The Thunder Ended Their NBA Title Drought, But These Teams Are Still Waiting

The Oklahoma City Thunder are your 2024-2025 NBA champions after surviving a Pacers team that pushed them to seven games. One of the fascinating aspects of this series, even outside of the games themselves, was that it was a matchup between two teams in the midst of decades-spanning championship droughts.

The last time the Thunder were the champs, they were the Seattle SuperSonics: that happened back in 1979, 46 years ago and decades before the team moved to Oklahoma. And the Pacers? While they were American Basketball Association champions on three occasions — 1970, ‘72 and ‘73 — they’ve yet to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

The Thunder’s drought is over, while that of the Pacers tacks on another year: it’s now been 49 years since the Pacers joined the NBA, all without a championship, and even longer than that if you want to go back to before the ABA/NBA merger. Just focusing on NBA history, however, the Pacers’ championship-less streak ranks “just” the seventh-longest in the league, tied with the Brooklyn Nets, who similarly joined the NBA in 1976. 

[Related: Thunder Dominate Shorthanded Pacers to Win First NBA Title in OKC]

Here are the six teams who have been waiting even longer than the Pacers (and Nets) for their own NBA title.

Utah Jazz: 51 years

The Jazz joined the NBA in 1974, as an expansion team out of New Orleans. Their top player in those early days was Pete Maravich, but he wasn’t nearly enough: the Jazz would move to Utah in 1979, and wouldn’t make the playoffs for the first time until the 1983-1984 season. The Jazz selected John Stockton in the 1984 draft with the 16th-overall pick, and Karl Malone with the 13th-overall pick a year later, and thanks in large part to the presence of those two Hall of Famers, the Jazz would make the playoffs every year until the 2003-2004 season.

Utah made it to the NBA Finals in both 1997 and 1998, with 64-18 and 64-20 seasons, and would lose to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls on both occasions. Utah hasn’t been back to the NBA Finals since, and in the 2024-2025 season, posted the worst record in the league, at 17-65. To add insult to injury, despite having the best draft lottery odds, the Dallas Mavericks won the first-overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, while the Jazz had to settle for no. 5. 

New York Knicks: 52 years

The Knicks had a chance to wipe this streak away in these playoffs,, but lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Pacers in six games. Unlike the Jazz, they have actually won before: the Knicks were last champions in 1973, their second title in four seasons, with both teams led by Hall of Fame point guard Walt Frazier. 

The Knicks wouldn’t make it back to the NBA Finals until 1994 with Patrick Ewing their big star. They’d lose Games 6 and 7 to the Rockets, however. Game 6 ended with Rockets’ center Hakeem Olajuwon blocking a three-point shot by John Starks, securing an 86-84 victory and forcing Game 7, which saw Starks go just 2-for-18 from the field in a game the Knicks lost by just six points. 

New York would make it back to the Finals in 1999 against the Spurs, but would lose 4-1, putting them on the opposite side of San Antonio’s first-ever NBA championship. The Knicks have made it to the Eastern Conference Finals twice since, but no further. 

Los Angeles Clippers: 55 years

The Clippers have never won an NBA title, 55 years running. They were brought into the league in 1970 as the Buffalo Braves before moving to San Diego in 1977, where they were renamed the Clippers. In 1984, the Clippers moved again, to Los Angeles, becoming the second team in town in more ways than one. While the Lakers have won an additional nine championships since ‘84, when the Clips came to Los Angeles, the Clippers have topped out at exactly one Western Conference Finals, with zero NBA Finals appearances.

It’s not that the Clippers have been bad of late, either: they’ve made the playoffs 13 times this century, including in four of the last five years and 12 times since 2011-2012. They just haven’t been able to overcome the challenges of the Western Conference, though, losing to the likes of the Nuggets on multiple occasions, last year’s Western Conference Finals representative the Mavericks, the Suns in the 2021 Western Conference Finals, and defeat at the hands of 2019’s Western Conference champ, the Warriors. 

Phoenix Suns: 57 years

The Suns entered the NBA in 1968 as an expansion team, and were surprisingly competent almost out of the gate: they finished 16-66 in their first season, but finished in third or fourth in their division for the next six years after that, and made it to the 1976 NBA Finals despite being just a 42-40 team. They’d lose to the Celtics in six games, however, and wouldn’t make it that far again until ‘93, when Jordan’s Bulls won their third NBA title in a row.

After defeating the Clippers to advance to the Finals in 2021, the Sun finally came up against a team that wasn’t part of a historic dynasty. However, that team still had Giannis Antetokounmpo, who proceeded to average over 35 points per game to bring the Bucks back from down 2-0 to four in a row and their first NBA championship since 1971, ending their own drought. 

In 2025, Phoenix missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2019-2020 season, and then traded star Kevin Durant to the Rockets for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and six draft picks, including the Rockets’ 2025 first-round selection. They are the oldest NBA franchise to never once win a championship.

Atlanta Hawks: 67 years

Before they were the Atlanta Hawks, they were the St. Louis Hawks. They were the Milwaukee Hawks and Tri-Cities Blackhawks in the years before moving to St. Louis, too, but it’s that relocation to St. Louis in 1955 that matters here, because in the 1958 NBA Finals, the Hawks defeated the Boston Celtics in six games. 

To put into perspective just how long ago that was, Tommy Heinsohn and Bill Russell were both on that Celtics’ squad, and they were both 23 years old. Bob Cousy was 29. Boston had won its first-ever NBA championship the season before, against these same Hawks — the C’s now have 18 of them, with Russell ending up with more rings than fingers before he called it a career. The Hawks? They have 1958. They made it to the finals again in both 1960 and 1961, but that’s about all. 

The team moved to Atlanta and the Eastern Conference for the 1968 season, and has not made it to the NBA Finals since: they reached the Eastern Conference Finals in 2015, when they lost to the Cavaliers, and again in 2021, when Antetokounmpo’s Bucks downed them en route to ending their own championship-less streak. Atlanta has missed the playoffs in both of the last two years.

Sacramento Kings: 74 years

Unlike the Suns, Clippers, and Jazz, the Kings have won an NBA championship. The problem is that it predates the existence of any of those teams, as well as the ABA. The Kings joined the National Basketball League in 1945, where they were known as the Rochester Royals — they had been a semi-pro team for over two decades before then. They joined the Basketball Association of America in 1948 with three other NBL teams, and then the NBL and BAA merged together into the NBA before the 1949 season.

Still known as the Rochester Royals at this point, they’d defeat the Knicks in 1951 for their first NBA championship… which has since turned out to be their only NBA championship. Despite predating the NBA itself, this is also the franchise’s lone NBA Finals appearance. They’d move to Cincinnati for the 1957 season, then to Kansas City-Omaha — where they’d be renamed the Kings — in 1972. They’d become just the Kansas City Kings in 1975, then move to Sacramento in 1985, where they’ve stayed since. They’ve lost two Western Conference Finals in that time — in 1981 to the Rockets, and in 2002 to the Lakers — but that’s it. 

From the 2006-2007 season through 2021-2022, the Kings didn’t make it to the playoffs, the longest postseason drought in league history. That was briefly snapped with a first-round exit against the Warriors in 2023, despite the Kings being the third seed in the West and the Warriors the sixth. They’ve missed the playoffs in the last two seasons — they just missed with a 46-36 record in a crowded field in 2023-2024, then finished in ninth once again but under .500 this past season.

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