Agreed, my point was more that it'd be hard to be considered one of the best players ever if you don't win a title.
that is because if you are that good is is hard not to win a title. It happens like Malone (and nearly happened with KG), but it is rare because those guys are quite honestly just that good.
Barkley is another good example, but I still think there's a bit of a fallacy going on here: you're using a player's inherent greatness as a reason for why they won a title, when I'm fairly certain there's some hindsight bias going on because they won a title.
The truth, I suspect, is somewhere in the middle.
But is it though. I mean before Lebron won he was widely regarded as one of the better players of his generation and an all timer. Sure winning solidified his place, but he had reached that magnitude without the title. I think Durant is probably headed there even if he never wins a title, but that certainly helps.
When you start listing the greatest players at each position in history, you see they almost all have titles, and most have multiple titles. Even PG which is historically the least important position for winning titles, most of the guys have titles. Even if you look at just the last 15 years and top 5 for each position, the vast majority have titles.
And again historically you acquire those players via the draft or trades, free agency is great for acquiring secondary pieces, but rarely yields a Gold Medal Superstar or even a Silver Medal Superstar.
Look at the last few champions (top few players)
San An - Draft (TD), Draft (Parker), Draft (Manu), Draft day trade (Leonard)
Miami - Draft (Wade), FA (James), FA (Bosh), draft (haslem)
Dallas - Draft day trade (Dirk), Trade (chandler), FA (kidd), Trade (Terry)
Lakers - Trade prior to playing (Kobe), Trade (Pau), Draft (Bynum), Trade (Odom)
Celtics - Draft (PP), Trade (KG), Trade (Allen)
Miami - Draft (Wade), Trade (Shaq), Draft (Haslem), Trade (Toine), FA (Payton)
Detroit - Trade (Wallace), Trade (Wallace), Trade (Hamilton), FA (Billups), Draft (Prince)
The only Free Agent to even be a top 2 player for a title team was Lebron (maybe Billups though I think both the Wallaces and Hamilton were better than Chauncey that season, though Chauncey got hot in the playoffs). And every single team aside from Detroit was essentially anchored by a player that the team drafted (LA and Dallas acquired their anchor before they ever played in the league so they were essentially drafted by them). Now a lot of those teams had a fair amount of players in the rotation that were acquired via free agency, but a rotation player is not an anchor. To get an anchor you need to draft them or trade for them and historically draft works better. And obviously not all of those drafted anchors were top 5 picks (Dirk, PP, and Kobe were not), but it certainly seems to help. Of note, most of the players acquired via trade that became anchor/star/etc. were also top 5 picks in their respective drafts.
Putting your eggs in the free agency basket is not something I would do. Historically it really has only worked out for Miami and LA and that was just in two specific off seasons (I do also think it will work out for Cleveland as I believe the Cavs will win the title this year, but James coming back home is not exactly normal free agency either).
Topic: The Atlanta Hawks and Tanking (Read 9809 times)