NBA All-Stars Who Need a Championship Most
Do you remember when skeptics viewed Nikola Jokić as a dubious two-time MVP and might have even denied him a third straight award because he'd never backed up his regular-season success with a title?
And do you notice how now, in the wake of the Denver Nuggets star's breakthrough championship run, nobody ever questions his greatness?
That's how profoundly a ring changes the discourse about a player. It wipes away the questions, cleanses the doubts and offers validation that can't be acquired in any other way.
Ahead of a 2024 NBA All-Star Game that will be littered with both established champs and title-hungry vets, it's time to ask: Who needs a legacy-transforming ring most?
In highlighting the All-Stars who most desperately need a title, we'll skip past most of the youngsters. Even if a player as decorated as Luka Dončić could vault several levels up in the all-time-great hierarchy by winning a championship, there's no urgency for him to do so this year. A couple of weeks shy of his 25th birthday, he's got loads of time.
For others, the clock is ticking and opportunities to add a crowning jewel to their list of career achievements are slipping away.
Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers
1 of 5
Though named a starter following an MVP-worthy first half of the season, Joel Embiid will miss the All-Star Game due to knee surgery.
That unavailability and the questions about his health that will be waiting when he returns are exactly why he needs to collect a ring as soon as possible. After missing his entire first two years with injuries, the 2022-23 MVP has been utterly dominant when healthy but has rarely managed to stay at full strength in the playoffs.
Across the last five years, Embiid ranks fourth in the cumulative catch-all Value Over Replacement Player. That's despite playing fewer minutes than anyone else in the top 10, meaning this metric actually undersells his impact during the regular season. In contrast, he's just 20th in postseason VORP since 2019-20.
The 29-year-old has made the playoffs every year since 2017-18 but has never once advanced past the conference semifinals. His career postseason averages in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks are all lower than they are during the regular season. His shooting percentages from the field, beyond the arc and the foul line are all worse. He has 193 career playoff turnovers against just 148 assists.
Whether it's been knee injuries, freak accidents like the two orbital fractures he's suffered or basic fatigue, Embiid has almost never reached the playoffs in ideal shape. Heading into a second-round series against the Boston Celtics last year, his postseason history of getting (and playing) hurt was striking.
If Embiid's playoff failures persist, they'll appear in the first paragraph of his career retrospective, probably right after his scoring titles and MVP award. He'll join Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, James Harden and a handful of others in the "best player without a title" list no one wants to be on.
If he somehow shakes the injury bug and secures a championship, he will see his reputation completely transformed.
Given his health record, there's no reason to believe Embiid's best years are ahead. Racking up surgeries and coming down the stretch of his age-29 season, he is running out of time to alter his legacy.
Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics
2 of 5
Because he's been remarkably healthy and will only be 26 when the 2024 playoffs start, Jayson Tatum doesn't face the same level of championship urgency Embiid does.
The five-time All-Star lands on this list anyway because he's been agonizingly close to glory more than once and has an exceptionally long individual postseason resumé populated by as many epic failures as resounding successes.
Some have happened in the same series, like when Tatum started just 1-of-13 from the field in Game 6 of the 2023 East semifinals against the Sixers before hitting a barrage of threes in the fourth quarter to stave off elimination. The 51 points he scored in that very next contest are an all-time record in a Game 7, but the ensuing conference finals against the eighth-seeded Miami Heat flipped the Tatum narrative again.
He failed to make a field goal in the fourth quarter of a tight Game 1...and then didn't make a bucket in the final stanza of Game 2 either. The Heat would go on to upset top-seeded Boston and reach the Finals, and the Celtics' history of ill-timed offensive collapses grew.
The weight of those failures rests heaviest on Tatum. Such is the burden of being the best player on a contender.
Tatum has already played 94 playoff games since entering the league in 2017-18, reaching the Finals in 2022 and advancing as far as the conference finals four times. That's certainly better than never reaching the playoffs at all or failing to get out of the second round, but he is kind of the "close but no cigar" poster boy of his era.
A championship would elevate him above 20-something All-Star peers like Devin Booker, Donovan Mitchell, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Anthony Edwards. Another year coming up short, especially after again hitting the playoffs with the No. 1 seed, and Tatum's reputation as a very good player who can't get his team over the hump could crystallize.
Damian Lillard, Milwaukee Bucks
3 of 5
Damian Lillard has the most career win shares of anyone in the 2024 All-Star Game who hasn't won a championship.
Though his peak years didn't measure up to Embiid's and he hasn't come close as many times as Tatum, Lillard has been good enough for long enough that his missing ring is becoming an issue.
You can tell he feels the urgency. After a career spent almost entirely outside the contender class with the Portland Trail Blazers, Dame pulled the trade-request ripcord and got himself moved to the Milwaukee Bucks.
Because Giannis Antetokounmpo is clearly the team's best player and the Bucks have already won a championship, Lillard can't get complete validation by going all the way with his new squad.
Were the Bucks to finish this season with another chip, the 33-year-old would almost certainly be regarded as the second-most important piece of the puzzle. It would call to mind another iconic Blazer, Clyde Drexler, getting to the mountaintop as Hakeem Olajuwon's sidekick with the Houston Rockets 30 years ago.
That would still be better than ending his career without a ring, but nobody would put Lillard's hypothetical title with Milwaukee on the absolute top level of the NBA pantheon—unless he completely takes over the proceedings and averages something like 35.0 points per game en route to Finals MVP.
In light of his habitual high-stakes heroism, maybe we shouldn't rule that out.
Lillard has scored over 20,000 points, made seven All-NBA teams and earned a spot on the NBA's Top 75 list. If he could only add a title to that list of accomplishments, he would have one of the most impressive resumés of any guard to ever play.
Kevin Durant, Phoenix Suns
4 of 5
Wait a minute, doesn't Kevin Durant already have two championships?
Consider his inclusion here proof that #Ringz culture is as ruthless as it is fickle. According to the unwritten and largely arbitrary bylaws of that school of NBA analysis, KD's chips aren't quite the same as others'. Fair or not, the brutally hot takes are out there.
He's a bandwagon-jumper.
His legacy is incomplete.
He didn't drive the bus.
Durant famously joined a 73-win Golden State Warriors team and won a pair of rings. That he earned Finals MVP both times doesn't seem to matter. Nor does the fact that he's averaged 30.3 points per game with a 54.6/44.8/91.1 shooting split in 15 Finals contests. Everyone fixates instead on those same Warriors winning one championship before he got there and securing another after he left.
The cruelest potential twist of all: Durant might still carry an asterisk if he wins a third championship with the Phoenix Suns.
Anyone who looked askance at him signing with a superteam in Golden State will probably feel similarly unsatisfied if Durant succeeds after getting himself traded to a Suns team that already had Devin Booker. In that sense, it may actually be too late for the 35-year-old to change his legacy with a title. For many, that ship sailed when he left the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2016.
Nothing Durant does will quiet all of his critics, but a hypothetical third ring and Finals MVP would put him behind only LeBron James (four) and Michael Jordan (six) on the all-time list. That would eliminate a good percentage of his detractors and slot him in a historical spot that his talent clearly justifies.
LeBron James and Stephen Curry
5 of 5
We might as well lump LeBron James and Stephen Curry together, as both generation-defining superstars share so much in common.
Leaders of Western Conference clubs ticketed for the Play-In, James and Curry have long, probably insurmountable pathways to a championship. Maybe their odds would have been better if they had actually joined forces.
These two have battled one another for most of a decade, accounting for six of the last nine championships and meeting head-to-head in the Finals four straight times from 2015 to 2018. If either were to add one more title, it would legitimately shake up NBA history.
A fifth championship for Curry would move him into a group occupied by Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, putting him in the conversation about the most decorated player of the post-Michael Jordan era. Paired with the way Curry's shooting fundamentally changed how his sport is played, he'd likely be regarded as one of the half-dozen most significant NBA players of all time.
Another ring would make it five for James, too, and he'd probably have the distinction of winning Finals MVP in all five instances—something Curry wouldn't be able to claim.
If LeBron were to add his fifth title and Finals MVPs, he'd be one closer to Jordan, who has six of each. The GOAT conversation may never be officially resolved, but that level of success combined with his status as the all-time leader in points would force even the staunchest MJ defenders to consider James' case.
Do Curry or James need more accolades? Maybe not technically, but you could argue their already elevated status means they have as much to gain from another ring as anybody else.
Think of it like this: If Tatum, Lillard or Embiid go all the way, they'll move into the top tier of their current era. If LeBron or Steph do it, they'll get cemented as two of the no-questions-asked greats of all time—alongside or ahead of luminaries such as Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Duncan and even Bryant.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate entering games played Thursday, Feb. 15. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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