I can’t believe they did it. The New York Knicks are finally NBA Champions, once again. It took about a lifetime for it to be achieved, but better late than never, right? I was one of the foolish doubters of this team. I was distracted by the Knicks’ history of terribleness. And don’t I look stupid now? The franchise, and the fans, deserved it.
To celebrate the win, let’s quickly look back at the previous five NBA Finals winners, ranking the best, and the worst.
A quick note: for about the past decade, the NBA has seen unprecedented parity. Not since the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018 have we had a repeat Finals winner. This will make rankings both challenging and easy. Challenging because you can’t view the teams within a dynastic lineage, and easy because you don’t have to do that.
#5 – Golden State Warriors, 2022
I struggle to put this Warriors team any higher than this if I’m honest. This team was a shell of the 2010s Warriors teams that defined the latter half of the decade. Steph Curry was still a dominant force offensively, but guys like Klay Thompson had lost a step due to injuries.
I remember feeling a little shocked that the Warriors even made it to the Finals that year. It wasn’t that the team was bad, just that they weren’t at the level of those previous teams. They were employing their “two timelines” strategy and, to their credit, it worked for this season. Jordan Poole was an ascending player and Andrew Wiggins seemed rejuvenated. But outside of these players, the quality of depth just wasn’t as strong as the rest of the teams on this list.
#4 – Denver Nuggets, 2023
The Nuggets are a bit similar to the Warriors but with more depth on the roster. Both were propelled by a superstar—the Warriors with Curry and the Nuggets with Nikola Jokic. I would argue though that Jokic in 2023 played at a much higher level than Curry in 2022. He was an offense all unto himself. His statistical profile during the regular season, and then especially in the playoffs, was nothing short of extraordinary.
Part of the reason that Denver won the Finals was because Jokic made his teammates significantly better. The way he set up shooters and freed cutters allowed fellow Nuggets to score easy buckets and become better players. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to look how players like Bruce Brown or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope fared once they moved teams during the offseason.
#3 – Boston Celtics, 2024
Am I showing recency bias? Maybe, but the remaining two teams are the best champs of the last five years as far as I’m concerned, and the next team—the New York Knicks—effectively beat this Celtics team in the 2025 playoffs. (And yes, I realize that Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in this series, but that was in Game 4 when the Knicks were already up 2-1, and while they were ahead late into the fourth quarter.)
This team had near perfect roster construction for that single season. I don’t have a ton of space to wax poetically about this team, so I will focus on two specific players that elevated the team: Derrick White and Jrue Holiday. These two were like Michael Jordan of “glue guys.” There were not two more complementary players in the league. They did the dirty work, didn’t make mistakes, and were reliable offensively once it hit crunch time.
As much as Tatum and Jaylen Brown were important to the Celtics this year, the combo of Holiday and White were just as vital to the success of the team.
#2 – New York Knicks, 2026
As I’ve said, I was a fool to doubt the Knicks. I had already decided that their playoff dominance was a product of a weak Eastern Conference—I was wrong. After the Indiana Pacers last year, I should have known better than to doubt a team that could come alive during the playoffs.
New York elevated during the NBA Playoffs in a way that is rarely seen. They turned into a genuine buzzsaw. Much like the Pacers, they made a living off winning close came and coming back from deficits. This is the mark of a great team.
Part of me still can’t believe that they won it all. They still lack the total amount of depth that other winners have had, but they were the best team in the league, nonetheless.
#1 – Oklahoma City Thunder, 2025
Am I making a mistake not putting the Knicks first after their dominant showing in the Finals against a very good Spurs team? Perhaps, but I would still give the Thunder an edge. The Knicks never had a series go the full seven games, but the Thunder twice let a series go that long. In terms of pure talent, Oklahoma City certainly holds an advantage. (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is better than Jalen Brunson.) The same can be said for the depth of the teams.
But the real separator for me is the Thunder’s superpower—their defense. They could swing games in an instant with their constant swarming and harassment. They’d quickly rattle off 10 points to put a game away. The Knicks are great, but they don’t have something like this to put them over the top.
