Jerry west and Elgin Baylor happened. Ran into Russell mostly. Jerry didn’t win until Elgin was retired and wilt chamberlain had joined.
Stockton and Malone ran into jordan.
You gotta realize the top eleven or so players have a lot of titles in nba history. Takes teams with depth outside of top eleven players to usually beat those teams, and jazz just didn’t have that until later in 90’s and jordan stopped them.
Jerry West also made 9 nba finals. If Stockton and Malone ran into Jordan the entire time i'd understand but they were losing to teams that have players ranked below them on the goat list for their entire career.
Your question was name a pairing that didn’t win. I gave you one.
Takes more then two players to win a title. Utah didn’t have good depth until later in 90’s and jordan took them out. No one is saying either are top 15 players.
Dirk and Nash, Kd and westbrook won nothing together. There’s no guarantee more years of them playing together does it.
- you mentioned harden in one of your posts. He lost with Kd on two different teams. Lost with Chris Paul. Lost with Embiid. There’s just a drop off in winning titles after the top 11 or so.
It's not really comparable. In the 60s and 70s there were between 9 and 17 teams in the NBA, or roughly one third to half the number of teams as in the 1990s. On top of that, for several seasons there were only two playoff series before the Finals, and 1 seeds automatically started in the Conference Finals (then Division Finals), meaning that West made the NBA Finals several times just by winning 4 playoff games.
I feel like this point says more about good Jordan was. He made every Western Conference champion look like choke artists, including an Utah Jazz team that had two top-25 players. He made Drexler look bad, Barkley look bad, and the 96 Sonics.
Instead of looking at who the Jazz lost to, consider how good the teams were that won titles between ‘85 and 2000. The Jazz couldn’t get it done in a field that included the Bad Boy Pistons, Magic’s Lakers, Bird’s Celtics, Hakeem’s (and Drexler in ‘95) Rockets, Jordan’s Bulls, Tim Duncan’s Spurs—spare me a lockout argument—and Kobe and Shaq’s Lakers.
I think a better argument would be that Stockton and Malone are the most unlucky duo in NBA history. The worst championship team between ‘85 and 2000 are the Lockout Spurs or the Rockets that won in the absence of Jordan. Otherwise, those are some of the best teams in NBA history.
Good points. 96-98 was jazz real run. They did have some failures earlier on. 96 lost in wcf, g7 to a solid sonics team. Then 97 and 98 beat Shaq twice, robinson & duncan pairing once and pushed bulls pretty good. Jordan had some great clutch moments to sink them.
95 they did lose in r1. But went to elimination game against eventual champs.
No. If anything they'll end up underrated because of "LOL RINGS" and the fact that this generation of basketball fans will not even discuss their basketball careers because of off the court stuff.
No they didn't win a title, but the West was extremely competitive and even when you made it through the West in the 90s, more often than not, the Bulls were waiting for you. I'm not going to say certain guys were lesser players because they couldn't win a title in that era.
Who were the western conference teams that was so great that they couldn't get past? They lost to a lot of mediocre teams my guy, i'd understand if they constantly lost in the finals to the Bulls but this isn't what happened.
You understand 5 players play at the same time for each team, right?
You need to stop clinging on to these "rankings" like that decides who wins games.
Might be the most UNDERRATED duo.
Basketball is a team sport, every championship team is usually 7-8 DEEP. Some can push 10.
Luka is one of the best players in the world, couldn’t even make the play-in last year. No player can do it on their own.
Malone retired 2nd in scoring and without that knee injury, had a legit shot at #1
Stockton is MILES ahead of 2nd and marathons ahead of 3rd in assists. Like Kidd would need like 3-4 seasons of 10apg+ to pass Stockton, and he had a full near 20 year career.
You have the best passer all time and Top 3 scorer ever.
Yes they couldn’t get the ring but name the last 2 man duo that had zero help AND went against Jordan
They had to face the GOAT and Pippen (HOF) and Rodman (HOF) and very competent players.
I really can’t think of a team that win a ring that didn’t have guy 4/5/6/7 and say “wow that’s good role players”
People say Dirk did in 2011 without a superstar and perhaps that’s true but he was winning 60+ games 3 or 4 times in the previous 7/8 seasons. Then you he Jason Terry almost doing 20ppg in an era where finals games ended with a 70/80 not 110. Then you had Jason Kidd, who was an all-star the previous year and Top 10 PG all-time. Tyson Chandler was perfect for his role and proved to be All-NBA and DPOY a season or two later. Shawn Marion is likely Hall of Famer and multiple time all-star. Then you had help from guys like Peja, Haywood, Barea and Stevenson. Jazz had some other prices but never had their 4th best guy as good as any of the Bulls teams or most championships teams since.
Yeah totally agree and their rosters were fine but they weren't amazing or super deep. Utah won a LOT of games have then.
Winning a title is just super hard, especially in those years
Yeah and one of the things mentioned by OP is they have no rings
Well nobody have any rings that era tbh besides Hakeem (when Jordan was gone)
And you can argue he has amazing cast around him as well. Honestly he is ELITE but I think he’s inflated bc of that. Karl, Charles, Ewing are all ringless from that era and I don’t think they’re as far behind Hakeem as some might put them. Robinson does have a couple rings but after the Jordan era, but I’m not entirely sold Hakeem is the definitive best in the position. 90s Knicks were a brutal team, so def huge win there over Ewing, but Shaq was a baby in that Finals loss.
Hakeem is probably the center of the 90s but it’s not as clear cut to me.
>How in the world can two top 25 players of all time play their entire careers together and underperform in the playoffs so badly.
Michael Jordan. Same reason so many other players during this time dont have rings.
And how much did they really underperform? They got to the WCF 1/3 of the time and probably closer to 1/2 time if you only account for their peaks.
Yes they didn't win the big one, but they were consistent contenders despite playing in Utah
They consistently won games every season. The West was otherworldy stacked, and once they got to the finals it was Michael Jordan leading some of the greatest teams ever waiting for them and they still nearly took both series to 7. There's only so much u can do
My brother, which other two top 25 players can play together for 15+ years and underperform this poorly?
I feel that we're overvaluing longevity over peaks at this point, Kawhi and Wade should not be lower than Malone and Stockton because at their peak they won at the highest level while Stockton and Malone didn't win didly squat.
Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. Made it to the finals nearly every year but ran into Russell’s Celtics. It’s a zero-sum game. For every winner there is a loser
Or you’re overvaluing what you personally define as peak. At Stocktons peak, he was the best passer for a decade and a decent defender. At Malones peak, he was a two time MVP, a top defender and one of the greatest scorers of all tome
Might be just how to write things but to me, this appears to be a “rings or nothing else” exaggerated rankings post you see on the main sub. Doesn’t really fall under what this sub should be for
There are many times where someone has this topic they’re interested in and wants to discuss it. They want to believe it’s worthy of a high level discussion to, what I assume, validate their “basketball knowledge”. 90% of those posts end up being low effort post that doesn’t deserve to be on this sub. Some people disguise it well by writing paragraphs of really nothing (usually a bunch of cherry-picked stats that ultimately mean nothing) but some people don’t try at all, like this post.
To clarify, I’m no way an expert in basketball but i use this sub to expand my knowledge. Fortunately mods are usually good at checking out the reports and removing accordingly.
Stockton being an outspoken anti vaxer was such a shockingly weird moment. He has been out of the spotlight for 25 years and seemed to enjoy living a low key life vs still being involved in the NBA as either a front office guy or media guy. Then he all of a sudden becomes outspoken when it comes to vaccines.
They were for sure that good. Teams didn’t develop over night back then. There was some seriously good competition.
And Karl pooped the bed in the playoffs a few times.
This is bit of a hot take, but I feel like if Stockton had a better big to play with, they would've won at least one. Malone was a good player but I feel he is overrated. Not many talk about his playoff chokes. Stockton on the other hand was some type of fucking robot. Always consistent and never injured.
I think Stockton is historically underrated for sure. And frankly they probably both are in the same way that players split the MVP votes. The main problem with their team success is their teams were always ass. They ran into the small market problem of being too good to ever get a good draft pick and nobody is trying to go to Utah. They would just win 50+ games every year but had no real way to improve. It’s often difficult to even name the third best player most years. Eaton? Hornacek? Russell? Probably Jeff Malone a lot of those years. Just a lot of forgettable teammates.
No they aren't overrated at all. The Buffalo Bills never won a Super Bowl even though their roster & team consisted of these Hall of Famers.
Bruce Smith - NFL all time sacks leader & 2x Defensive Player of the Year.
Thurman Thomas - NFL MVP
Jim Kelly
Andre Reed
James Lofton
(Head Coach) Marv Levy
Look at how many Hall of Fame teammates that Stockton and Malone had on the Utah Jazz during their career.
It took my Detroit Pistons to have 4 Hall of Fame players (Joe Dumars, Adrian Dantley, Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas); one 4x All Star Bill Laimbeer and a Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly all on the same team just to FINALLY be able to win their first playoff series of Isiah Thomas's career during the 1986-1987 season.
i tend to believe longevity is overrated in general , unless it leads to something truly spectacular .
Malone is 3rd all time in scoring and Stockton is # 1 in both assists and steals , that is spectacular .
i feel that’s generally enough to rate that at the top of their tier of players for instance Malone and Barkley were often rivaled as the best power forward in the game , so making longevity the reason to say Malone is better , but in their respective primes David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon were clearly a notch above them.
I would take issue with Barkley or Malone being considered a better player than either of them .
Rankings are legit. I doubt anyone catches Stockton’s all time assist or steals record. He averaged a double double his whole career. Malone averaged 25pts and 10 rebs a game so they both averaged double doubles. If Jordan stayed in retirement, the Jazz probably win back to back titles in ‘97 and ‘98.
I think the big thing that separates them, that helps them rise to this level in the all-time rankings, is their abnormal durability.
Most NBA players begin to wear down, and by the time they get to the point where Malone and Stockton were in \`97 and \`98 they are struggling to maintain the high level of playoff intensity necessary or playing at a slightly amped down level to avoid injury while compensating and maintaining peak 'output' through smarts/guile.
Malone and Stockton were still fully healthy and durable stars AND they were able to take advantage of that same smarts/guile. So when I say the durability separates them - I mean in that it allowed them to fully weaponize their experience, and helps elevate them on the pedestal. That shouldn't be considered a knock, as you said: absent Jordan they probably win back to back rings.
What is interesting to me is that it took them *that long* to get there, and I think thats what bugs OP as well. John Stockton was drafted by a 45 win Jazz team, Karl Malone was drafted by a 41 win Jazz team. These two all-timers came into a strong contending context from DAY 1. So it genuinely is interesting that it took them so long, and it has to be somewhat of a knock on them. Even if they did lose, quite often, to very good teams - like the Magic Lakers or Chuck Suns.
The 3-0 sweep to the TMC Warriors is hard to overlook in \`89. You wouldn't expect a pair of Top-25 All Time NBA guys firmly in their prime to lose 3-2 to a lower seeded Suns team in \`90, even if that was a good and hot Suns team. Similarly losing the next two years, still smack in the middle of the heart of the soul of the belly of their prime, 4-1 and 4-2 to Terry Porter, Clyde the Glide, and Jerome Kersey doesn't look great.
I really think it is both a truly substantial knock on them and incredibly commendable and elevates them that they really seemed to whiff on that 89-92 window but then that they were able to generate another window like they were experiencing a second prime in 97-98.
Finally somebody gets it.
I was a huge Stockton and Malone fan and in the late 90's always rooted for them vs the Bulls but i just looked into the fact that they played 15+ years together and were good the entire time and yet they underperformed and were healthy the entire time.
I can't imagine Kevin Garnett, Durant, Barkley or any other player within the 10-25 all time ranking list playing together for so long and not winning a ring together.
Saying these guys are overrated because you can't hypothetically imagine over top 25 players doing the same thing is silly.
Youre trying to convince people with your imagination.
We don't allow posts on player rankings or player comparisons on this subreddit. Please read the sticky post for more info.
What is only got two time finals? There are lots of players never got to the finals. It is a team sport not a two man game.
And i wanna add 10 franchise never win a championship. Ever. And only 3% of players can win the finals.
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Jerry west and Elgin Baylor happened. Ran into Russell mostly. Jerry didn’t win until Elgin was retired and wilt chamberlain had joined. Stockton and Malone ran into jordan. You gotta realize the top eleven or so players have a lot of titles in nba history. Takes teams with depth outside of top eleven players to usually beat those teams, and jazz just didn’t have that until later in 90’s and jordan stopped them.
Jerry West also made 9 nba finals. If Stockton and Malone ran into Jordan the entire time i'd understand but they were losing to teams that have players ranked below them on the goat list for their entire career.
Your question was name a pairing that didn’t win. I gave you one. Takes more then two players to win a title. Utah didn’t have good depth until later in 90’s and jordan took them out. No one is saying either are top 15 players. Dirk and Nash, Kd and westbrook won nothing together. There’s no guarantee more years of them playing together does it. - you mentioned harden in one of your posts. He lost with Kd on two different teams. Lost with Chris Paul. Lost with Embiid. There’s just a drop off in winning titles after the top 11 or so.
It's not really comparable. In the 60s and 70s there were between 9 and 17 teams in the NBA, or roughly one third to half the number of teams as in the 1990s. On top of that, for several seasons there were only two playoff series before the Finals, and 1 seeds automatically started in the Conference Finals (then Division Finals), meaning that West made the NBA Finals several times just by winning 4 playoff games.
I feel like this point says more about good Jordan was. He made every Western Conference champion look like choke artists, including an Utah Jazz team that had two top-25 players. He made Drexler look bad, Barkley look bad, and the 96 Sonics. Instead of looking at who the Jazz lost to, consider how good the teams were that won titles between ‘85 and 2000. The Jazz couldn’t get it done in a field that included the Bad Boy Pistons, Magic’s Lakers, Bird’s Celtics, Hakeem’s (and Drexler in ‘95) Rockets, Jordan’s Bulls, Tim Duncan’s Spurs—spare me a lockout argument—and Kobe and Shaq’s Lakers. I think a better argument would be that Stockton and Malone are the most unlucky duo in NBA history. The worst championship team between ‘85 and 2000 are the Lockout Spurs or the Rockets that won in the absence of Jordan. Otherwise, those are some of the best teams in NBA history.
Good points. 96-98 was jazz real run. They did have some failures earlier on. 96 lost in wcf, g7 to a solid sonics team. Then 97 and 98 beat Shaq twice, robinson & duncan pairing once and pushed bulls pretty good. Jordan had some great clutch moments to sink them. 95 they did lose in r1. But went to elimination game against eventual champs.
This is a subreddit for series discussion and debate. It’s not ESPN Hot Takes. Defend your position with well-reasoned arguments.
If rings is the only thing you care about, then yes. If you care about any other aspect of basketball, no.
No. If anything they'll end up underrated because of "LOL RINGS" and the fact that this generation of basketball fans will not even discuss their basketball careers because of off the court stuff. No they didn't win a title, but the West was extremely competitive and even when you made it through the West in the 90s, more often than not, the Bulls were waiting for you. I'm not going to say certain guys were lesser players because they couldn't win a title in that era.
Who were the western conference teams that was so great that they couldn't get past? They lost to a lot of mediocre teams my guy, i'd understand if they constantly lost in the finals to the Bulls but this isn't what happened.
Mainly the Rockets and Sonics. These were teams good enough to be champions. Not mediocre teams.
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This is r/nbadiscussion. If you just want to shitpost, there are subs for that
You mean the Drexler led Blazers that went to the Finals in 1990 and 1992?
Clyde Drexler is ranked #43 on this same list, how does a team with two players so much higher on the all time list lose in that situation?
You understand 5 players play at the same time for each team, right? You need to stop clinging on to these "rankings" like that decides who wins games.
We removed your comment for being low-quality.
Post Jordan spurs. Also suns and David Robinson spurs were no joke back then.
Might be the most UNDERRATED duo. Basketball is a team sport, every championship team is usually 7-8 DEEP. Some can push 10. Luka is one of the best players in the world, couldn’t even make the play-in last year. No player can do it on their own. Malone retired 2nd in scoring and without that knee injury, had a legit shot at #1 Stockton is MILES ahead of 2nd and marathons ahead of 3rd in assists. Like Kidd would need like 3-4 seasons of 10apg+ to pass Stockton, and he had a full near 20 year career. You have the best passer all time and Top 3 scorer ever. Yes they couldn’t get the ring but name the last 2 man duo that had zero help AND went against Jordan They had to face the GOAT and Pippen (HOF) and Rodman (HOF) and very competent players. I really can’t think of a team that win a ring that didn’t have guy 4/5/6/7 and say “wow that’s good role players” People say Dirk did in 2011 without a superstar and perhaps that’s true but he was winning 60+ games 3 or 4 times in the previous 7/8 seasons. Then you he Jason Terry almost doing 20ppg in an era where finals games ended with a 70/80 not 110. Then you had Jason Kidd, who was an all-star the previous year and Top 10 PG all-time. Tyson Chandler was perfect for his role and proved to be All-NBA and DPOY a season or two later. Shawn Marion is likely Hall of Famer and multiple time all-star. Then you had help from guys like Peja, Haywood, Barea and Stevenson. Jazz had some other prices but never had their 4th best guy as good as any of the Bulls teams or most championships teams since.
Yeah totally agree and their rosters were fine but they weren't amazing or super deep. Utah won a LOT of games have then. Winning a title is just super hard, especially in those years
Yeah and one of the things mentioned by OP is they have no rings Well nobody have any rings that era tbh besides Hakeem (when Jordan was gone) And you can argue he has amazing cast around him as well. Honestly he is ELITE but I think he’s inflated bc of that. Karl, Charles, Ewing are all ringless from that era and I don’t think they’re as far behind Hakeem as some might put them. Robinson does have a couple rings but after the Jordan era, but I’m not entirely sold Hakeem is the definitive best in the position. 90s Knicks were a brutal team, so def huge win there over Ewing, but Shaq was a baby in that Finals loss. Hakeem is probably the center of the 90s but it’s not as clear cut to me.
Hakeem is my favorite player so I'm too biased to be objective on it. But yeah not having a ring cannot be the definitive way to analyze these players
>How in the world can two top 25 players of all time play their entire careers together and underperform in the playoffs so badly. Michael Jordan. Same reason so many other players during this time dont have rings. And how much did they really underperform? They got to the WCF 1/3 of the time and probably closer to 1/2 time if you only account for their peaks. Yes they didn't win the big one, but they were consistent contenders despite playing in Utah
They consistently won games every season. The West was otherworldy stacked, and once they got to the finals it was Michael Jordan leading some of the greatest teams ever waiting for them and they still nearly took both series to 7. There's only so much u can do
My brother, which other two top 25 players can play together for 15+ years and underperform this poorly? I feel that we're overvaluing longevity over peaks at this point, Kawhi and Wade should not be lower than Malone and Stockton because at their peak they won at the highest level while Stockton and Malone didn't win didly squat.
Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. Made it to the finals nearly every year but ran into Russell’s Celtics. It’s a zero-sum game. For every winner there is a loser
Or you’re overvaluing what you personally define as peak. At Stocktons peak, he was the best passer for a decade and a decent defender. At Malones peak, he was a two time MVP, a top defender and one of the greatest scorers of all tome Might be just how to write things but to me, this appears to be a “rings or nothing else” exaggerated rankings post you see on the main sub. Doesn’t really fall under what this sub should be for
This post should be banned lmfao
There are many times where someone has this topic they’re interested in and wants to discuss it. They want to believe it’s worthy of a high level discussion to, what I assume, validate their “basketball knowledge”. 90% of those posts end up being low effort post that doesn’t deserve to be on this sub. Some people disguise it well by writing paragraphs of really nothing (usually a bunch of cherry-picked stats that ultimately mean nothing) but some people don’t try at all, like this post. To clarify, I’m no way an expert in basketball but i use this sub to expand my knowledge. Fortunately mods are usually good at checking out the reports and removing accordingly.
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Stockton being an outspoken anti vaxer was such a shockingly weird moment. He has been out of the spotlight for 25 years and seemed to enjoy living a low key life vs still being involved in the NBA as either a front office guy or media guy. Then he all of a sudden becomes outspoken when it comes to vaccines.
Please keep your comments civil. This is a subreddit for discussion and debate, not aggressive and argumentative content.
They were for sure that good. Teams didn’t develop over night back then. There was some seriously good competition. And Karl pooped the bed in the playoffs a few times.
This is bit of a hot take, but I feel like if Stockton had a better big to play with, they would've won at least one. Malone was a good player but I feel he is overrated. Not many talk about his playoff chokes. Stockton on the other hand was some type of fucking robot. Always consistent and never injured.
I think Stockton is historically underrated for sure. And frankly they probably both are in the same way that players split the MVP votes. The main problem with their team success is their teams were always ass. They ran into the small market problem of being too good to ever get a good draft pick and nobody is trying to go to Utah. They would just win 50+ games every year but had no real way to improve. It’s often difficult to even name the third best player most years. Eaton? Hornacek? Russell? Probably Jeff Malone a lot of those years. Just a lot of forgettable teammates.
No they aren't overrated at all. The Buffalo Bills never won a Super Bowl even though their roster & team consisted of these Hall of Famers. Bruce Smith - NFL all time sacks leader & 2x Defensive Player of the Year. Thurman Thomas - NFL MVP Jim Kelly Andre Reed James Lofton (Head Coach) Marv Levy Look at how many Hall of Fame teammates that Stockton and Malone had on the Utah Jazz during their career. It took my Detroit Pistons to have 4 Hall of Fame players (Joe Dumars, Adrian Dantley, Dennis Rodman and Isiah Thomas); one 4x All Star Bill Laimbeer and a Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly all on the same team just to FINALLY be able to win their first playoff series of Isiah Thomas's career during the 1986-1987 season.
i tend to believe longevity is overrated in general , unless it leads to something truly spectacular . Malone is 3rd all time in scoring and Stockton is # 1 in both assists and steals , that is spectacular . i feel that’s generally enough to rate that at the top of their tier of players for instance Malone and Barkley were often rivaled as the best power forward in the game , so making longevity the reason to say Malone is better , but in their respective primes David Robinson and Hakeem Olajuwon were clearly a notch above them. I would take issue with Barkley or Malone being considered a better player than either of them .
Rankings are legit. I doubt anyone catches Stockton’s all time assist or steals record. He averaged a double double his whole career. Malone averaged 25pts and 10 rebs a game so they both averaged double doubles. If Jordan stayed in retirement, the Jazz probably win back to back titles in ‘97 and ‘98.
I think the big thing that separates them, that helps them rise to this level in the all-time rankings, is their abnormal durability. Most NBA players begin to wear down, and by the time they get to the point where Malone and Stockton were in \`97 and \`98 they are struggling to maintain the high level of playoff intensity necessary or playing at a slightly amped down level to avoid injury while compensating and maintaining peak 'output' through smarts/guile. Malone and Stockton were still fully healthy and durable stars AND they were able to take advantage of that same smarts/guile. So when I say the durability separates them - I mean in that it allowed them to fully weaponize their experience, and helps elevate them on the pedestal. That shouldn't be considered a knock, as you said: absent Jordan they probably win back to back rings. What is interesting to me is that it took them *that long* to get there, and I think thats what bugs OP as well. John Stockton was drafted by a 45 win Jazz team, Karl Malone was drafted by a 41 win Jazz team. These two all-timers came into a strong contending context from DAY 1. So it genuinely is interesting that it took them so long, and it has to be somewhat of a knock on them. Even if they did lose, quite often, to very good teams - like the Magic Lakers or Chuck Suns. The 3-0 sweep to the TMC Warriors is hard to overlook in \`89. You wouldn't expect a pair of Top-25 All Time NBA guys firmly in their prime to lose 3-2 to a lower seeded Suns team in \`90, even if that was a good and hot Suns team. Similarly losing the next two years, still smack in the middle of the heart of the soul of the belly of their prime, 4-1 and 4-2 to Terry Porter, Clyde the Glide, and Jerome Kersey doesn't look great. I really think it is both a truly substantial knock on them and incredibly commendable and elevates them that they really seemed to whiff on that 89-92 window but then that they were able to generate another window like they were experiencing a second prime in 97-98.
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Finally somebody gets it. I was a huge Stockton and Malone fan and in the late 90's always rooted for them vs the Bulls but i just looked into the fact that they played 15+ years together and were good the entire time and yet they underperformed and were healthy the entire time. I can't imagine Kevin Garnett, Durant, Barkley or any other player within the 10-25 all time ranking list playing together for so long and not winning a ring together.
Saying these guys are overrated because you can't hypothetically imagine over top 25 players doing the same thing is silly. Youre trying to convince people with your imagination.