to be a professional athlete, an NBA player.
But then I quickly realized
that I have zero athletic ability.
I can't run, jump, I have no strength.
So the next best thing was to be able
to service the professional athletes.
Each and every ring presents its own level of difficulty,
its own obstacles that we have to overcome.
These ring programs are really passion projects.
Like I said, I started as a huge sports fan.
So for me, this is really a dream come true.
We're not looking at projects
like this to be some huge money maker.
This is something that really brings eyes to our brand.
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My very first championship ring project was
a Lakers NBA Championship Ring.
This particular ring here actually emulates the shape
of the STAPLES Center where they won the championship
and this was their 15th championship.
So we made this ring
out of 15 karat goal to commemorate that 15th championship.
The large stones
on the outside actually are 14 large white diamonds
to represent the 14 previous championships leading
up to this one.
When we built this ring,
we put each player's face on the side
of the ring so you can see the imagery of the face.
And we built a lot of storyline
into this ring because we knew when 20 years
down the road we wanted to have a lot to talk about.
So in 2010, the Lakers won back-to-back championships
against their arch rivals the Boston Celtics in seven games.
Now that was an experience that was
unlike anything I've ever had in my life.
I was able to travel with the team, I was able to go
on the floor while everyone was pouring champagne.
And it was also the second time we got
to design a championship ring.
Now what makes this ring so unique is that
for the first time in history we were able
to capture a piece of the actual game.
And when I say a piece of the actual game,
I mean the actual ball that was used in game seven
Lakers versus Celtics, we were able to track
down the ball and that was no easy task by the way.
Cut out little pieces,
and implant them inside each and every ring.
Once we had the ball in hand
we had to carefully dissect the ball with a razor blade
cut out perfect circles that were the exact size
without damaging them and implanting them
onto the inside of the ring.
That was probably the most difficult part
of building a ring like this.
On top of that, we were able to make this ring
out of a signature batch of 16 karat gold
which represented this 16th championship
in the organization's history.
And on the top you have two Larry O'Brien trophies
that represent the fact
that this was a back-to-back championship.
And you also notice some small details
that other people won't see.
There are small triangles on the four corners.
And those small triangles represents the offense
that they ran, the triangle offense
that Phil Jackson came up with.
We had a lot of personal clients on the team,
but when it came to actually deciding
on what final design elements were gonna be included
in the ring, the team went back to some of the key players,
primarily Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher
when it came to these particular rings.
The team really took their ideas
to heart and wanted to make sure
that all the design elements that they thought was important
to them would be included in the final design of the ring.
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So the next two rings I'm gonna show you are the 2015
and 2017 Golden State Warriors Championship rings.
Now, Golden State hadn't won the championship in many,
many years and none under the current ownership.
So when they won the championship, I made sure to call Steph
and Clay and Draymond and a lot of my clients
on the team to help get me a meeting with the ownership.
This ring here, you had about 13 karats of diamonds.
You had baguettes down the center
which were never used in other championship rings.
You had a total of 240 stones on the face of the ring
which represented the total amount
of playoff and regular season wins under that ownership.
This ring here incorporates elements
of the Oracle Arena's architecture all
alongside of the ring.
And in the center of the side of the ring
we mimic the actual photo
of all the players holding up the trophy
during the championship ceremony.
On the 2017 ring,
it's very similar in shape because it was very important
to the warriors to kind of have some continuity.
They were building a dynasty.
They wanted the face to communicate the main logo
that they have, which is front
and center on the face of the ring.
But they also wanted to add color.
So we had to search the globe high and low
to find the perfect shade of blue in these blue sapphires.
So every ring has a warrior blue bezel going
around it with all special club blue sapphires
with the Larry O'Brien trophy in the center,
and each and every player's number written
across the side over here.
So 2018 was the first time that we actually
incorporated a secret hidden feature in the ring.
No one knew about what we were gonna do.
The players didn't know,
the team didn't know, the ownership didn't know.
It wasn't until the day
of the ring ceremony that we unveiled the fact
that this ring had an interchangeable top.
And the story behind that was really simple.
We were basically split across the middle
both within the organization as well as in house with us
whether the rings should have a blue sapphire top
or a white diamond top.
So in order to make it easy,
we actually made the top interchangeable.
You can actually take the top
off and flip it from blue sapphires
to white diamonds and wear it however you want.
This way everyone's happy.
And we were nervous,
because the day I brought the rings we're hauling in
you know, millions of dollars of worth of rings.
And like if they didn't like it, I was screwed.
But thank God they were blown away.
So now we're approaching our fourth championship ring
with the Golden State Warriors.
We're about to unveil the world's most amazing ring.
This was really the gold blooded era
of the Golden State Warriors.
And we incorporated all of that into design in the ring.
It's gonna have a unique color, a unique feature,
something different that you've never ever seen.
So in 2020, the Lakers won the championship.
Now this was a historic year for many reasons.
You're in the middle of the pandemic.
It's a bubble season where they can't play
in front of a crowd.
It was LeBron James' first championship here
in LA and most importantly, that was the year
that the late, great Kobe Bryant had passed away.
So there was so much to talk about, but very limited space.
When you're talking about a ring that's 40 millimeters
in height and 35 millimeters in width,
there's only so much real estate you have
to tell the story you want to tell.
So we had the unique challenge of creating more real estate.
So how do we do that?
We create a twistable top that twists open.
So when you take the top off, you see every jersey
from every retired player in the Lakers organization.
And in the background you have a snake skin
texture to represent the mamba,
with Kobe's two jerseys set in black
and a little bit higher in remembrance of Kobe Bryant.
On the other side you have unity,
which was an important word in that,
during that time with every player's name written on theirs.
In doing this, in creating this unique feature
we were able to have more real estate to tell a better story
without sacrificing any of the design elements.
We had diamonds going all the way down the side.
We had each player's number written with a mamba snake
in the background in honor of Kobe Bryant.
We really went over and beyond
on this particular ring because it's the home city.
I'm a huge fan and I want it to be bigger
and better than any ring we've ever made.
A ring like this,
you're talking about six figures for a ring like this.
This level of history, this type of diamond weight,
this type of gold weight, you're easily into
the $100,000 mark as far as value of these particular rings,
which at the time is the most expensive ring
in championship ring history.
Now this is getting a bit redundant,
because every single year I do it,
has gotten bigger and more expensive.
At some point here
we gotta like stop or else it's gonna look stupid. [laughs]
What? That's the truth.
So come 2021, we've done the Los Angeles Lakers,
we've done the Golden State Warriors
and those are two California teams.
This was the first time we ventured off.
We went to another state, Wisconsin,
Milwaukee, Giannis, Chris Middleton.
They win the championship.
They came to us about doing a championship ring.
They came to us to do something different,
that's never been done before.
And that's exactly what we did.
This is the most amount of diamonds
in any championship ring in history at the time.
You have all white gold, all white diamonds.
But we realized that it was a need in the marketplace.
These players are wearing these oversized rings,
but they're not very practical.
They can't be worn everywhere.
So we wanted to develop something, a feature,
a unique feature that allows the players to not
only wear the ring on their finger,
but wear the ring around their neck.
So this ring has a unique system where it has
two buttons that click to take the top off
and you could actually turn it into a pendant.
And to make it even better, on the inside
of the ring when you take off the top is a QR code,
that's, scanned by your phone shows the highlights
of the entire season leading up to the championship.
The Milwaukee bucks have a very unique shade
of like a forest green, but not really.
And so this is our challenge to find the perfect
Pantone that perfectly matches the color of the team.
These teams are very proud of their colors
and they don't want it to be misrepresented
in the ultimate trophy, which is their championship ring.
So we had a search the globe for the perfect shade of green,
which we found in Germany, had it flown in, we QC'd each
and every piece and had it put into the actual logo
the deer of the ring with World Champions written
in diamonds all the way around it.
I want to thank you for watching.
Hopefully you learned a little something more
about the process of making a championship ring.
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