Among the major North American professional sports, the NBA does easily the best job of determining a “true” champion. By nature of the playoff format that includes multiple seven-game series and the decrease in variance when compared to a sport like baseball, the league does a fantastic job of ironing out which teams are the best and rewarding them as such.
In fact, it is often argued by some sports fans that the NBA is “too predictable” because, well, the best teams usually win.
With that said, there have been some truly great teams that fell short of championship glory through the years and they are often forgotten when compared to those squads who were potentially lesser overall but managed to win the final contest of the year. In this space, we will break down ten teams that are on the (very) short list of “best teams that did not win an NBA title” and, needless to say, there were a few more that deserved real consideration.
Let’s roll through the list.
10) 2010-11 Heat
LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and company won 14 of their first 18 playoff games in their first year as a squad. From there, things went sideways with haste and the result was a meltdown in a loss to Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks. Still, this team reached incredible heights after a slow start to the regular season and it still seems crazy that they were unable to win the title based on talent alone. Miami led the league in net rating (+8.5) and, even if they didn’t crack the 60-win threshold in the way that many on this list did, the Heat weren’t a typical championship runner-up.
9) 1996-97 Jazz
This was the best of the bunch when talking about teams led by Karl Malone and John Stockton. The Jazz outscored opponents by 9.0 points per 100 possessions and that would lead the NBA in many seasons. Unfortunately, Utah ran into the Michael Jordan-Scottie Pippen buzzsaw in the form of the 69-win Bulls, and that spoiled what was Jerry Sloan’s best chance at a title.
The Jazz suffered three NBA Finals losses by four points or fewer, and this was probably one of the 30 best teams ever. That Jordan guy is a problem.
8) 2008-09 Celtics
The 2007-2008 Celtics were solidly better than this edition and, of course, that team was able to provide a title to Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen. However, the follow-up version was dynamic in its own right and Doc Rivers is still talking about the fact that the starting five never lost a series at full strength.
Unfortunately, Boston did not even reach what would have been an epic showdown against LeBron James and the Cavs, as the Orlando Magic crashed the party on their way to the NBA Finals. Still, this was a 62-win team with an elite defense, real firepower and a tantalizing upside that never materialized due to an injury to Garnett. We’ll never know.
7) 2008-09 Cavs
Two teams from the same year land back-to-back and this was easily LeBron’s best team in Cleveland prior to his return home. The 2009 Cavs won a season-high 66 games while comfortably leading the league in net rating (+10.3), and it was a wild upset when they fell to the Magic in six games. Before that, Cleveland cruised to eight straight wins in the playoffs against the Pistons and Hawks and it looked as if James was going to be crowned earlier than what actually transpired. It would be easy to poke fun at the supporting cast (led by Mo Williams) in retrospect, but this was a dominant team led by an all-time great at the absolute peak of his physical powers.
6) 1993-94 Sonics
With apologies to the 2006-2007 Dallas Mavericks, this is the best team to lose in the first round. It seems possible, if not likely, that this Sonics team would have awakened in time to beat Dikembe Mutombo and the Nuggets if it was a seven-game series, but that was not the reality, and the 63-win Seattle team went home.
Still, this was the best statistical product of the entire run led by Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, and they entered the postseason as the favorite to bring the title back to the Western Conference as Michael Jordan played baseball. The Sonics (finally) made their Finals run later, but this team should have been the one. Seattle fans can still see Mutombo laying on the floor.
5) 1971-72 Bucks
If you can believe it, Basketball-Reference’s SRS model actually believes this is the best team that did not win a title, even with the 2015-2016 Warriors included. These Bucks did not even make the NBA Finals, though, as they encountered one of the five best teams of all-time with the 1972 Lakers in the Western Conference Finals.
That series featured Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain on the Los Angeles side, so it doesn’t seem quite as crazy that a squad led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson couldn’t advance. By any available statistical measure, this is one of the best teams that fell short and, frankly, we might be underrating them.
4) 1972-73 Celtics
Weirdly, the Celtics went four seasons without a title from 1969 through 1973. This was the fourth and final team that didn’t finish the campaign on top. While some of the advanced numbers (especially Basketball-Reference’s SRS data) don’t love this Boston team, it was a 68-win squad that employed Hall of Fame talent. They did not even make the NBA Finals, but that run included an injury to John Havlicek (who was pretty good), so that is explainable as a result.
In truth, we don’t have the same type of data to evaluate a team from 40-plus years ago but it feels safe to say that a 68-win team from the Celtics in this era was fairly impressive.
3) 2015-16 Spurs
From a numerical perspective, it could easily be argued that this was a top-10 team ever. The Spurs finished with a better net rating (+11.8) than the 73-win Warriors and Basketball-Reference, using its SRS breakdown, describes San Antonio as the No. 8 team of all-time. More so than many others on this list, the final season of Tim Duncan’s Hall of Fame career will likely be forgotten, if only because the Warriors existed.
Still, this was an utterly incredible basketball team that fell victim to a brutal match-up against the Oklahoma City Thunder before even meeting Golden State in what could have been an epic battle. This will be a divisive pick, but the numbers don’t lie in this case.
2) 2001-02 Kings
Kings fans will never forget the officiating throughout the Western Conference Finals loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. It was well known, even in the moment, that the winner of that series was going to win the title, as the Lakers and Kings were easily the two best teams in the league that year.
Chris Webber and company finished with the best record in the league (61-21) with a near-identical net rating (+7.7) to the Lakers that season, and Sacramento played a beautiful brand of basketball that foreshadowed what would come to be later in the decade. The gap between No. 1 and No. 2 on this list is (much) bigger than the difference between No. 2 and No. 3, but this Kings team should be fondly remembered. The worst part? They, too, blew a 3-1 lead at an inopportune time.
1) 2015-16 Warriors
We all know how this ended. It is incredibly obvious as to why this version of the Warriors lands in the top spot and it starts and ends with a 73-9 record. Golden State zoomed to a +12.1 net rating led by the first-ever unanimous MVP in Stephen Curry, and even if Michael Jordan (and others) believe that the regular season performance doesn’t mean anything, we can agree that this was a fantastic team that simply didn’t win the title.
Get your 3-1 jokes off with pleasure but let’s try not to forget just how absurd this team was until the final three games of the 2016 NBA Finals.
