Winning an NBA championship is no easy task, even for the best players who have ever stepped foot on the court. No one individual can win a title by themselves, and they need a great supporting cast around them to take their team to the Promised Land.
There are some players, though, who needed less around them than most. Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal shared a list on Instagram on Saturday of superstars who never needed a superteam to win the NBA Finals.
– Dirk Nowitzki
– Giannis Antetokounmpo
– Hakeem Olajuwon
– Kobe Bryant
– Michael Jordan
– Shaquille O’Neal
– Dwyane Wade
– Isiah Thomas
– Nikola Jokic
This is quite an interesting list. It’s not entirely accurate, though.
We’re talking about never needing a superteam, so Dwyane Wade cannot be there. Sure, he wasn’t on one when he won the NBA championship in 2006 with the Miami Heat, but that wasn’t the case in 2012 and 2013. He was playing alongside LeBron James and Chris Bosh then. The Heat were the definition of a superteam with those three.
The keyword here is never. If you won a championship with a superteam at any point, you can’t be here. So, James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant are all out.
As for the rest who made it, a lot depends on what you classify as a superteam. Were the Chicago Bulls a superteam when they three-peated with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman from 1996 to 1998? Were the Los Angeles Lakers one with O’Neal and Kobe Bryant when they won three in a row from 2000 to 2002?
Those Bulls and Lakers teams aren’t generally looked at as superteams, though, so O’Neal, Bryant, and Jordan are fair inclusions. Still, one could argue they aren’t.
There are no arguments when it comes to the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, and Isiah Thomas, though. None of these four had an all-time great in their prime next to them when they won it all.
Nowitzki, Antetokounmpo, and Jokic didn’t even have a teammate make the All-Star team when they won in 2011, 2021, and 2023, respectively. That was the case with Hakeem Olajuwon in 1994 and 1995 as well, but he did have Hall of Famer Clyde Drexler for that second title run with the Houston Rockets. Drexler was somewhat past his best by then, though, which is why those Rockets aren’t thought of as a superteam.
So, in all, this proved to be a solid list, Wade aside.
