5 greatest players to never win an NBA championship
By Phil Watson
4. James Harden
One of two active players to make the list, James Harden is one of two players in NBA history — along with Bill Walton — to win both the Sixth Man of the Year and MVP awards. Harden is a three-time scoring champion and a two-time assists leader who is approaching the 25,000-point mark in his career, entering the 2023-24 season (wherever he ends up playing) 307 points shy of the milestone.
But of the players on this list, Harden's playoff performance is significantly less than his regular-season numbers. He has career averages of 24.7 points, 7.0 assists and 5.6 rebounds in 34.8 minutes per game with a 52.6 effective field goal percentage. In the playoffs, that drops to 22.7 points, 6.3 assists and 5.5 rebounds with a 50.2 effective field goal percentage.
Harden, the 2017-18 NBA MVP and a seven-time All-NBA selection, played in his lone NBA Finals with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2012 and struggled to make a mark in the five-game loss, shooting 37.5 percent overall and 31.8 percent from 3-point range while averaging 12.4 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists while turning the ball over 12 times.
He is third among active players with 24,693 points, trailing only all-time leader LeBron James and Kevin Durant, and is a 10-time All-Star. But despite numerous pairings with other stars, Harden was never able to get the Houston Rockets over the top during his seven-plus seasons and fell short playing with Durant and Kyrie Irving with the Brooklyn Nets.
The last two seasons, he and Joel Embiid couldn't get the Philadelphia 76ers past the second round.
Harden was also named to the 75th Anniversary Team.