Who deserves a spot on the NBA's 80th anniversary team? Adding four players to hypothetical Top 80 list

Before the 2021-22 season, the NBA chose its 75 greatest players to celebrate its 75 seasons of play. However, that process notably ended with 76 players chosen because a tie in the voting process. The full list, which features a who's who of Hall of Famers, can be found here.Now that we've hit another round number with 80 seasons in the books, we can correct that imbalance by naming four new players to a hypothetical NBA Top 80 list. All 76 players chosen, either in 2021 or initially for the NBA's top 50 list during the 1996-97 season, will stay put. Only four new players get slots.We are not limiting ourselves to players with newly minted candidacies, though. Anyone who has ever stepped on an NBA court and was not chosen for that 2021 list of 76 players is eligible. We will judge players exclusively on the merits of what they have accomplished through the 2025-26 season. That means retired players, whose entire careers are complete, will actually have an edge over active players, but the counterpoint is that most retired players have been passed over at least once, whereas some of our active choices were simply too young and unaccomplished when the 2021 list was made to garner serious consideration.So how are we going to do this? Well, to be blunt, there are two no-brainers here. We'll start there before making the two agonizing final choices. The no-brainers: Jokić and SGAA total of 16 players have won multiple NBA MVP awards, and of those 16 players, 14 were on the NBA's Top 75 list. The two who weren't at the time were both relatively early in their careers. Nikola Jokić had just won his first MVP award, but had only played six NBA seasons when the list was published. Shaquille O'Neal made the top 50 with no MVP awards and only four full years of experience, but he had led a team to the NBA Finals, which Jokić, to that point, had not. With 2011 MVP winner Derrick Rose also excluded, there was at least some basis for ignoring another MVP winner from that initial list based on experience. However, Jokić has since added two more MVP trophies and a championship ring, so he is now an obvious selection.Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has won the last two NBA MVP awards. Getty Images Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, on the other hand, hadn't even made an All-Star team by 2021. He was still coming into his own with the Oklahoma City Thunder, but has since won two MVPs and a championship. Though he hasn't accomplished quite as much as Jokić to this point, there is no question whatsoever that he is one of the 80 greatest players in NBA history. No need to waste any more time arguing his merits. He's an easy pick. Who are the candidates for the last two slots?OK, so with Jokić and Gilgeous-Alexander, we're at 78 players.Before we move forward with our last two picks, we have to figure out what exactly this list is rewarding. There's a pretty clear answer here: winning and MVP awards. Multiple players on the NBA's Top 50 list from the 90s (Lenny Wilkens and Nate Thurmond) never made an All-NBA team. Even Ray Allen made the 2021 update with just two selections. Meanwhile, both Dwight Howard and Tracy McGrady made seven All-NBA Teams and were excluded. We covered MVPs above. There are only two that remain unchosen, one of whom hadn't won his award yet in 2021.Of the 76 players chosen in 2021, 58 had won championships. Of the remaining 18, 11 played in the NBA Finals at least once, and of those 11, five won MVP awards. It was hard to make this list without either having a trophy or having a trip to the NBA Finals on your résumé. Only six players had neither: Dave Bing, Carmelo Anthony, George Gervin, Pete Maravich, Damian Lillard and Dominique Wilkins. Meanwhile, only two post-merger teams, the 1978-79 Seattle Supersonics and 2003-04 Detroit Pistons, had not a single player make the list.So those are the basic parameters we're looking for here: MVP winners, players with multiple championships, or players who led a single champion or at least a Finals team. So let's start sorting. The MVP winnersWe addressed Derrick Rose above, and his prime was just cut too short to seriously factor into the discussion here. He won his MVP award in his third season and remained a star for one more season before tearing his ACL and declining precipitously. He is not one of the 250 highest scorers in NBA history, never reached the Finals and never even made another All-NBA Team. Things probably would have gone differently had he stayed healthy, but he didn't.Joel Embiid has a case that is a bit more interesting. He has only scored around 1,000 more total points in the NBA than Rose has, but he has packed those points more efficiently into individual games and seasons. He's played 233 fewer regular-season games, but he's made five All-NBA Teams and three All-Defensive Teams, accolades that dwarf what Rose accomplished aside from his MVP season. For his career, he has averaged roughly 10 more points per game with an effective field goal percentage five points higher, and Embiid dwarfs Rose in most all-in-one metrics. Rose had a Box Plus-Minus of 6.8 when he won his MVP award. Embiid has a Box Plus-Minus of 6.7 for his entire career. Rose doesn't have much of a case here, but Embiid warrants real consideration.Players who led a single championship or Finals teamRight away, a number of notable players are about to enter the chat. Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brunson are the two newly eligible members of the "best player on a championship team" club here, as Stephen Curry was already chosen in the 2021 list and we've already added Jokić and Gilgeous-Alexander. Of the two, Tatum undoubtedly has the more complete case. Tatum has twice as many All-Star selections, more First-Team All-NBA selections (four) than Brunson has overall All-NBA selections (three) and more than 3,000 more total points. With edges in most all-in-one metrics and a wide canyon on defense, Brunson really only has two advantages: a Finals MVP award and his more efficient offense, especially in the clutch. If your life was on the line in a single game, you might genuinely choose Brunson, and he deserves a real look for one of the spots we're handing out here. But of the two, Tatum's case is better.We mentioned earlier that the 2004 Pistons and 1979 Sonics don't have any players chosen for either list. Do either deserve a representative? My inclination is no. Neither team had a clear "best" player. Gus Williams led the 1979 Sonics in scoring, but at just 19.2 points per game. Jack Sikma and Dennis Johnson were All-Stars, but not All-NBA choices. That was an ensemble cast, and so were the 2004 Pistons. They also lacked a 20-point scorer, but they did have a player worth examining here. Ben Wallace was the only 2004 Piston chosen for the All-Star Game. He also won four Defensive Player of the Year awards. However, as Dikembe Mutombo didn't make the 2021 list with just as many and a more well-rounded résumé, I'd lean against Wallace even with the ring. Dennis Rodman needed five championships to make the list as a non-scorer.What about teams that made the Finals and lost? Well, everyone else is lucky that we're doing this list in 2026, because by next year, it's possible Victor Wembanyama has accomplished enough to demand inclusion. Alas, thus far, he hasn't. For different reasons, it would be difficult to include recent runner-up leaders like Devin Booker and Jimmy Butler. The field is just too crowded. We have two very obvious names to cover. The first is Dwight Howard, who, as we mentioned above, has seven All-NBA selections, but also has a championship with the 2020 Lakers and three Defensive Player of the Year awards. Even if Wallace and Mutombo were better defenders, Howard laps them both offensively and was a far more valuable overall team centerpiece. He was widely considered one of the biggest snubs in 2021, so we're considering him now.And then there's Luka Dončić, whose accumulation resume is similar to Tatum's, but without the championship. He has Six First-Team All-NBA picks to Tatum's four, and notably, the 21 other players with that many selections made the list or, in Jokić's, make our update. Both Dončić and Tatum have six All-Star selections, and Dončić destroys him by basically any statistical measure besides efficiency (expected, given their roles). Championships matter, but Dončić has a wide enough gap to qualify as the best candidate we've covered thus far.Multiple-time championsThe top 50 list from 1997 loved taking the second-, third- and even fourth-best players from teams to win multiple championships, but strangely, the 2021 list mostly ignored such players. The San Antonio Spurs dynasty got Tim Duncan selected, but not Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili. The Golden State Warriors of the 2010s and 2020s got Stephen Curry picked, but not Klay Thompson or Draymond Green. Even the late-2000s Lakers, who won two titles and lost a third Finals, couldn't get Pau Gasol chosen. On this note, we should probably mention Dennis Johnson as a crossover candidate. He was arguably the best player on the 1979 Sonics, but he went on to win two more championships with the Boston Celtics. Of those six, Gasol probably has the best case. He's tied for the most All-Star and All-NBA selections, played the second-most games, averaged the second-most points and ranks at or near the top of the group in terms of the all-in-one metrics. Ginobili's accumulation numbers were muted by coming off the bench. Parker was a starter on the same team, but none of the Spurs from that era age especially well statistically, in part because of the sacrifices everyone on that team made. The Warriors players just got squeezed out by virtue of an overcrowded list. Thompson's case holds up well against Reggie Miller's, and Green is at least comparable to Dennis Rodman. They made the cut in less restrictive votes. Since the 2021 vote removed no one from 1997, we won't be either. Johnson falls in the same boat. His résumé outshines Dave DeBusschere's in just about every respect except raw scoring and rebounding. But Debusschere likely misses the cut in a completely remade list, so Johnson probably gets crowded out as well.The final two selections: Luka and ... ?One of our two final choices is relatively straightforward. Luka Dončić, like Jokić and Gilgeous-Alexander, has sustained a peak that has historically warranted automatic inclusion on this list. If every other six-time First-Team All-NBA selection has made the cut, it seems wrong to leave Dončić out purely for his lack of a championship. Even if he doesn't have an MVP award, a season in which he nearly averaged 34 points, 10 assists and nine rebounds would certainly qualify as "MVP-caliber." He's just hit statistical heights that Brunson, Tatum, Gasol and Howard have never remotely broached, and he's paired that with similar dominance in the postseason. This is where the questions start to arise. His only statistical peer in this group is Joel Embiid. Dončić has the highest Box Plus-Minus of the group, but Embiid posts the most Win Shares per 48 minutes. By the numbers, the two of them are head and shoulders above the others, and with Rose being the only excluded MVP, we'd need a good reason to leave Embiid out, especially since his on-paper resume dwarfs Rose's.The answer here, aside from durability, is the postseason. Embiid has never reached the conference finals. He's faced Tatum and Brunson in the playoffs six times and lost five of those series, with the only victory coming this season, when Tatum missed Game 7 of their first-round series. As we've covered, this is a list that prizes playoff success. Embiid has barely had any, and his individual numbers have dipped in the postseason as well. These are case flaws that may well be resolved by the time the NBA reaches its 100th anniversary. For now, it just seems to defy the spirit of this list to put Embiid in over peers with substantially stronger postseason track records.So that leaves us with two active players in Tatum and Brunson who have been the best players on championship teams and two retired players in Howard and Gasol who weren't. With apologies to Gasol and Brunson, they are the slightly weaker candidates in their categories. For Brunson, that's partially a matter of starting his career as a reserve. It's possible he catches Tatum before the end of their careers, especially with the lone head-to-head series victory between them. He just hasn't had the chance to accomplish as much as Tatum, who was a starter on a contender from the jump. Gasol simply didn't peak as high as Howard did. Howard has all five First-Team All-NBA selections between them.So Tatum and Howard are the last men standing. Howard probably peaked higher. He has a second-place MVP finish. Tatum has never finished higher than fourth. Three Defensive Player of the Year trophies are nothing to sneeze at either even if this list hasn't tended to value those awards much. He also, frankly, did more with less. Does Tatum have a single individual achievement more impressive than Howard slaying prime LeBron James in a playoff series? Howard obviously had the superior supporting cast in the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals... but when has Tatum not had the superior supporting cast in just about any series he's participated in? As sidekicks go, you'd rather have Jaylen Brown than Rashard Lewis. By virtue of playing longer, Howard obviously has the accumulation edge. Luka Dončić and Dwight Howard have combined for 14 All-NBA selections. Imagn Images But having a "best player on the team" championship carries a lot of weight. Howard won his ring as a reserve. Howard was also the dominant center of a league that had no dominant centers, whereas Tatum has been one of the NBA's most consistent wings in a league that has never been more wing-centric. Howard complained about his role frequently. Tatum is a sorely underrated chameleon who won his championship in part because he could pass like a point guard and defend opposing centers. You'd rather have Tatum on your team because you can have any sort of team when Tatum is a part of it.If Tatum hadn't torn his Achilles, he might have been my pick. If I was making this pick a year later, when he's had one more chance at beefing up his résumé, he might be the pick. But by the slimmest of margins, I landed on Dwight Howard. It just doesn't feel right to deny the player with both the higher peak and the longer track record, even if a good chunk of that track record was spent as a role player. When it's all said and done, I suspect Tatum has the better career than Howard. For now, this feels like an opportunity to rectify Howard's 2021 snub. He should have made the cut last time. He sneaks through in our update.