10 Active NBA Players With The Most Career Points Who Haven’t Won A Championship
· Yahoo Sports
Since Russell Westbrook decided to call it a career this offseason after 18 years in the NBA, the league lost one of its most prominent stars without a title of the generation. Westbrook retired with 27,176 career points, an MVP, nine All-Star selections, two scoring titles, and basically every triple-double record possible, but he never got the one thing every superstar wants at some point: a championship.
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Taking Westbrook out leaves James Harden as the clear leader among active players who still haven’t won a ring. Harden just re-signed with the Cavaliers on a three-year, $97 million deal after helping them reach the Eastern Conference Finals last season, while DeMar DeRozan is still sitting in free agency and has started to get some real interest from contenders, including the Nuggets.
And the names are still huge after those two. Damian Lillard is still here, Paul George is trying to win with Boston, Jimmy Butler will come back this season, and Devin Booker has already piled up more than 18,000 points before turning 30. Some of these guys still have a few years to try. Others are pretty much entering their last real chances.
With Westbrook officially out of the picture, here are the 10 active NBA players with the most regular-season career points who still haven’t won an NBA championship.
10. Jimmy Butler – 16,658 Career Points
With 16,658 points, Jimmy Butler barely sneaks into the top 10, but his story is probably more painful than most of the players here because he has already gotten extremely close.
Butler reached the NBA Finals twice with the Heat, first in 2020 and then again in 2023. Miami lost to the Lakers in the bubble and then to the Nuggets three years later, but both runs were basically built around Butler becoming a different breed once the playoffs started. That is where the whole “Playoff Jimmy” thing came from.
He was still really good last season too. Butler put up 20.0 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 4.9 assists in 38 games for the Warriors while shooting 51.9% from the field and 37.6% from three. His 64.6% true shooting showed he was still getting his points without needing a ton of shots.
Then everything went wrong. Butler tore his right ACL in January and missed the rest of the season. At 36 years old, that is obviously a brutal injury, especially for a player whose game still depends a lot on strength, movement, and getting downhill.
The Warriors still have Stephen Curry in a roster that, although pretty disappointing for me, is still trying to win now, so Butler probably isn’t done chasing a title. The question is simply what version of him comes back. If he can still be close to the guy Golden State had before the injury, he has a chance. If not, his championship window is probably done.
9. Mike Conley – 16,715 Career Points
Mike Conley being this high feels weird at first because nobody really thinks of him as a huge scorer. Then you remember he has been in the NBA since 2007.
Conley has scored 16,715 points over 1,226 regular-season games, with career averages of 13.6 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 5.5 assists. He was never a 25-point scorer or anything close to that, but almost two decades of solid production adds up.
Last season clearly showed his age, though. Conley was down to just 4.5 points, 1.7 rebounds, and 2.9 assists in 18.4 minutes per game with the Timberwolves. He shot 33.5% from the field and 33.7% from three, both well below his normal level.
That is why his move to the Celtics makes so much sense. Boston signed Conley to a one-year deal to be a veteran presence. They don’t even need him to score much. They need him to organize the offense, take care of the ball, hit some open threes, and give them 15 decent minutes.
At 38 years old and entering his 20th NBA season, this could easily be Conley’s last championship shot. After all these years, playing a veteran role on a contender is probably exactly where he should be.
8. CJ McCollum – 16,838 Career Points
Widely considered one of the most underrated players of the last decade, CJ McCollum has built one of the better scoring careers of his generation without ever making an All-Star team.
He is now at 16,838 career points and has basically spent his whole career as a reliable 18-to-22 point scorer. McCollum owns career averages of 19.5 points while shooting 45.3% from the field and 39.5% from three, which is pretty impressive for someone who was never really thought of as a superstar.
He also didn’t fall off much last season. Across 76 games between the Wizards and Hawks, McCollum put up 18.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 3.9 assists while shooting 45.5% from the field and 37.5% from three.
The Hawks clearly liked what they saw because they gave him a one-year, $21 million extension. Once he joined them midseason in the Trae Young move, they went 19-6 in the games he started, and came up huge against the Knicks in the first round despite the loss.
McCollum has only made one Conference Finals in his career, back in 2019 with the Blazers. He is 34 now, so there probably aren’t many deep playoff runs left. Atlanta might not be a championship favorite, but at least he is still on a team trying to win instead of finishing his career on a rebuilding roster.
7. Bradley Beal – 17,306 Career Points
There was a time when Bradley Beal looked like he was going to fly past 20,000 points pretty easily.
During his peak with the Wizards, Beal had back-to-back seasons above 30.0 points per game and became one of the best pure scorers in basketball. He now sits at 17,306 career points with career averages of 21.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, and 4.3 assists.
The problem is that the last few years have been a mess because of injuries. Beal’s 2025-26 season lasted only six games with the Clippers before a hip injury ended it. He put up just 8.2 points, 0.8 rebounds, and 1.7 assists while shooting 37.5% from the field, although six games isn’t enough to really judge where he is as a player.
The Clippers still decided to bring him back on a two-year, $13.2 million deal, and honestly that might help him. Beal spent years carrying massive contracts and massive expectations. Now he doesn’t have to play like a $50 million star anymore.
If he can get healthy, score efficiently, and give the Clippers 15 or 16 points per game, that is probably enough. At this point, Beal’s best path to a ring isn’t becoming the guy again. It is becoming a really good fourth option in a competitive roster. The Clippers probably won’t be that team right now.
6. Nikola Vucevic – 17,684 Career Points
Nikola Vucevic is probably the biggest “wait, he has that many?” guy on this entire list.
Vucevic has scored 17,684 points and grabbed more than 10,700 rebounds in his career. He owns career averages of 17.1 points and 10.3 rebounds, so this is basically what happens when a big man gives a team a double-double almost every night for more than a decade.
He was still productive last season with 15.1 points, 8.4 rebounds, and 3.3 assists while shooting 49.3% from the field and 36.9% from three across 64 games between the Bulls and Celtics.
His role really shrunk once he arrived in Boston, though. By the end of the playoffs, he wasn’t really part of the rotation anymore and didn’t play in Game 7 of their first-round loss to the 76ers.
Now he is back where a huge part of his career happened. Vucevic signed a one-year, $3.9 million deal with the Magic, returning to the franchise where he became a two-time All-Star.
Orlando has a good young team, so Vucevic should at least get another shot at playoff basketball. Still, at 35, his role is much different now. He isn’t joining a team to be a 20-point scorer anymore. He is basically trying to give a contender solid bench minutes and see if one last run can finally get him a ring.
5. Devin Booker – 18,120 Career Points
I think there’s only one player this high on the list who still has a lot of time to change his story, and that’s Devin Booker.
Booker already has 18,120 career points at only 29 years old, and those points are also the Suns’ franchise record. He reached that total in just 737 regular-season games, so if he stays healthy, he is going to climb way higher than this.
In the middle of his prime, his averages of 26.1 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 6.0 assists in 64 games last season took the Suns to the playoffs, while shooting 45.6% from the field. His three-point percentage dropped to 33.0%, but he remained the clear engine of Phoenix’s offense.
The frustrating part is that Booker already had a perfect chance to win one. The Suns reached the 2021 Finals and went up 2-0 against the Bucks. At that point, Booker was two wins away from getting a ring at just 24 years old. Then Milwaukee won four straight, and that opportunity disappeared.
Booker can still deliver a championship to the city, but Phoenix isn’t really sitting at the top of the contender list right now either. He still has plenty of years left, but once a player gets into his 30s, these chances start disappearing faster than expected.
4. Paul George – 19,338 Career Points
Paul George is almost at 20,000 points, which says a lot about how good he has been for a very long time. George has scored 19,338 career points across 945 regular-season games. He also has nine All-Star selections, six All-NBA selections, and four All-Defensive selections. That is a Hall of Fame type résumé already.
The only big thing missing is the ring. George averaged 17.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.6 assists last season while shooting 43.9% from the field and 39.2% from three. The scoring clearly isn’t at peak Indiana or Oklahoma City levels anymore, but the shooting still makes him a solid piece despite the age and injuries.
Now he is in Boston after the Celtics acquired him in the Jaylen Brown trade. That gives him another chance to finally win, especially because he doesn’t have to be the No. 1 option next to Jayson Tatum.
George has been close before. He reached the Eastern Conference Finals twice with the Pacers and the Western Conference Finals with the Clippers in 2021. At 36, Boston might be his final shot. He doesn’t need to be prime PG anymore. He just needs to stay healthy and hit shots around Tatum.
3. Damian Lillard – 22,598 Career Points
There is a huge jump here. Damian Lillard sits at 22,598 career points, more than 3,000 ahead of Paul George. And that number didn’t move at all last season because Lillard missed the entire year recovering from the torn Achilles he suffered in the 2025 playoffs.
Before that injury, Lillard was still really good. He averaged 24.9 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 7.1 assists with the Bucks in 2024-25 while shooting 44.8% from the field, 37.6% from three, and 92.1% from the line.
His career numbers are crazy too. Lillard is at 25.1 points and 6.7 assists per game across 900 regular-season appearances. He is already one of the best scoring point guards ever, but the ring keeps eluding him.
Lillard made the Western Conference Finals with the Blazers in 2019, then eventually left Portland because he wanted a better championship chance after the roster failed to make the 2023 postseason. Milwaukee looked like the place where it could finally happen, but that never really worked out the way he expected.
Now he is back with the Blazers after signing a three-year deal in 2025. At 36 and coming off an Achilles tear, nobody really knows what level he can still reach. If he somehow comes back close to his old self, there is still time. But of everyone still at the star level, his title path probably feels the hardest right now.
2. DeMar DeRozan – 26,711 Career Points
DeMar DeRozan being 16th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list still feels kind of crazy. DeRozan has 26,711 regular-season points, one more than Oscar Robertson. That is an absurd amount of scoring for a player who never really built his game around the three-point shot in the modern era.
He was still very good last season at age 36, with 18.4 points, 2.9 rebounds, and 4.1 assists in 77 games for the Kings while shooting 49.7% from the field, 32.0% from three and 86.8% from the line. Even at this point in his career, the mid-range game still is a killer.
The issue now is figuring out where he plays next. Sacramento waived him in July, making him an unrestricted free agent, and several contenders have shown interest. The Nuggets are one of the teams that have checked in on him, and they’ll be even more aggressive since they lost Peyton Watson.
At this stage, Denver would make a lot of sense if DeRozan really wants to chase a title. He wouldn’t need to carry the offense. He wouldn’t need 20 shots. He could just score against second units, run some possessions when Nikola Jokic sits, and give the Nuggets another guy who can create his own shot.
After 26,711 points, DeRozan has basically done everything a scorer can do. The ring is the only major thing missing.
1. James Harden – 29,339 Career Points
And then there is James Harden, who is now clearly No. 1 after Westbrook’s retirement with 29,339 career points. He ranks ninth in NBA history and is only 661 points away from becoming the 10th player ever to reach 30,000. That is legendary scoring territory.
He made the NBA Finals once with the Thunder back in 2012. Then came the brutal 2018 loss with the Rockets, when Houston missed 27 straight threes in Game 7 against the Warriors. Since then, Harden has played for the Nets, 76ers, Clippers, and now Cavaliers, trying to find that one perfect situation.
Across 70 games between the Clippers and Cavaliers last year, he averaged 23.6 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 8.0 assists while shooting 43.4% from the field, 37.5% from three, and 88.4% from the line. After getting traded to Cleveland, his scoring dropped to 20.5 points per game, but his three-point percentage jumped all the way to 43.5% in 26 games.
More importantly, Harden finally has another real shot. The Cavaliers reached the Eastern Conference Finals last season, and Harden just re-signed on a three-year, $97 million contract. Cleveland already proved it can make a deep run, and Harden doesn’t need to be the guy who scores 35 every night anymore.
He is 36 now, so there probably aren’t many chances left, which makes the next couple of seasons in Cleveland pretty important for how his career is remembered. Harden already has an MVP, three scoring titles, two assist titles, and 11 All-Star selections, giving him one of the greatest offensive resumes the NBA has ever seen.
The championship is basically the only major thing missing, and if the Cavaliers can’t get it done while he can still play at this level, Harden could eventually retire as one of the greatest players in league history to never win a ring.