The is a dynasty league. There are 79 champions in the league’s history, but more than half of them, 42, employed one of these seven players: Bill Russell (11), Robert Horry (7), Michael Jordan (6), Magic Johnson (5), George Mikan (5), (4) and (4). For most of NBA history, the league had never gone more than five straight seasons with a different champion each year.
Well, welcome to the parity era. Thanks to a combination of injuries, a restrictive CBA, a deeper-than-ever talent pool and some high-risk, high-reward team building, the NBA has seen eight different champions across the past eight seasons: the in 2019, the in 2020, the in 2021, the in 2022, the in 2023, the in 2024, the in 2025 and, now, the in 2026.
When you include the conference championships won by the in 2020 and 2023, the in 2021, the in 2024, the in 2025 and the in 2026, nearly half of the league, 13 out of 30 teams, have reached the Finals during this stretch.
This has been commissioner Adam Silver’s vision of the NBA for some time.
“We set out to create a system that allowed for more competition around the league, the goal being to have 30 teams all in the position, if well managed, to compete for championships,” he in 2025.
But there’s a difference between 30 teams competing for a championship and 30 teams actually winning one. Eventually, this streak will end. So with the 2026 season now in the books, let’s look at the odds for the 2027 title and also rank the eight champions we’ve seen in this window by how likely they are to be the team that breaks this streak and gets their second title.
Via FanDuel on June 14
. They’re probably going to look different next season. But had and stayed healthy in the Western Conference Finals, they easily could have ended the streak this season. They have a serious problem, but so does everybody except New York. And now that they’ve seen him in a playoff series, they at least have a real data set to work with in seeking solutions.
The Thunder have won 132 regular-season games over the past two years, and they haven’t been especially healthy in doing it. They have the two-time MVP in . They have the draft capital to make whatever changes they want. They’ll likely enter next season as the favorites and are therefore the likeliest of our eight recent champions to add a second ring.
Like the Thunder, the Knicks will have financial issues to face. They’re around $13 million below the second apron for next season, including their first-round pick, but they only have 10 players under contract. They’ll have to pay up to keep , and potentially restricted free agent Mohamed Diawara. has a player option he could exercise to become a free agent, and several players are due extensions in the years to come.
The Knicks built this team with roughly a four-year window in mind. They haven’t gone into the second apron yet, so they have two years to do so before draft picks start moving to the back of the first round. They’ll likely cross the line this summer, but they’ll draw a financial line somewhere, so there probably will be losses here. Still, the Knicks are the defending champions, and they found the best version of themselves in this historic playoff run. They’ll open next season as the Eastern Conference favorites, and if what they’ve found this postseason proves at all sustainable, they’re going to be a very hard out next season.
They’ve won 56 or more games in four straight seasons, and even did so this year with limited to only 16 regular-season games. They’ve been in six of the last 10 Eastern Conference Finals. There’s just a baseline competence here that’s always going to keep the Celtics in the mix.
That said, the Knicks beat them in 2025, and they couldn’t even reach the rematch in 2026. There are real questions here. At a minimum, they have to find a way to consistently pressure the rim. Their centers are not good enough; neither are their point-of-attack defenders. Whether it’s a pursuit, some other trade or a series of smaller moves, the Celtics probably need to improve in some notable way to genuinely contend for next season’s championship.
Basically none of next year’s roster is settled yet. Only five players are locked into guaranteed contracts… but one of them is Luka Dončić, and Dončić plus $48 million in cap space and three tradable first-round picks is a formula for a pretty good team. What sort of team, we won’t know for several weeks.
will presumably be back on something close to a max contract. , both in terms of who he’s playing for and how much he’s earning. There will almost certainly be at least one substantial new player joining the team, and possibly many. Even if the Lakers mostly run it back, they’ll presumably go shopping with those draft picks and their few tradable picks. As long as they have Dončić, they belong in this conversation, albeit below the heavyweights at the top.
The Lakers have Dončić, but the Nuggets have Nikola Jokić. His mere presence opens the championship window, but man, the rest of the team is looking bleak. Denver lost to a depleted Minnesota team in the first round, and with the second apron looming, they are almost certain to lose , Cam Johnson, or in an effort to trim their enormous impending luxury tax bill.
Even that is the continuity scenario. There could be far more drastic changes coming. in trade talks this offseason. Their star player may be better than the Lakers’ star player, but the Lakers are operating from a position of strength, whereas . They’re capped out and mostly without tradable picks. They’re just far more constrained than Los Angeles is.
Don’t tell the Warriors they don’t crack the top five of this list. They’re preparing for an incredibly aggressive summer. They’ve been linked to Giannis, LeBron and — really any remotely available star. . They have every intention of going down swinging.
But Curry will be 39 next postseason. Those stars aren’t young and neither is . In a single game, those names are terrifying. Over an 82-game season and four-round playoff grind, the modern NBA is just too physically demanding to bet on a team that old. Basketball may not be a young man’s game, but it’s no longer nearly as accessible to older teams as it used to be. James really benefited from playing next to Dončić last season because it allowed him to minimize his regular-season usage, at least relative to his norms. Put a bunch of old guys on one team and they’re going to wind up doing too much in December and probably burning out by May.
The Raptors had an unexpectedly successful season. Few thought they’d make the playoffs. grew into a legitimate star. They pushed the eventual Eastern Conference runner-up, the to seven games in the first round. But it was still the first round.
. They have the resources to improve. They control all of their own first-round picks. They have youth on this roster. But they have so many bad contracts clogging up their books that taking the jump all the way into the championship picture is going to be a tall order. Nobody from the championship team is still here. They share a uniform with the 2019 team and little more, so it wouldn’t feel appropriate for them to break the streak anyway.
They could have ended the streak in 2022, but got hurt. They did everything in their power to end the streak afterward, trading away what little flexibility they had to bring in . It didn’t work. Lillard is gone. So are most of the players from the 2021 championship team.
And now, , the Bucks are headed for some sort of rebuild. If anything, the Knicks owe them a thank you for resisting that rebuild. The two sides discussed an Antetokounmpo trade and ultimately didn’t pull the trigger, which allowed this version of the Knicks to blossom into the champions they just became. Some team on this list may break the streak by trading for Antetokounmpo, but with him headed out, the Bucks almost certainly won’t be the one.
Who’s to say the streak has to end at eight? It’s entirely possible that next year’s champion is the one to ultimately win multiple titles before anyone else. So, who are our candidates?
