It often feels like an inborn desire to prove doubters wrong is a prerequisite to playing in the NBA. This competitive preset isn't just a useful motivational tool, though. It's also a necessary trait in an environment where almost no achievement is ever good enough.

Remember how Nikola Jokić winning two MVPs didn't satisfy critics who still demanded that he "prove himself" by succeeding in the playoffs? And what about those who refuse to crown LeBron James until he matches Michael Jordan's six titles?

As a basketball-consuming public, we're never satisfied. A player does something great, and we require something greater.

Keep that in mind as we highlight a handful of guys with something significant to prove down the stretch of the 2023-24 campaign. Many of them have already achieved at an exceptionally high level, but none have anything close to complete resumés, to the extent those even exist.

With a focus on seeding, momentum-building ahead of the postseason and validation of level-ups that have already happened, these players need to show us things we haven't seen yet.

Anthony Edwards, Minnesota Timberwolves

Even before the wildly unnecessary "Is he the face of the league?" narrative started, Anthony Edwards had more on his shoulders than most.

With his Minnesota Timberwolves (yes, he's admittedly the face of this team) in the midst of the best season in franchise history and within reach of the No. 1 seed, Edwards already had a perfect opportunity to elevate his status in games with real stakes. Karl-Anthony Towns' absence only further shifted the burden of completing this breakthrough season onto Edwards.

The highlights have not been in short supply, with Edwards validating predictions that he'd turn in the dunk of the year before all was said and done.

It's going to take more than a nightly jaw-dropper or two to ensure the Wolves go into the playoffs in the best possible position. And quietly, Edwards hasn't been all that great lately.

His scoring volume is down to 26.9 points per game in March from 31.0 in February, his true shooting percentage of 54.6 this month is below the league average and worse than any other month this season, and Minnesota has won just two of the eight games it's played against postseason-bound opponents since the All-Star break.

The Oklahoma City Thunder aren't going away, and you won't find a single person outside the Twin Cities who believes the Wolves are more dangerous than the reigning champion Denver Nuggets, who've inserted themselves into the fight for the West's top seed in recent weeks.

Edwards is a two-time All-Star, and there might only be a couple of under-25 players in the league with brighter futures than his. But if he's going to truly move into rarefied air and perhaps even justify all this "face of the league" business, Edwards has to be the guy who hits a new level over this closing stretch of the 2023-24 season.

Damian Lillard, Milwaukee Bucks

The pick-and-roll volume between Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo continues to rise, and with it the Milwaukee Bucks' chances to do major damage in the rapidly approaching postseason.

Based on the continuing development of what should be an unstoppable go-to offensive partnership, optimism about the Bucks' odds is appropriate. At the same time, this is still very much a work in progress.

When Giannis set 23 on-ball screens for Dame against the Los Angeles Lakers on March 8, the Bucks still lost. Head coach Doc Rivers acknowledged that there was value in that defeat, telling ESPN's Jamal Collier: "Listen, you want to win all these games, but that's the stuff that we're going to keep doing more and more until it becomes us."

But it was still a defeat, part of a 1-3 road trip through the West that included Lillard going just 2-of-12 from the field in a blowout loss to the Sacramento Kings on March 12.

Lillard earned an All-Star nod this season, giving him a career total of eight, but there's no denying his overall production is down. Not since 2015-16 has Lillard been so inaccurate from the field in a full campaign (we're kicking out his injury-plagued 29-game effort in 2021-22), and you have to go all the way back to 2014-15, Dame's age-24 season, to find a three-point hit rate worse than his current 36.0 percent clip.

That's to say nothing of Lillard's perimeter defense, which is a huge reason Milwaukee has struggled on that end for much of the year and ranks just 19th in points allowed per 100 possessions since the All-Star break.

The Bucks broke up a recent title-winner to bring Dame aboard, and they've changed coaches twice in the last year. To say they're all-in on the present is a massive understatement, and that's doubly true with Lillard likely to decline as his salary trends upward, peaking at $58.6 million in 2026-27 when he'll play his age-36 season.

We won't get a true verdict on whether Milwaukee's huge offseason acquisition was worth it until the playoffs, but Lillard can at least create momentum toward validation during this last handful of regular-season games. If he can keep building chemistry with Giannis, not torpedo the defense and do it all while actually producing wins, it'll go a long way toward setting up the kind of deep run Milwaukee wants.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a good bet to finish no worse than No. 2 in MVP voting while securing his second straight All-NBA first team nod. He could lay down and take naps on the floor after the opening tip of his next dozen games and many would still agree he had a roaringly successful regular season.

But like Edwards in Minnesota, SGA has been good enough to warrant even higher expectations. The Oklahoma City Thunder have earned the West's top seed just once since the mid-1990s, when a 24-year-old Kevin Durant keyed a surge to 60 wins in 2012-13. And in fact, Gilgeous-Alexander has only played a major role for a team that finished the season with a winning record once, in 2019-20 as a Chris Paul-led OKC squad finished 44-28.

Everything he's done to this point suggests SGA is more than capable of leading the Thunder to the West's top seed, but he still has to prove himself as the alpha in games with legitimate stakes.

One intriguing complication: Gilgeous-Alexander is among the craftiest foul-drawers in the league, which puts him among those most susceptible to the change in officiating we've seen over the last couple of months.

That's not to say SGA depends on grift to get his points. He's still the hardest player to stay in front of in the entire NBA, but it's worth noting that after peaking at 15.2 free-throw attempts per 100 possessions in January, SGA got to the foul line just 10.1 times per 100 possessions in February and 11.7 times so far in March.

As he tries to get OKC into prime standings position while making a late MVP push, Gilgeous-Alexander will have to do so with one of his sharpest weapons, the ability to create contact that produces free throws, blunted.

Jonathan Kuminga, Golden State Warriors

Midway through this season, Jonathan Kuminga seized his rotation role for good. The 21-year-old has since upgraded his status to "no-questions-asked starter" and continues to show signs that he's got another level or three in his growth trajectory beyond that. Like Edwards, Lillard and SGA before him, Kuminga has already proved plenty.

But his unique importance to the Golden State Warriors' present and future means his work is far from over.

At the risk of oversimplifying, Kuminga is Golden State's much derided "two timelines" gambit. James Wiseman is gone, Moses Moody continues to flit in and out of the rotation, Brandin Podziemski is a fine rookie but may forever struggle to create his own shots and Trayce Jackson-Davis, while an exciting lob threat, isn't deep enough into his career for us to draw any firm conclusions.

If anyone is going to carry the torch after Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson are gone, it has to be Kuminga. That basically requires him to become a superstar—a night-in, night-out high-volume scoring threat like Thompson used to be, but with a level of athleticism and defensive playmaking that also channels Andre Iguodala.

No pressure, right?

Amid Curry's rough shooting in March (41.1 percent from the field and 35.5 percent from deep), Kuminga has been instrumental to Golden State's survival. He's averaged more drives per game than any teammate over the last two months while leading the team in free-throw attempts during that same span.

Perhaps most encouragingly, Kuminga is taking over games with his athleticism more often than ever. He went full three-level-scoring dominator en route to 26 points against the Memphis Grizzlies on March 20, and the Warriors can only be a dangerous play-in threat if he makes that the norm.

Scoot Henderson, Portland Trail Blazers

Brandon Miller looks legit for the Charlotte Hornets. Juxtapose that fact with an injury-hit, inefficient rookie year from Scoot Henderson, and it becomes a little harder to resist the urge to imagine what Miller might have looked like next to a backcourt of Anfernee Simons and Shaedon Sharpe.

The Hornets took that option off the table when they selected Miller at No. 2, partly because they didn't want to add another point guard to a core that already had LaMelo Ball. It's easy to forget now, but that decision was widely panned. Henderson was supposed to be the best prospect at the position since, well...the exact name depended on how extreme you were comfortable getting with your comparisons. Derrick Rose and Chris Paul came up pretty often.

Now, it's up to Henderson to show enough late-season flashes to restore some order. So far, Miller appears to be the more promising prospect, a potential two-way star at the wing. Henderson, in contrast, is dead last in true shooting percentage among the 148 players who've attempted at least 500 shots on the year.

Fortunately, Portland is a great place for individual late-season surges. Though stretch runs for teams out of the playoff mix don't always mean much, it's nonetheless encouraging that Simons and Sharpe have both tantalized during the final few weeks of regular seasons in ways that carried over into the following year.

Simons busted out by averaging 22.3 points per game and hitting 45.9 percent of his triples after the All-Star break in 2021-22, while Sharpe closed 2022-23 on a tear, putting up 15.6 points per game on a 47.1/38.4/75.4 shooting split after March 1 last season.

Henderson is only 20, so he has plenty of time to regain his status as the best point guard prospect in years. But the Blazers would certainly like to see some momentum-building progress before his rookie campaign comes to a close.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate entering games March 22. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.