With Steve Nash’s departure from the National Basketball Association, it’s sad to see another NBA great added to the list of legends walking away from the league without winning a championship.
The NBA has been replete with tales of success and failures. Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan are just some of those whose stories have been repeatedly told in the pages of basketball books.
In his stellar NBA career that spanned 19 years, Nash had always been an effective team leader who consistently led the league in assists. He was a two-time Most Valuable Player aside from being an NBA All-Star eight times.
Nash, a formidable point guard, could have won a championship ring or two, reaching the Western Conference Finals twice.
While with the Dallas Mavericks, we saw the best of Nash as he directed the team’s offense. His tandem with Dirk Nowitzki had clicked, with the help from Michael Finley, which fueled a memorable run for the Mavericks.
Too bad he left to rejoin with the team that had drafted him in 1996, the Phoenix Suns. He could have been part of the Mavericks’ line-up that won the 2011 championship against the Miami Heat had he decided to stay.
Of course, Nash is not the only NBA great who retired without a ring. And while he was the latest to join the club, he would certainly not be the last.
The list is long of those who achieved fame and fortune but failed to win a title in the world’s most popular and richest professional basketball league. It even included some of the NBA’s greatest players who saw action in the 1990s and 2000s.
Here’s a few of them.
1. Charles Barkley – A dominating power forward who mastered the art of outrebounding taller opponents in the 1990s. He and the Phoenix Suns battled with the Chicago Bulls in the 1993 NBA Finals but lost
2. Karl Malone – Nicknamed the ‘Mailman’, he was the second NBA player on the pointscoring list. But every time he carried the Utah Jazz to the NBA Finals, Michael Jordan and the Bulls would stand in their way to the title. His last trip to the final, this time with the Los Angeles Lakers, ended in another defeat.
3. Patrick Ewing – The big man had carried the New York Knicks to the finals twice but lost to Houston Rockets and the San Antonio Spurs.
Yes, worth mentioning were John Stockton, Allen Iverson and Reggie Miller who are all potential hall of fame candidates.
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