Go down the list. Google “past NBA champions” and take a look at their rosters. What becomes abundantly clear is that you truly cannot win a title without at least one top five player. What that means is that roughly 25 teams in the league each year are completely out of the running, and only those with an ELITE superstar can truly contend.
There are counter examples to this cold hard fact of NBA life, but they are few and far between.
The Spurs in 2014 didn’t have one top five player, but they one of the greatest coaches ever, 15 years of chemistry, and one of the most alarmingly deep and flexible rosters in history as well as a collection of top 10-15th-ish players who all bought in completely to the system.