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A lot has been made of this new parity-driven era of the NBA, a byproduct of new CBA restrictions that have pretty much killed free agency for elite free agents, making building super-teams nearly impossible. An unintended result of this new NBA is that we now have a record number of active players who have won championships in their careers.
Having a player with championship experience on your roster used to be rare and somewhat valuable, as those players could be looked at as experienced locker-room leaders who know what it takes - and the sacrifices that need to be made - to win it all. Now, that's a lot less rare to find, as a record 70 players who took part in an NBA game in 2025-26 had won a championship before. That's two more than the previous record of 68 players in 2024-25, and eight more than the record before that, 62 players in 2023-24.
Considering that in the '90s, the season with the most active NBA champions was 1996-97, with 42, that just goes to show we're in a new day and age for the Association.
That record of 70 amounts to over 12 percent of players (582 players saw minutes this season) who saw action in 2025-26 having won a championship before.
Hard to fathom.
Of course, this type of record comes with an explanation. We truly are in an era of parity in the NBA. The new CBA has made teams more selective about which players they offer extensions to, both to avoid being saddled with bad contracts and to stay under the tax. As a result, team continuity after winning a championship has taken a hit, making it harder to repeat. Think of Bruce Brown leaving Denver in free agency in 2023, right after the team's title run, as a prime example.
As such, the league has never been as wide open as it is now; the NBA is about to have a record eighth new champion in a row, starting with the Toronto Raptors in 2018-19 and ending either the New York Knicks or San Antonio Spurs this season. A wider number of teams winning championships directly correlates with the record number of championship-winning players we have today.
All in all, we see this number continuing to get larger over the coming years, as whichever team wins the title this season - San Antonio or New York - will create a whole bunch of new championship-winning players. The Knicks have just one player who has won a championship before, Dillon Jones, a member of last season's Thunder squad, while the Spurs have two, Luke Kornet, who won one in Boston in 2023-24, and Harrison Barnes, who won one in Golden State in 2014-15.
With how difficult it is to repeat as champions in the modern NBA, we can see a future with 100-plus active players having championship experience.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: The NBA has never had more championship winners on its rosters
Continue reading...
Having a player with championship experience on your roster used to be rare and somewhat valuable, as those players could be looked at as experienced locker-room leaders who know what it takes - and the sacrifices that need to be made - to win it all. Now, that's a lot less rare to find, as a record 70 players who took part in an NBA game in 2025-26 had won a championship before. That's two more than the previous record of 68 players in 2024-25, and eight more than the record before that, 62 players in 2023-24.
Considering that in the '90s, the season with the most active NBA champions was 1996-97, with 42, that just goes to show we're in a new day and age for the Association.
That record of 70 amounts to over 12 percent of players (582 players saw minutes this season) who saw action in 2025-26 having won a championship before.
Hard to fathom.
Of course, this type of record comes with an explanation. We truly are in an era of parity in the NBA. The new CBA has made teams more selective about which players they offer extensions to, both to avoid being saddled with bad contracts and to stay under the tax. As a result, team continuity after winning a championship has taken a hit, making it harder to repeat. Think of Bruce Brown leaving Denver in free agency in 2023, right after the team's title run, as a prime example.
As such, the league has never been as wide open as it is now; the NBA is about to have a record eighth new champion in a row, starting with the Toronto Raptors in 2018-19 and ending either the New York Knicks or San Antonio Spurs this season. A wider number of teams winning championships directly correlates with the record number of championship-winning players we have today.
All in all, we see this number continuing to get larger over the coming years, as whichever team wins the title this season - San Antonio or New York - will create a whole bunch of new championship-winning players. The Knicks have just one player who has won a championship before, Dillon Jones, a member of last season's Thunder squad, while the Spurs have two, Luke Kornet, who won one in Boston in 2023-24, and Harrison Barnes, who won one in Golden State in 2014-15.
With how difficult it is to repeat as champions in the modern NBA, we can see a future with 100-plus active players having championship experience.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: The NBA has never had more championship winners on its rosters
Continue reading...
