There have been over 150 players inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame over the years. These guys are easily considered the best to ever hit the basketball court. However, not all of these players have tremendous success in the championship department. This has left a handful of these guys without any ring to their name. So, what NBA Hall of Famers have no championship rings?
What NBA Hall of Famers Have No Championship Rings? There are over 400 inductees in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Including 178 players, a little over 70 of the Hall of Fame players have been able to win at least one championship in the NBA. That leaves over 100 Hall of Fame players without an NBA ring. Some of the key names are Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Elgin Baylor and Reggie Miller.
Nowadays, we always like to look at star players and demand them go to another team so that they can compete for a championship. That wasn’t always the norm back then, which left a lot of hardworking superstars without much franchise success throughout their careers.
Charles Barkley
Charles Barkley is probably one of the most recognizable NBA players in the Hall of Fame without a ring. His numbers and accolades clearly speak for themselves. He was the 1993 NBA MVP winner, an 11-time All-Star, two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and an 11-time selection onto an All-NBA team. Throughout the course of his career, the forward was able to average 22.1 points and 11.7 rebounds per game. He became a true star in the league early on with the Philadelphia 76ers before moving over to the Phoenix Suns and turning them into a complete powerhouse. The Suns even made it into the NBA Finals because of Barkley, but they wound up losing to Michael Jordan and that legendary Chicago Bulls trio.
Karl Malone & John Stockton
We just had to put the two Utah Jazz standouts in the same section because the fact that neither of these guys ever won is astonishing. Let’s start out with Karl Malone. Malone is a two-time NBA MVP, a 14-time All-Star, three-time All-NBA Defensive First-Team selection, two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and an 11-time All-NBA First-Team selection. Malone was a bullish scorer who used his physicality to dominate the glass and in the paint. He was a key component to the Jazz being so competitive for a string of years and averaged 25.0 points and 10.1 rebounds throughout the course of his legendary career. Then we have John Stockton, the point guard of this Jazz roster and a guy that deserves just as much credit as Malone. Stockton was named to the All-Star team 10 times, the All-NBA Defensive Second-Team five times, he won two Olympic Gold Medals and was an addition to the All-NBA roster 11 times. Many people believe to this day that Stockton was one of the most complete point guards that has ever played the game of basketball. Whatever was asked of him to get done, he accomplished and did so with flying colors. He averaged 13.1 points and 10.5 assists per game throughout his career. Many people remember him for his incredible defensive intelligence and brilliant passing but that scoring aspect was always underrated about him. Yes, he averaged just 13 points a night over his career, but he dropped just under 20,000 points in total. It truly is a shame that we were never able to watch either of these guys put that ring on their finger.
Elgin Baylor
Elgin Baylor deserves an entire section just to himself. Some people have him rated as one of the best players in league history and yet he is without a championship ring. Baylor played 13 strong seasons in the NBA and made it onto an All-NBA First-Team 10 times. He was the 1959 Rookie of the Year and an 11-time NBA All-Star. Then, the most shocking statistic of them all, Baylor made it into the NBA Finals eight times throughout his career. That’s right, eight times. He never once was able to win one of those series. Other stats including Baylor just show how surprising that really is to hear. The man literally averaged 19.8 rebounds per game in just his third season in the league and yet wasn’t able to take home an MVP award because he happened to play with guys like Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain who took a lot of the glory. Fast forward to the final year of his career and Baylor retired early in the 1971 season. Ironically enough, that Lakers squad won 33 straight games that year and eventually went on to win an NBA Championship without him on the roster. It’s hard to find a player that has been screwed over more than Baylor when it comes to getting a ring. He averaged 27.4 points and 13.5 rebounds per game.
Reggie Miller
Finally, we have one of the greatest sharpshooters in league history, Reggie Miller. Miller was a five-time All-Star, three-time All-NBA selection and a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist. He was literally the lifeblood of the Indiana Pacers during his playing days. The franchise simply wasn’t good whenever he didn’t play up to the standards set before him. Before Steph Curry came around and ruined it, Miller was the All-Time leader in made three-pointers at one point. He stayed a Pacer throughout his whole career, an incredibly respectable move but one that didn’t allow him to win a ring. Though he did have some runs that saw him and the Pacers get close. For example, the team made it into the Conference Finals five different times and yet lost all of those series. It’s wildly unfortunate that they couldn’t pull off just one win in those series. He still averaged 18.2 points per game throughout his 18 long years of playing.
Chris Paul seems the next big name to chain that list, if he cannot win a title before he retires in the next few years.