30 best NBA players to never win a championship

27. Bernard King

Cut from the same cloth as the likes of Carmelo Anthony or even — to a degree — Wilt Chamberlain before him, Bernard King is a player that probably doesn’t get the recognition he’ll ever deserve. By his inclusion on this list, you can tell that he was unable to win a title throughout his career. What that doesn’t tell you, though, is that was probably okay with King. The New York Knicks star (most famously), possessed the same type of mentality as Anthony in that winning a title wasn’t paramount to him.

As stated previously, that often causes fans, the media and the general public alike to view a player differently. Whether or not that’s entirely fair is open to debate, but it’s the reality of the situation. Subsequently, King long has been maligned by basketball historians for not being among the greats of his generation. When you look at what he was able to do on the floor, that’s just absolutely silly to even suggest, though.

In his prime six seasons from 1981-87 (two with the Golden State Warriors and four with the Knicks, with a knee injury erasing his 1985-86 campaign), King was just lethal. He put up 24.8 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 1.1 steals per game. Perhaps his most impressive feat over that span was that, while playing small forward and having a strong inside-out game, he shot 55.6 percent from the field.

He was just simply one of the most dominant scorers of his generation. He proved that late in his career in the 1990-91 season, at 34 years old, when he put up 28.4 points per game on 47.2 percent shooting for the Washington Bullets. King may not have rings, but he deserves more spotlight than he normally receives.