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 TBDboth 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 Facebook
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