Which player is the most consistent winner for his own team in NBA history?
That is the question I asked myself a couple of years ago, in February 2007 to be precise. In an effort to find an answer, I decided to rank all NBA “franchise players” since the 1979-80 season.
This winter, I updated the research, taking into consideration every player that has played in the NBA.
Of course, that means I eventually run into some difficulties: Players in the 1950s and 1960s played fewer games with fewer playoff rounds. Nonetheless, you can’t deny overall career winning percentage.
Why winning percentages?
Throughout the years, I’ve read and seen tons of articles and videos about NBA history, which gave me an interesting idea: Which elite player had the best winning percentage for a particular team for whom he played at least seven consecutive seasons?
I chose seven somewhat arbitrarily. If a player is traded during his seventh season – such as Chris Webber in Sacramento – he is ineligible. Seven seasons leading the same squad is definitely worthy of “franchise player” status.
I created three categories (regular season, playoffs and total) and ranked the franchise players and their era’s teams. Below is a list of 50 stars whose teams had the most success.
I calculated an average of a player’s respective franchise seasons. For example, Charles Barkley played eight seasons with the 76ers and had a .565 winning percentage. I used a points system to determine his playoff rating number and combined the numbers in Table D.
This list doesn’t tell you who has been the best player or who would have outplayed whom in a game of one-on-one. This tries to explain how well they led their team.
Some bona fide superstars didn’t have the opportunity to play somewhere long enough to make the list, such as Wilt Chamberlain and Moses Malone. Some franchise players played most of their power years together, such as Utah’s John Stockton and Karl Malone. Since it was too difficult to determine the better player overall, I included them 
both.
Unfortunately for some great players such as Scottie Pippen and Kevin McHale, nobody would claim they were better players than respective long-time sidekicks Michael Jordan or Larry Bird. So unfortunately, they are not ranked.
Furthermore, as in the case of Dwyane Wade, he has had the help of an awesome player named LeBron James during his last two seasons. It’s hard to say Wade was the best player on the team in every one of his nine years with the Heat, although he was before James arrived. This is an imperfect science.
With that caveat, on to the list. Enjoy.