The Knicks’ title is their first in 53 years, breaking what was the fifth-longest active championship drought in the NBA.
Hell has appeared to freeze over in the world of basketball, as the New York Knicks have won their first NBA title since 1973, finishing off a five-game series victory over the San Antonio Spurs to etch this team into NBA’s history books.
The title is among the more significant in recent league history, ending a drought that at many times truly felt endless, with the Knicks spending the first two decades of the 21st century largely mired in futility without a clear direction.
With a few generations of futility emphatically put to rest, the focus now falls onto other franchises that are also deep into lengthy championship droughts – while the Utah Jazz take over for the Knicks in having the honor of the league’s fifth-longest title drought.
Of the five teams that now hold the longest championship droughts, three of them have simply never won at all, with the Jazz being joined by the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Clippers as NBA mainstays who have never reached the promised land.
This bit of futility undoubtedly hurts the Clippers more, who have never made it to the NBA Finals and have made just one Conference Final in franchise history, coming in 2021.
While the two teams with the longest droughts, the Sacramento Kings and Atlanta Hawks, have technically won the championship before, neither team has even made the NBA Finals while playing in their current city, with the Hawks last winning it in St. Louis while the Kings resided in Rochester, New York when they won their first and only title.
Here’s a look at the longest droughts across the league after the Knicks’ win – and how all of these teams got to where they are:
5. Utah Jazz (52 years, began play in 1974)
Originally beginning play as the New Orleans Jazz for the 1974-75 season, the franchise moved to Salt Lake City ahead of the 1979-80 campaign where they have remained to this day.
Differing from other franchises on this list, the Jazz has a decorated playoff history marked by the two-decade long Karl Malone-John Stockton era, which saw the team make the playoffs for 20 consecutive seasons, much of which came under the coaching of Jerry Sloan.
This era, and the franchise overall, peaked in 1997 and 1998, when the Jazz won back-to-back Western Conference titles only to fall short to the absolute buzzsaw that was Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, who defeated the Jazz in six games in both seasons.
Though the Jazz hasn’t been back to the NBA Finals since, they have had spurts of success since Malone and Stockton hung up their sneakers, most recently including six straight playoff appearances from 2017-22 with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert serving as the franchise leaders.
The Jazz last made the Western Conference Final in 2007, with the Deron Williams-led squad falling short to the San Antonio Spurs after taking down the ‘We Believe’ Golden State Warriors in the second round.
4. Los Angeles Clippers (56 years, began play in 1970)
Known as one of the most futile franchises in all of sports, the Clippers have been defined by decades of poor play and irrelevance followed by a series of playoff heartbreakers that has left the team on the outside looking in after all of these years.
Conceived as the Buffalo Braves for the 1970-71 season, the team was renamed as the Clippers upon a move to San Diego in 1978-79, only to move to Los Angeles less than a decade later for the 1984-85 campaign, where they have remained since.
Outside of three playoff appearances in Buffalo during the 1970’s, it took the Clippers until 1992 to make the playoffs while in California, meeting the fate of a first-round exit for all three of their playoff appearances during the 1990’s.
The team finally saw the second round thanks to a randomly competitive team led by Elton Brand, Corey Maggette and Shaun Livingston in 2005-06, with the team coming just one game short of a Western Conference Final at the hands of the Steve Nash-led Phoenix Suns.
The Clippers eventually became a mainstay near the top of the Western Conference throughout the 2010’s during the “Lob City” years, with Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan serving as the anchors for a team that went to six straight postseasons.
While the Clippers have at least been a play-in team in 14 of the past 15 seasons, the club remains without an NBA Finals appearance with just one trip to the Western Conference Finals.
3. Phoenix Suns (58 years, began play in 1968)
The first major pro sports team by a longshot to settle in the desert, the Phoenix Suns have developed a regional identity that the other Arizona teams have failed to – though that hasn’t come alongside any championships to show for.
Unlike most teams with long championship droughts, the Suns are wildly successful as a regular season team throughout their history. The Suns hold an all-time winning percentage .535 with 2,510 wins and 2,179 losses, taking trips to the NBA Finals in 1976, 1993 and 2021.
A Cinderella story Suns team fell short to the experienced Boston Celtics in six games in 1976, while Michael Jordan and the Bulls proved to be too much for an MVP Charles Barkley and the Suns to handle in a six-game loss in 1993.
Phoenix met their biggest heartbreak five years ago, when Devin Booker and company blowing a 2-0 series lead to the Milwaukee Bucks who rattled off four straight victories to deny the Suns their first-ever title, with Milwaukee themselves breaking a 50-year championship drought.
Not mentioned in this mix are the seven seconds or less Suns teams of the mid-2000’s, with Mike D’Antoni acting as the architect for a fast-paced, three-point-centered offense that became standard practice across the league around a decade later. While Steve Nash and company were perennial contenders, the Suns were met with three devastating Western Conference Finals losses in 2005, 2006 and 2010.
2. Atlanta Hawks (68 years, last title in 1958)
The franchise that accounted for two of the three Knicks losses this postseason is clamoring to prove themselves in the playoffs, having been without even a trip to the NBA Finals since the franchise resided in St. Louis in 1961.
While the Hawks have never seemed to figure it out on in the postseason, this is not a franchise that has been defined by decades of bottom-feeding. Since moving to Atlanta for the 1968-69 season, the Hawks have qualified for the playoffs on 37 different occasions, including a stretch of 18 postseason berths in 22 seasons from 1978 to 1999.
Although Atlanta did weather a period of some atrocious play in the early 2000’s, the Hawks have once again bounced back to keep themselves out of the NBA’s cellar. The Hawks have been at least a play-in team in 16 of the last 19 NBA seasons, making the postseason in 14 of those seasons.
Playoff success, on the other hand, has been extremely hard to come by in Atlanta. Despite being a playoff mainstay, it took until 2015 for the Hawks to finally crack the Eastern Conference Finals while playing in Atlanta, a series in which they were promptly swept by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Hawks made it back to the NBA’s final four in 2021, this time putting up more of a fight before falling in six games to the Milwaukee Bucks, still standing out as their deepest playoff run since moving to Atlanta.
1. Sacramento Kings (75 years, last title in 1951)
The longest active title drought in the NBA and third-longest in major North American professional sports behind the Cleveland Guardians and Arizona Cardinals, the Kings have been synonymous with poor play for most of their history.
A relatively nomadic team, the Kings won their lone title as the Rochester Royals in 1951, a handful of years before the club relocated to Cincinnati to become the Cincinnati Royals in 1957. Residing in Cincinnati for over a decade, the Royals made two trips to the Eastern Division Finals amid a streak of six straight playoff appearances before becoming the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1972, splitting their season between the two cities.
This bizarre arrangement only lasted three seasons before the Kings made a permanent move to Kansas City for the 1975-76 season, remaining there until 1985 when the franchise relocated to its current home of Sacramento.
While the franchise’s tenure in Sacramento has included one long stretch of competitive basketball that saw the Kings make the postseason in eight straight seasons from 1999 to 2006, the team’s peak still looks to be their controversial seven-game loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2002 Western Conference Finals.
The Kings followed up eight straight playoff appearances with an unprecedented 16-year postseason drought, which finally came to an end in 2023 with a seven-game loss to the rival Golden State Warriors in the first round.
To rub salt in the wound for Kings fans, the Knicks broke their title drought with head coach Mike Brown at the helm, who was nonsensically fired by the Kings after a 13-18 start to the 2024-25 season. Since Brown’s firing, the Kings have compiled a 49-84 record under head coach Doug Christie.
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