30 best NBA players to never win a championship

24. Alex English

The beginnings of Alex English’s career in the NBA will always be one of the most confusing times in any one player’s body of work to me. Taken as a second round pick in the 1976 draft, English played as a role player in his first two seasons in the league, averaging a meager 15.5 minutes per game over 142 played with the Bucks. He then spent a season and a half with the Indiana Pacers before being traded to the Denver Nuggets. That’s when he was finally given the opportunity to shine, and he did so with authority.

English spent 10 full seasons with the Nuggets in his career and, through the first nine in Denver, he put together one of the most unheralded individual runs in the history of the league. The forward produced 26.9 points, 5.7 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game while shooting a cool 51.1 percent from the floor. He was a versatile threat that could take on anyone and do so with great success.

Perhaps as a product of the era in which he played alongside the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry, English is a player that gets overlooked a great deal. However, it’s hard to fully ignore the success he was able to put together while with the Nuggets. He was an absolute monster when he was in his prime at Denver and, had he come along in a different era, he might’ve both had a better shot at a title and been better recognized for his greatness.