Stacking which teams can keep the NBA’s parity run going

The NBA’s parity era continued last season when the New York Knicks became the eighth different team to win the championship in the past eight years, and the joyous scenes across the Big Apple in June should spark hope for long-suffering fanbases across the league.

If New York can win its first championship since 1973 after spending most of the past 25 years in the wilderness, everyone can dare to dream of holding the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Who’s next?

The past eight champions shared some roster similarities: Each had a Hall of Fame-level leader, supporting star power and a meaningful degree of postseason experience. As they built toward the playoffs, six of the eight teams had a top-five offense and seven of the eight had a top-10 defense.

But the past eight seasons also proved there are many ways to reach the summit: The Toronto Raptors won in 2019 immediately after trading for Kawhi Leonard, the Denver Nuggets won in 2022 despite a middling defense, and the Oklahoma City Thunder won in 2025 despite a remarkably young roster.

Let’s apply the lessons from the past eight seasons while examining the 22 teams who haven’t won a championship since 2019 — the beginning of this parity. As the 2027 title chase comes into focus, which teams are best positioned to become the ninth different champion in the past nine years? Which teams are looming as under-the-radar contenders? And which rebuilding franchises will be ready to join the party by 2030?

Jump to a tier:
Championship-ready | Serious contenders
The chase pack | Miracles can happen
Maybe by 2030 | Maybe by 2032
Never say never | Maybe never

Tier 1: Championship-ready

Last championship: 2014

The Spurs occupy the top tier by themselves because they check every box for a title hopeful: They have an A-list superstar in Victor Wembanyama, multiple co-stars and a deep bench, plus they ranked in the top three in both offense and defense last season. While the Spurs’ youth came back to bite them during a series of collapses in the Finals against the Knicks, the 2025 Thunder proved that exceptional young teams are capable of quickly learning from their postseason shortcomings.

The old saying goes that “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” but it matters in the NBA playoffs, too. Seven of the past eight champions had reached at least the conference semifinals shortly before winning it all, and six built off trips to the conference finals.

The Spurs’ fourth-quarter collapses against the Knicks were excruciating to watch, but the fact that they were in position to win Finals games should be viewed as evidence of their ability to compete at the highest level in the future. Remember how Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s Milwaukee Bucks blew the 2019 Eastern Conference finals before taking care of business in 2021? Remember how many times Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown came up just short before the Boston Celtics‘ 2024 title? Close counts.

San Antonio has suffered no major defections this offseason, and it added veteran forward Tobias Harris to an improved frontcourt rotation. The pieces are in place for another 60-win campaign, which could see Wembanyama win his first MVP.

Perhaps the biggest question facing the Spurs is Mitch Johnson, who couldn’t stop the bleeding in the Finals during his first full season as coach. Johnson’s inexperience shouldn’t be viewed as a dealbreaker: Seven of the past eight title teams were led by coaches who hadn’t previously won a championship.

The new-look 76ers now boast championship experience at every level thanks to newcomers LeBron James and Jaylen Brown, coach Nick Nurse and front office executives Bob Myers and Mike Gansey. That’s a crucial development, because Joel Embiid’s time in Philadelphia has been defined by his inability to hold up physically in the playoffs. Without a reliable superstar leader, there was no good reason to take Philadelphia seriously.

While the NBA has undergone a youth movement in the past few years, the 76ers cut against the grain by adding the 41-year-old James and the 29-year-old Brown rather than fully resetting their clock around the younger backcourt duo of Tyrese Maxey and V.J. Edgecombe. With their new stars in place, the average age of the 76ers’ eight highest earners is up to 27.9. That puts them in the same ballpark as several past champions: The 2026 Knicks (28.1), Brown’s 2024 Celtics (28.2), and James’ 2020 Lakers (29.5). Nurse’s 2019 Raptors were also older than league average (27.3).

Philadelphia’s title hopes hinge on its ability to build instant chemistry: James, Embiid, Brown and Maxey are ball-dominant stars, and all four will be asked to sacrifice for the good of the offense. On the other end, the 76ers must show significant improvement after ranking 17th in defensive efficiency during the regular season and 14th out of the 16 teams in the 2026 playoffs. No team has won a title over the past eight years with such a shaky defense.

The 76ers have the highest ceiling among the teams in this second tier, but the questions about their fit, age, health and defensive baseline give them the lowest floor as well. By next June, James’ decision to pick Philadelphia could look brilliant or disastrous.

Last championship: Never

The Timberwolves deserve their kudos in the “close counts” conversation mentioned above: They have averaged 51.3 wins over the past three seasons, and they reached the Western Conference finals in 2024 and 2025. Even though Anthony Edwards is still only 24 years old, he has helped lead playoff series wins over the Lakers, Warriors, Nuggets and Phoenix Suns. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves’ defense has ranked in the top 10 in each of the past four seasons.

Even so, Edwards and the Timberwolves have a nasty habit of letting go of the rope and getting run off the court at the end of difficult playoff series. Minnesota’s latest such loss — in the second round against the Spurs — prompted a busy offseason in which LaMelo Ball arrived, and Julius Randle and Naz Reid departed. The Timberwolves are gaining playmaking and losing size in the exchange, but it’s a gambit that could help address their playoff stumbles. Ball is easily the most dynamic guard to line up alongside Edwards, and Minnesota’s defense should remain elite with Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels returning.

The onus is on Edwards, who battled a knee injury during the postseason, to continue elevating after head-to-head playoff losses against Luka Doncic, Gilgeous-Alexander and Wembanyama. He possesses the explosive scoring ability and physical tools to be the best player on a championship team, but he must display better focus and consistency when the pressure is cranked all the way up.

Minnesota’s game plan is comparable to Boston’s approach with Tatum and Brown before 2024: Keep shuffling the deck so that Edwards is always in position to make deep runs throughout his mid-20s, then hope he eventually translates his vast postseason experience into a championship.

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Last championship: 2004

Fresh off a 60-win campaign and a trip to the conference semifinals, the Pistons share similarities with the 2025 Thunder as a young and forceful group with a top-flight defense and an All-NBA offensive engine. Much like Oklahoma City, Detroit’s swift transformation from lottery team to contender has been driven by a focus on draft and development. As it turns out, the Thunder were the only team to have a better defense than the Pistons last season.

Cade Cunningham isn’t quite on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s level yet, but Detroit’s biggest issue on offense is that it lacks someone in the Jalen Williams co-star role. After the Pistons’ offense ranked ninth during the regular season, it dropped nearly seven points in the playoffs. Unfortunately, replacing Tobias Harris with John Collins could actually make things worse.

Assuming the Pistons resolve Jalen Duren’s restricted free agency and add some level of playmaking firepower before the trade deadline, there’s a path for the 24-year-old Cunningham to carry the gritty Pistons to a deep postseason run. However, Detroit enjoyed exceptional health last season, and its extreme upward momentum could be stunted if the injury bug hits.

Meanwhile, midseason addition James Harden helped Cleveland survive seven-game marathons against the Toronto Raptors and Pistons, but he predictably ran out of gas when the Knicks swept them in the conference finals. The 36-year-old guard finished with unsightly 41/30/83 shooting splits during the playoffs and nearly registered as many turnovers as assists.

The Cavaliers missed their shot to land LeBron James as a momentum-changing piece this summer and settled for Mario Hezonja. Throw in the departures of Darius Garland, Ty Jerome, Dean Wade, Caris LeVert, De’Andre Hunter and Isaac Okoro over the past two offseasons, and it’s increasingly difficult to believe that Cleveland will be able to rekindle the magic of its 2024-25 season.

If Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen fit together perfectly, perhaps the Cavaliers would be able to survive the constant roster churn. Sadly, they don’t: The high-priced trio had a negative net rating in last year’s playoffs.

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Last championship: 1995

The justified outrage prompted by Houston’s playoff debacle has started to give way to renewed hope during a solid offseason. The Rockets were utterly embarrassed by the Lakers in a first-round series loss, but there were some obvious extenuating circumstances: Fred VanVleet missed the entire season and Kevin Durant missed five of the six playoff games due to injuries.

The Rockets, who ranked in the top 10 on both offense and defense last season, took a deep breath after their flame-out and kept the band together. VanVleet, who logged more than 2,100 minutes for Houston two seasons ago, will rejoin a Houston team that retained its top six players from last season and added Marcus Smart and Bogdan Bogdanovic.

To bring another banner to Clutch City, the Rockets must make major strides on offense with VanVleet back as an initiator. Houston posted a 22-23 record in games that were within five points in the final five minutes last season, and its offensive efficiency dropped more than 12 points from the regular season to the playoffs. It would probably be wise for Durant to cede some authority to his younger teammates, but Alperen Sengun and Amen Thompson often looked unreliable in key moments.

Thompson, 23, looms as the X factor: The athletically gifted wing made strides as a scorer in his third season, but his poor 3-point shooting deflated Houston’s spacing and dramatically limited his effectiveness. Can he blossom into a true star and raise Houston’s ceiling?

Last championship: Never

The Pacers might be the trickiest team to peg in this exercise. On one hand, they came closer to winning the championship than any other runner-up during the past eight seasons. Remember, Indiana was leading Oklahoma City at halftime of Game 7 in the 2025 Finals. That was only 13 months ago.

On the other hand, Tyrese Haliburton missed last season recovering from a torn Achilles tendon, and the Pacers sputtered to just 19 wins without their floor general. Haliburton, 26, shared a promising video documenting his recovery progress last week, but it’s unclear whether he will be able to immediately recapture his form from the 2025 playoffs. The two-time All-Star spent those playoffs on another planet, pulling off comeback after comeback and hitting multiple game winners. Could Haliburton’s Pacers draw inspiration from the Warriors, who cratered during the 2019-20 season due to a Stephen Curry injury before riding the star guard’s comeback to the 2022 title?

Haliburton will return to familiar surroundings: Rick Carlisle is still in place as coach, and Pascal Siakam and several other Pacers mainstays will continue to flank Haliburton. While longtime center Myles Turner departed last summer, the Pacers landed a possible upgrade by trading for Ivica Zubac.

Unfortunately, the Eastern Conference landscape should be tougher in 2027 than it was in 2025, and Indiana’s up-tempo style is less likely to catch teams flat-footed this time around.

The Heat still have some work to do building around the star tandem of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo if they want to seriously contend for the 2027 title. Namely, Miami lacks a high-level secondary ball handler and playmaker to balance its offense. Adding Tim Hardaway Jr. and rookie shooter Ryan Conwell isn’t enough to offset the rotation losses that were required to land Antetokounmpo from the Bucks, even if the two-time MVP makes a splash in his first season in South Beach.

After missing out on LeBron James, Miami could need another year of fine-tuning to reconstruct an offense that lost its top two scorers in Norman Powell and Tyler Herro. It’s worth remembering, though, that coach Erik Spoelstra guided Finals runs in 2020 and 2023 by getting the most out of imperfect rosters. Could an MVP-caliber season from Antetokounmpo, a top-five defense built around Adebayo and an injection of talent before the trade deadline produce another under-the-radar run?

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Last championship: 1958

The Hawks are the anti-Heat: They lack a proven superstar leader but have almost every other base covered. Quietly, Atlanta has put the Trae Young era in the past and assembled a roster stocked with good and underrated players with depth at every position.

Does that formula work in the playoffs? Well, the Hawks were the only team to beat the Knicks twice in last year’s postseason before their eventual first-round demise, but they don’t bear much resemblance to any of the past eight champions. Until Jalen Johnson leads a real playoff run or the Hawks add another premier talent next to the All-Star forward, a healthy degree of skepticism is warranted.

Last championship: Never

The Magic feel like an undervalued stock: They won 45 games last season even though their top five players played in only 19 games together, then nearly upset the top-seeded Pistons in the first round. But how undervalued? With better health, can Orlando win 50 games and its first playoff series since 2010? Or can Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Desmond Bane dream bigger?

The Magic are banking on first-time coach Sean Sweeney to add creativity to a choppy offense and inspire a young group to play defense as it did in 2024-25, when it ranked second in the NBA. That’s asking a lot, but Sweeney helped Doncic’s Mavericks and Wembanyama’s Spurs reach the Finals ahead of schedule during past stints as an assistant.

The Mavericks, like the rest of the teams outside the top four tiers, are playing for the future. Patience is in order as new coach Dusty May gets acclimated to the NBA, but Dallas is further along in its rebuilding effort than most other young teams because it has potential superstar Cooper Flagg as its centerpiece.

Flagg’s two-way impact and versatility should make him extremely easy to build around, and the Mavericks have already started tearing down an old roster to recalibrate their timetable around the 2025 No. 1 pick. It’s asking too much to expect Flagg to transform the Mavericks into a contender as quickly as Wembanyama lifted the Spurs, but his rapid improvement over the past three years suggests he has MVP candidate potential in the not-too-distant future.

Last championship: Never

While the Jazz don’t have a singular prospect on Flagg’s level, they have gradually assembled one of the league’s most intriguing collections of young talent by trading for Jaren Jackson Jr. and drafting Darryn Peterson, Ace Bailey and Keyonte George.

Peterson, the second overall pick in 2026, has arguably the highest ceiling of any guard drafted since Anthony Edwards and Cade Cunningham. That bodes well for Utah’s hopes of becoming a perennial contender and reaching its first Finals since the John Stockton and Karl Malone days. Here’s another reason for optimism: The Jazz landed two unprotected first-round picks and two first-round swaps from the Lakers in a summer sign-and-trade for center Walker Kessler. If the Doncic era doesn’t go as planned in Hollywood, Utah is poised to reap major rewards.

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The Hornets opted to play the long game by trading LaMelo Ball this summer after their best season in a decade. Kon Knueppel, Brandon Miller, Coby White and Ryan Kalkbrenner represent a nice core, though it’s unclear whether Charlotte has found a player able to be the leading option on a title team.

Whether Knueppel or Miller really pops or the front office needs to keep looking, the Hornets will need a few years of steady progression before they truly enter the title mix.

Last championship: Never

The Grizzlies kick-started the post-Ja Morant era by drafting Cameron Boozer with the third overall pick in June. Boozer’s polish, maturity and complete game make him an ideal centerpiece. He fits with virtually any style of co-star and oscillates well between scoring and keeping his teammates involved.

With that said, Memphis will need multiple seasons to rebuild after Morant’s off-court transgressions and injuries submarined a promising young core before it reached its potential.

Last championship: 1998

The Bulls have spent nearly 30 years since Michael Jordan’s second retirement searching for someone capable of leading a title team. During that time, Derrick Rose might have been the only player who entered the NBA with more potential than Caleb Wilson.

There’s no pressure on the fourth overall pick to immediately restore Chicago’s credibility: Wilson is joining a languishing franchise that changed its coach and front office after winning 31 games last season. It’s going to take some time.

Last championship: 1983

Nothing launches a honeymoon period quite like landing the top overall pick: The Wizards won 17 games last season, committed huge money to Trae Young this summer and haven’t won 50 games since before Ronald Reagan was president.

Does any of that matter now that AJ Dybantsa will begin his career in the nation’s capital supported by a roster that already featured a handful of recent first-round picks? Hopes haven’t been this high in Washington since John Wall was doing the Dougie.

Unless Deni Avdija makes another massive leap, the Blazers are stuck as a low-ceiling, high-floor outfit. That’s standard operating procedure for a small-market franchise that hasn’t won a game in the conference finals since 2000. A recent ownership change has only clouded the picture.

Last championship: Never

The Suns have been riding the treadmill of mediocrity — or something slightly better — since their incredible run to the 2021 Finals. After Durant’s brief tenure sputtered, Devin Booker became the face of a one-star team with too many holes and not enough remaining draft picks to fill them.

While Phoenix owner Mat Ishbia has shown a willingness to spend what it takes to acquire talent, his ultra-aggressive approach has proven to be a double-edged sword given the long-term costs of his biggest swings. Remarkably, Phoenix doesn’t control any of its first-round picks through 2033. With Booker turning 30 in October, the Suns are running dangerously low on time and assets to get back in the mix.

Last championship: Never

Appropriately, the Nets are the opposite of the Suns: Brooklyn has endured three dismal seasons since trading Durant to Phoenix, but at least it has stockpiled a huge war chest of future draft picks to provide a measure of hope.

The only problem: The Nets never seem to know what to do with their picks. While Egor Demin could prove to be an exception, the franchise has gone an awfully long time since cultivating a homegrown star. Given its draft struggles and failed experiment building around Durant and Kyrie Irving, it’s fair to wonder whether Brooklyn has the cultural foundation needed to compete at the highest level.

Last championship: Never

Much like the Nets, the Clippers have spent most of their history stuck in the shadow of their crosstown rivals. While LA flirted with winning a championship multiple times after landing Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, something always went wrong. Now, Leonard is the subject of an endless NBA investigation into salary cap circumvention, and the Clippers are left hoping they will be able to trade the All-Star forward to the Raptors.

The Clippers’ search for their next franchise player should begin immediately: Is No. 5 pick Keaton Wagler up to the task? Or, will owner Steve Ballmer bide his time and look to duplicate his bold plays for Leonard and George by pursuing veteran stars via free agency and trade? Either way, the Clippers will need several years to pull themselves together.

Small-market teams don’t have a prayer of sustaining success unless they’re able to develop and retain their best players. Sadly, the Pelicans are a perfect example of this truism: Chris Paul and Anthony Davis left for greener pastures, and former No. 1 pick Zion Williamson hasn’t really panned out.

The Pelicans’ short-term outlook is troubling: Their major roster pieces don’t fit, their most recent lottery picks have clear flaws and they made virtually no moves this summer after winning only 26 games last season. Let’s put aside the Larry O’Brien talk and ask: How long will it be until New Orleans wins a playoff series? It’s been eight years and counting since the last one.

Last championship: 1951

If the Kings ever win a championship, the city of Sacramento will host the greatest parade in NBA history. For evidence, just look at how the team’s loyal fans rallied around the “Beam Team” in 2023. De’Aaron Fox, Domantas Sabonis & Co. were treated as beloved heroes by the purple masses, even though they couldn’t escape the first round of the playoffs.

That type of thirst is only possible from a fanbase that hasn’t seen its team advance since 2004 or reach the Finals since it relocated to Sacramento in 1985. Looking ahead, Kings fans are stuck dealing with an unpredictable ownership group, an unproven coach, a talent-deficient roster and a payroll loaded with bloated contracts.

Worst of all, Sacramento has failed to fully develop or retain countless lottery picks, including Fox, Tyrese Haliburton, Marvin Bagley III and DeMarcus Cousins. What’s that famous saying about the perils of expecting different results while doing the same thing over and over again?