There are a few benchmarks players look forward to over their careers. Winning a title is the penultimate goal but there are individual honors players also put on their career bucket list.
Things like gaining entry into the Hall of Fame, making All-Star teams or collecting individual hardware like All-NBA teams or Most Valuable Player Awards. Unfortunately, few players ever get the chance to collect these latter honors since they are earmarked for the elite of the league.
Another honor that isn’t always isolated to the elite players is jersey retirements. Case in point, Nick Collison never won any individual awards but he was a logical choice for the OKC Thunder to nab as the first player to have his jersey retired and hoisted into the rafters.