The NBA 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), LeBron James (4) and Stephen Curry (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 Toronto Raptors in 2019, the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020, the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021, the Golden State Warriors in 2022, the Denver Nuggets in 2023, the Boston Celtics in 2024, the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2025 and, now, the New York Knicks in 2026.
When you include the conference championships won by the Miami Heat in 2020 and 2023, the Phoenix Suns in 2021, the Dallas Mavericks in 2024, the Indiana Pacers in 2025 and the San Antonio Spurs 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 said 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.
2027 NBA title odds
Via FanDuel on June 14
- Thunder: +250
- Spurs: +250
- Celtics: +600
- Knicks: +750
- Nuggets: +2200
- Pistons: +2500
- Lakers: +3000
- Timberwolves: +3300
- Rockets: +3500
- Cavaliers: +3500
Ranking recent champs by chances to get another ring
1. Oklahoma City Thunder
The Thunder obviously have second apron issues to address. They're probably going to look different next season. But had Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell stayed healthy in the Western Conference Finals, they easily could have ended the streak this season. They have a serious Victor Wembanyama 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 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. 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.
2. New York Knicks
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 Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet and potentially restricted free agent Mohamed Diawara. Jose Alvarado has a player option he could exercise to become a free agent, and several players are due extensions in the years to come.
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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.
3. Boston Celtics
They've won 56 or more games in four straight seasons, and even did so this year with Jayson Tatum 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 Giannis Antetokounmpo pursuit, some other Jaylen Brown 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.
4. Los Angeles Lakers
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.
Austin Reaves will presumably be back on something close to a max contract. LeBron James? He's more of a TBD, 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.
5. Denver Nuggets
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 Peyton Watson, Cam Johnson, or Christian Braun 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. The Nuggets have said that anyone but Jokić is theoretically on the table 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 the Nuggets are operating from a position of weakness. They're capped out and mostly without tradable picks. They're just far more constrained than Los Angeles is.
6. Golden State Warriors
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 Kawhi Leonard -- really any remotely available star. They don't want the Curry era to end with a whimper. They have every intention of going down swinging.
But Curry will be 39 next postseason. Those stars aren't young and neither is Draymond Green. 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.
7. Toronto Raptors
The Raptors had an unexpectedly successful season. Few thought they'd make the playoffs. Scottie Barnes grew into a legitimate star. They pushed the eventual Eastern Conference runner-up, the Cleveland Cavaliers, to seven games in the first round. But it was still the first round.
The Raptors are far away. 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.
8. Milwaukee Bucks
They could have ended the streak in 2022, but Khris Middleton got hurt. They did everything in their power to end the streak afterward, trading away what little flexibility they had to bring in Damian Lillard. It didn't work. Lillard is gone. So are most of the players from the 2021 championship team.
And now, with Antetokounmpo seemingly destined to be traded, 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.
What if it's not one of these teams?
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?
- San Antonio is the obvious one. The Spurs just made the Finals, they have the ascending face of the league in Wembanyama, and they have the assets to seriously improve if they want to. If they win next year, the Spurs will be the favorites going into the 2027-28 season.
- Where is Antetokounmpo headed? If he gets traded to the right team, it's entirely possible that he could win multiple championships. Miami seems to be the frontrunner for his services at the moment, but his championship odds would probably be higher on teams like the Timberwolves or Rockets.
- What about some of those other finalists who didn't get over the top? Phoenix has no obvious path to contending. Dallas, with Cooper Flagg, is probably too young to pull this off. Indiana is intriguing, though. The Pacers nearly won it all in 2025, and Tatum's Achilles recovery is a very encouraging sign for Tyrese Haliburton's. The Pacers already traded multiple draft picks for Ivica Zubac. If they push even further in, they'll have a real shot at the 2027 and 2028 titles.
