1) Steve Kerr (’97-’98 Bulls and ’98-’99 Spurs)

Over the last 27 years, Kerr has earned nine championship rings. In other words, he’s averaging an NBA title every three seasons, an incredible accomplishment in the salary cap era. The latest four have come as coach of the Warriors but the first five were earned out there on the court as a sharp-shooting guard. After brief stints early in his career with the Suns, Cavaliers, and Magic, Kerr signed as a free agent with the Bulls in 1994 and became a key piece in the second Michael Jordan era, earning championships rings in 1996, 1997, and 1998. While Kerr came off the bench in every game during those three seasons, he was usually on the floor in crunch time and was an unlikely hero in the clinching game six of the 1997 NBA Finals, hitting the game-winning shot. When the Bulls disbanded in 1998, Kerr was traded to another burgeoning dynasty in San Antonio. He played lighter minutes for the Spurs but still made some contributions to their 1999 championship run. Kerr remained with the team for several seasons, eventually retiring as a champion when the Spurs won it all again in 2003. In addition to his inclusion on this list, Kerr also has the following superlative labels: second player ever (the first is coming up later on this list) to win four consecutive NBA titles without being a part of the Bill Russell Celtics, and one of just three players, along with Robert Horry and John Salley, to win multiple titles with multiple teams.

2) Patrick McCaw (’17-’18 Warriors and ’18-’19 Raptors)
3) Chris Boucher (’17-’18 Warriors and ’18-’19 Raptors)

After going out on top as a player, Steve Kerr spent time as a TV broadcaster, sports commentator, and president and general manager of the Suns before taking over as the Warriors head coach in 2014. Synthesizing the lessons learned from own two legendary coaches, Gregg Popovich and Phil Jackson, Kerr instantly transformed Golden State into a title team. Front lined by Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant, the Warriors won championships in 2015, 2017, and 2018 under Kerr’s stewardship. There were numerous role players who won one or more rings as part of this epoch. That included McCaw, a second round pick in 2016 who wound up remarkably starting three playoff games as a rookie when Durant was sidelined with injuries. Boucher signed with Golden State as an un-drafted free agent and made just one appearance during the entire ’17-’18 season or postseason, logging one minute in a game in which Curry, Thompson, Green, McCaw, and David West were inactive. But he was awarded a championship ring alongside McCaw and all the rest after the Warriors defeated the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals. Boucher signed as a free agent that summer with the Raptors, just as the team was making a franchise-altering trade for Kawhi Leonard. He spent the majority of the season in the G-League (where he actually earned MVP and Defensive Player of the Year) before getting called up late in the season. It was about that time that McCaw was also making his way to Toronto, signing as a free agent in January of 2019 after signing with and subsequently getting waived by the Cavaliers. While Boucher didn’t make an appearance in the 2019 NBA Finals against his former Warriors team, McCaw did log a handful of minutes as the Raptors pulled off the upset.

In addition to etching his name on this list, McCaw also became just the eighth player to win championships in his first three NBA seasons (K.C. Jones, John Havlicek, Gene Guarilia, Satch Sanders, Larry Siegfried, Scott Williams, and Devean George are the others). Both he and Boucher also became the first two players to win a championship with one team and then defeat that team the next year in the NBA Finals. Meanwhile, Boucher became the first player from Saint Lucia to win a championship (to be fair, he’s also the only Saint Lucian in NBA history) and the first player with Canadian citizenship to win a championship with a Canadian team (his family moved from Saint Lucia to Montreal when he was five). In a surprising twist, McCaw has struggled to remain active in the NBA, playing in just 42 games in the last four seasons, while Boucher has developed into a crucial backup center for the Raptors, averaging as many as 13.6 points and 6.7 rebounds per game in ’20-’21.

4) Pep Saul (’50-’51 Royals and ’51-’52 Lakers)

If offered the trivia question “who was the first player to win four straight NBA championships?” most people would rightfully venture Bill Russell as the response. But it was Saul who first pulled off four in a row, doing so between 1951 and 1954. A prolific scoring guard, Saul was the first superstar in Seton Hall program history, setting the school scoring record despite having his amateur career bifurcated and abbreviated by military service. Drafted by the Rochester Royals (who are now the Sacramento Kings) in 1949, he joined one of the premier teams of the early NBA and won a championship in his second season when they defeated the Knicks in the 1951 NBA Finals. But Saul was unhappy with his role and playing time and was granted a trade request that summer to the Baltimore Bullets. Just 29 games into the ’51-’52 season, he was traded again, this time to Rochester’s in-conference rival, the Minneapolis Lakers. It was the best of both worlds for Saul, who got to play in a starting lineup with four future Hall of Famers in George Mikan, Slater Martin, Vern Mikkelsen, and Jim Pollard, but also put up the best stats of his career, averaging 11.3 points per game during Minneapolis’ 1952 postseason, which ended with an NBA Finals win over the Knicks. Along the way, Saul was the leading scorer for the Lakers with 18 points in the close-out game of their Conference Finals victory over his former Rochester teammates. He became not just the first player to win championships in back-to-back seasons with two different teams, but the only one for nearly a half century until Steve Kerr joined him on the list in 1999. Saul earned further championships with the Lakers in 1953 and 1954 but was soon after forced to retire due to a leg injury. Saul was also the oldest living NBA champion for some time, passing away in 2019 at age 95.

5) Danny Green (’18-’19 Raptors and ’19-’20 Lakers)

While the attention was rightfully focused on LeBron James’ legacy in the wake of the Lakers clinching a 2020 championship, Green made history in his own right, including one accomplishment in tandem with his legendary teammate. The pair became the third and fourth players in NBA history to win a championship with three different teams, joining Robert Horry and John Salley on the list. Green, who began his career as James’ teammate in Cleveland in ’09-’10, won his first championship with the Spurs in 2014, defeating James’ Heat in the NBA Finals. After eight successful seasons in San Antonio, Green was traded in 2018 alongside Kawhi Leonard to the Raptors, and was the starting shooting guard on Toronto’s ’18-’19 title team. He spent just one season with the Raptors, signing as a free agent with the Lakers in 2019 and winning a title again as the starting shooting guard (complete tangent here, but on a franchise that has featured James, Magic Johnson, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, and Elgin Baylor, Green also somehow set the Lakers record for most points in a franchise debut, dropping 28 in the ’19-’20 season opener). As he celebrated with his teammates on the Walt Disney World campus, Green was likely aware of the history he made as the fifth player to win a championship with two different teams in consecutive years. After 72 years of NBA history with just two players accomplishing that feat, three of them (Green, Patrick McCaw, and Chris Boucher) did it in just two years, and all of them were teammates on the ’18-’19 Raptors. Two things that set Green apart from the other players on this list: 1) he was in the starting lineup for both titles, and 2) he moved on to a third team the next season, coming relatively close to a third consecutive title as the 76ers reached the 2021 Conference Semifinals.