Recently, NBA star Lillard surpassed 20,000 career points, becoming the 51st player in history to complete the award.
The editor analyzed these 51 stars who reached 20,000 points and found that 12 NBA champions were among them, accounting for 24% of the total number. From this point of view, the material (especially the material growth rate) of the NBA champion is very high.
Let's start with who the 12 top picks are: James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, O'Neal, Hayes, Olajuwon, Oscar Robertson, Duncan, Ewing, Iverson, Elgin Baylor, Bellamy, David Robinson. These are people who made a name for themselves as soon as they entered the NBA (or even before they entered the NBA) and quickly became superstars who ruled an era after entering the NBA!
I have to say that the NBA league's overall vision of selecting people is quite good, especially the champion candidates, who are carefully selected from among many potential new stars every season, and must be a group of people with the highest success rate. It's just that the champion has received too much attention, resulting in an occasional few extremely special cases like Bennett and Auden, which gives people the illusion that the champion is easy to "water".
Taking the 23 champions in the 21st century as an example, in the 22 years from 2000 to 2022, 15 champions were selected for the All-Rookie Team in their rookie season, 7 won the Rookie of the Year, 10 became NBA All-Stars, and 5 have won NBA championships. These data show that the level of the champion is absolutely online! It also fully explains why people like the Spurs and Pistons chose to play bad to get the top pick.