The Best NBA Teams That Never Won a Title: 9 Near-Misses

The best NBA teams that never won a title did everything right for six months and then ran out of season. The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors won 73 games, more than any team in league history, and lost the Finals. The 1972-73 Boston Celtics went 68-14 and never even reached the Finals. Two different 67-win teams went home before the conference finals. A regular season is 82 games of evidence; a playoff series is seven, and a single hamstring, a suspension or one cold night from three can overrule the bigger sample. This list ranks the single team-seasons that came closest. It isn't about franchises that have never won, and it isn't about individual stars without rings. It's about specific rosters in specific years that looked exactly like champions and are remembered instead for how they lost.

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How We Picked the Teams

Start with the record book. Twenty-two teams in NBA history have won 65 or more regular-season games. Sixteen of them won the championship. The six that didn't are the first six entries below - the 2015-16 Warriors, the 1972-73 Celtics, the 2015-16 Spurs, the 2006-07 Mavericks, the 2017-18 Rockets and the 2008-09 Cavaliers. Wins aren't the only measure, though, so the last three entries are teams that were slightly less dominant from October to April but came within a game or a quarter of a title run: a 64-win Seattle team that drew the 72-10 Bulls, and two Western Conference finalists who took the eventual champion Lakers to Game 7 and lost. The order weighs three things - the regular season, how close the playoff exit was, and how much of the defeat came down to bad luck rather than a better opponent.

2015-16 Golden State Warriors - 73-9

The best regular season ever played ended with the most famous collapse in Finals history. The Warriors opened 24-0, the best start in NBA history, and finished 73-9, breaking the 72-10 record the 1995-96 Bulls had held for twenty years. Stephen Curry made 402 three-pointers, demolishing his own record of 286, and became the first unanimous MVP the league had ever had. The team made 1,077 threes, the first to clear 1,000 in a regular season, and never lost back-to-back games all year. They survived a 3-1 deficit against Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals, winning Game 7 96-88, then went up 3-1 on Cleveland in the Finals. Teams in that position had been 32-0.

Then Draymond Green picked up his fourth flagrant foul point of the playoffs and was suspended for Game 5. Cleveland won Games 5, 6 and 7. Kyrie Irving hit a go-ahead three over Curry with 53 seconds left in Game 7, and the Cavaliers won 93-89 at Oracle Arena despite 32 points, 15 rebounds and 9 assists from Green. Counting the playoffs, the Warriors won 88 games that season - the most in NBA history - and went home without the trophy.

1972-73 Boston Celtics - 68-14

No team has ever posted a better winning percentage and missed the Finals than Tom Heinsohn's 1972-73 Celtics. They went 68-14 (.829), still the best record in franchise history and one win shy of the 69-13 mark the Lakers had set the season before. Dave Cowens, a third-year center, won MVP ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. John Havlicek was the engine.

In the third quarter of Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals against New York, Havlicek fought through a pick between Bill Bradley and Dave DeBusschere and hyperextended his right shoulder. He missed all of Game 4, a double-overtime loss that put the Knicks up 3-1. He played Games 5 and 6 with a practically useless right arm, and Boston won both to force Game 7. That was all he had. The Knicks won Game 7 94-78 in Boston Garden and beat the Lakers 4-1 for the title. The postscript stings: the same Celtics core won the 1974 championship over Milwaukee in seven games.

2015-16 San Antonio Spurs - 67-15

In almost any other year, this season would have been the headline. With LaMarcus Aldridge and David West added in the offseason, the Spurs went 67-15, the best record in franchise history, and finished 40-1 at home, tying the NBA record held by the 1985-86 Celtics. They won their first 39 home games; the only team to beat them in San Antonio all season was Golden State, on April 10. Kawhi Leonard won his second straight Defensive Player of the Year award.

The Spurs swept Memphis, then opened the second round against Oklahoma City with a 124-92 demolition. The Thunder won four of the next five, including a one-point Game 2 in San Antonio (98-97) and a 113-99 Game 6 in Oklahoma City. That Game 6 turned out to be Tim Duncan's final NBA game. San Antonio became the first 67-win team since the 2007 Mavericks to go out before the conference finals - which tells you what the next entry is.

2006-07 Dallas Mavericks - 67-15

Dallas came into 2006-07 carrying the 2006 Finals, a series it had led 2-0 before Miami won four straight. The response was a 67-15 season that started 0-4, which means the Mavericks went 67-11 over their last 78 games. Dirk Nowitzki won MVP. The No. 1 seed in the West then drew the 42-40 Golden State Warriors and Don Nelson.

Golden State won Game 1 in Dallas and took the series in six. In the clincher at Oracle Arena, the Warriors used an 18-0 third-quarter run, Stephen Jackson made a franchise playoff record seven three-pointers, and Nowitzki finished with 8 points on 2-of-13 shooting in a 111-86 loss. Dallas became only the third 1-seed ever knocked out by an 8-seed, after Seattle in 1994 and Miami in 1999, and the first to lose a best-of-seven first-round series to one. The MVP had gone out in the first round.

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2017-18 Houston Rockets - 65-17

Houston traded for Chris Paul in the summer of 2017, then broke the franchise record with 65 wins, clinched the No. 1 seed for the first time in franchise history and watched James Harden win MVP. The Rockets beat Minnesota and Utah in five games each, then took a 3-2 lead over the defending champion Warriors in the Western Conference finals with a 98-94 win in Game 5.

In the final minute of that win, Paul suffered a right hamstring injury. He didn't play again in the series. Houston led Game 6 by as many as 17 and lost 115-86. In Game 7 at home, with a first trip to the Finals since 1995 one win away, the Rockets led by as many as 11 - and then missed 27 consecutive three-pointers, an NBA playoff record. They shot 7-of-44 from deep and lost 101-92. Golden State swept Cleveland in the Finals, which makes the hamstring one of the great what-ifs of the decade.

2008-09 Cleveland Cavaliers - 66-16

LeBron James's first MVP season produced the league's best record and a 39-2 home mark, which at the time was the second-best home record in NBA history. The 66-16 finish obliterated the old franchise best of 57-25. In the playoffs, Cleveland swept Detroit and Atlanta and won all eight of those games by double digits - the first team ever to string together seven straight double-digit playoff wins.

Then came Orlando and Dwight Howard. The Magic won Game 1 in Cleveland 107-106 despite 49 points from James. James tied the series with a buzzer-beating three to win Game 2, 96-95. It barely mattered. Orlando took three of the next four and closed it out in Game 6 behind 40 points from Howard. James scored 49, 35, 41, 44, 37 and 25 - 38.5 points per game - and lost the series 4-2. Much of the league had penciled in a LeBron-Kobe Finals; instead it was the Magic who lost to the Lakers in five.

1995-96 Seattle SuperSonics - 64-18

Wrong year, wrong opponent. George Karl's Sonics won a franchise-record 64 games, went 38-3 at home and were built around Gary Payton, that season's Defensive Player of the Year, and Shawn Kemp, who averaged 19.6 points and 11.4 rebounds. Both made All-NBA Second Team. In the playoffs Seattle beat Sacramento, swept the two-time defending champion Houston Rockets - holding Hakeem Olajuwon to 5 points in a 33-point Game 1 win - and outlasted Utah in the Western Conference finals with a 90-86 Game 7.

Their reward was the 72-10 Chicago Bulls. Chicago won the first three games of the Finals. Seattle won Games 4 and 5 at home to make it 3-2 before the Bulls closed it out 87-75 in Game 6. The Sonics belong on this list not because they folded but because of when they peaked - against the team that had just set the regular-season wins record.

2001-02 Sacramento Kings - 61-21

The best record in the NBA in 2001-02 didn't belong to the two-time defending champion Lakers. It belonged to Sacramento, 61-21, with Chris Webber, Peja Stojakovic, Mike Bibby and Vlade Divac. The Kings took a 2-1 lead in the Western Conference finals, then lost Game 4 in Los Angeles 100-99 when Divac knocked a loose ball away from the rim and it found a wide-open Robert Horry, who hit a three at the buzzer. Bibby's jumper with 8.2 seconds left won Game 5, 92-91, for a 3-2 lead.

Game 6 remains one of the most argued-about games in league history: the Lakers shot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter alone and won 106-102, with Divac and Scot Pollard both fouling out. Game 7, back in Sacramento, went to overtime. The Kings lost 112-106 after shooting 16-of-30 from the line and 2-of-20 from three. The Lakers swept New Jersey in the Finals for a third straight championship.

1999-2000 Portland Trail Blazers - 59-23

Portland went all in before this season, sending six players to Houston for Scottie Pippen and adding Steve Smith and Detlef Schrempf around Rasheed Wallace. The Blazers held the league's best record, 38-11, at the All-Star break and finished 59-23, second only to the Lakers. In the Western Conference finals they fell behind Los Angeles 3-1, then won Games 5 and 6 to force a Game 7 at Staples Center.

With ten minutes left in that game, Portland led by 15 points. The Lakers answered with a 15-0 run that tied it, and Kobe Bryant's lob to Shaquille O'Neal for an alley-oop sealed an 89-84 win. The Lakers beat Indiana in six for the title that June. Of every loss on this list, this is the one that turned fastest: one quarter, one run, one lob.

Honorable Mentions

A few more seasons that deserved better:

1996-97 Utah Jazz (64-18). Karl Malone won MVP, and John Stockton's buzzer-beater in Houston sent the Jazz to the first Finals in franchise history, where they lost 4-2 to the Bulls.
2005-06 Detroit Pistons (64-18). The best record in franchise history and four All-Stars - Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton, Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace - with Ben Wallace winning his fourth Defensive Player of the Year award. Miami beat them 4-2 in the conference finals and won the title.
1990-91 Portland Trail Blazers (63-19). Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter and Kevin Duckworth all made the All-Star team, and the Blazers were 39-9 at the break. The Lakers beat them 4-2 in the conference finals.
2018-19 Milwaukee Bucks (60-22). Best record in the league, MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, and a 2-0 lead on Toronto in the conference finals. The Raptors won four straight and then the championship.
2025-26 Oklahoma City Thunder (64-18). The defending champions went 64-18 and lost the Western Conference finals in seven games to San Antonio.

What These Teams Have in Common

Read the list end-to-end and three patterns show up. The first is timing. Seattle met the 72-10 Bulls. Sacramento and Portland ran into the Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant Lakers in the middle of a three-peat. Houston drew Kevin Durant's Warriors. Six of the nine teams above lost to the eventual champion. They weren't beaten by just anyone.

The second is the body. Havlicek's shoulder in 1973, Paul's hamstring in 2018 and Green's suspension in 2016 each took away or hobbled a key player at the exact moment a series turned. A seven-game series is a small sample, and losing one player for two or three games of it is often the whole margin.

The third is that the record can flatter. Among the fourteen teams in NBA history to win 67 or more games, the two lowest average point differentials belong to the 2006-07 Mavericks (+7.2) and the 1972-73 Celtics (+8.2) - and neither one won the title. Win totals reward close games going your way; point differential measures how often you actually overwhelmed people. The Warriors' and Spurs' collapses were about matchups and absences. The Mavericks' and Celtics' numbers were warning lights from the start.

None of that diminishes the seasons themselves. The 73-9 Warriors still hold the wins record, the 1972-73 Celtics still own the best winning percentage of any team that missed the Finals, and the 2015-16 Spurs still share the best home record ever posted. The banners say otherwise, but the record book remembers them anyway.

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