Top 10 Greatest Players in NBA History Who Didn’t Win the Title

Even without an NBA title, these players have forever marked the history of the league.

Becoming an NBA champion is the ultimate goal of all players who play in the NBA. For a player, this title is a Holy Grail to be achieved. For the stars, the title is what allows them to change dimension.

A great NBA player who does not win any title will always be blamed by others for this lack in his record of achievements later on. Just look at the attitude of Draymond Green, who constantly tells Charles Barkley that he doesn’t have an NBA title when the latter criticizes him on television.

Charles Barkley was an NBA player a hundred times better than Draymond Green will ever be. Yet when the real arguments are missing, the lack of a title always comes up.

From my perspective, an NBA title only makes a difference if the player who wins it was one of the team’s first options. Thus, Robert Horry’s seven titles are not enough to make him a better NBA player than Larry Bird who won three with the Celtics in the mid-80s.

Larry Bird was the leader of the Celtics. Robert Horry was a great backup player, but he was “only” a backup player with the Houston Rockets in 1994 and 1995. It was the same with the Lakers during the Three-Peat from 2000 to 2002. Finally, when he won those last two titles with the Spurs in 2005 and 2007, his statistics were more than anecdotal as he was only 4.3 points during the playoffs campaign.

While NBA titles are important to an NBA player, the fact remains that many of the best players in history have never made it to the Holy Grail. It’s not for lack of trying season after season though.

In what follows, I’ll take a look at the 10 greatest NBA players in history who failed to win a title.