List of Every NBA Champion by Year

There have been 80 championship seasons in NBA history, starting with the Philadelphia Warriors in 1947 and running through the New York Knicks in 2026. The Boston Celtics lead everyone with 18 titles, the Los Angeles Lakers have 17, and 20 of the league's 30 current franchises have won at least one.

Below is the complete year-by-year list — champion, runner-up, series result and Finals MVP for all 80 seasons — followed by the context that explains why the list starts where it does and how a handful of dynasties bent it out of shape.

At a Glance

Every NBA Champion by Year, 1947–2026

The Finals MVP award did not exist until 1969, so the last column is blank for the first 22 seasons. Series results are given from the champion's side.

For the franchise-by-franchise totals behind this list, see Which NBA Teams Have Won the Most Championships?.

Why 1947 Counts: The BAA-to-NBA Question

Strictly speaking, the league that crowned the Philadelphia Warriors in April 1947 was not called the NBA. It was the Basketball Association of America, founded in 1946 by a group of arena owners on the East Coast. The BAA became the NBA only in 1949, after it absorbed the remaining teams of the rival National Basketball League.

The NBA nevertheless treats the BAA seasons as its own. Its official history counts the 1947 Warriors as the first champion in league history, and Basketball-Reference keeps BAA results in the same tables as everything since. That is why the Warriors franchise is credited with seven championships rather than six, and why the count of championship seasons is 80 rather than 77.

The practical effect is a three-season prologue: 1947 (Philadelphia Warriors), 1948 (Baltimore Bullets) and 1949 (Minneapolis Lakers). The 1950 Minneapolis Lakers were the first champion of a league actually named the National Basketball Association — and, having won in 1949 as well, also the first repeat champion.

One quirk that follows from all this: NBL titles do not count. The Minneapolis Lakers won the 1948 NBL championship, and the Rochester Royals (now the Sacramento Kings) won the 1946 NBL title, but neither appears in the NBA's championship ledger.

The Celtics' Eight Straight, 1959–1966

The single most improbable run on the list belongs to Boston. From 1959 through 1966, the Celtics won eight consecutive championships — a streak no team in any major North American league has matched.

Widen the frame and it gets stranger. Across the 13 seasons from 1957 to 1969, Boston reached 12 Finals and won 11 of them, losing only to the St. Louis Hawks in 1958. Bill Russell played in all 13 of those seasons and finished with 11 rings, the most of any player in league history. He also served as player-coach for the final two, in 1968 and 1969.

Three things made it possible, and none of them exist anymore. The league had eight or nine teams for most of the streak, so a good team faced a very short path to the Finals. There was no draft lottery and no free agency worth the name, so a roster could stay intact for a decade. And the playoff bracket itself was tiny — Boston sometimes needed to win only two rounds. The modern format takes four series and up to 28 games; for the current structure, see NBA Playoff and Play-In Format, Explained.

What the ABA Merger Did and Didn't Change

On June 17, 1976, the NBA agreed to take in four teams from the collapsing American Basketball Association: the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets and San Antonio Spurs. Each paid a $3.2 million entry fee, and the Nets paid an additional indemnity to the Knicks for moving into their territory. Two other ABA clubs, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis, folded — the Spirits' owners famously accepting a share of the four surviving teams' national TV money instead.

The NBA structured the deal as an expansion, not a merger of equals, and it has never recognized ABA records or championships. That is why the Pacers' three ABA titles (1970, 1972, 1973) and the Nets' two (1974, 1976) do not appear anywhere in the table above, and why both franchises are still listed among the teams that have never won a championship.

The four arrivals have had wildly different outcomes since. San Antonio has won five NBA titles and reached seven Finals; Denver won in 2023. Indiana has lost two Finals (2000 and 2025) and Brooklyn has lost two (2002 and 2003). For where all 30 teams sit today, see How Many NBA Teams Are There - Every Team by Conference and Division.

Decade by Decade: Who Owned Each Era

Two of these decades are outliers in opposite directions. The 1960s produced just two champions in ten years — Boston nine times and Philadelphia once. The 1970s produced eight in ten, the most open stretch in league history until now.

The 2020s have quietly beaten it. Seven seasons, seven different champions: the Lakers (2020), Bucks (2021), Warriors (2022), Nuggets (2023), Celtics (2024), Thunder (2025) and Knicks (2026). No team has repeated since the Warriors in 2017 and 2018 — the longest run without a back-to-back champion the league has ever had. The tightened salary-cap aprons of the 2023 collective bargaining agreement, which make it expensive and roster-restricting to keep a top-heavy team together, are the most-cited explanation.

2026: The Knicks End a 53-Year Wait

New York's win over San Antonio closed the longest active championship drought held by a franchise that had actually won one. The Knicks' previous titles came in 1970 and 1973, both against the Lakers; the gap from 1973 to 2026 is 53 years.

The Knicks entered as the East's No. 3 seed and beat the West's No. 2 seed Spurs 4-1, with Jalen Brunson taking Finals MVP after averaging 32.6 points, 4.6 assists and 4.2 rebounds. Mike Brown coached New York; Mitch Johnson coached San Antonio.

The series was closer than 4-1 suggests. Three of the four New York wins were decided by a single possession, the average margin across the five games was around four points, and Game 4 featured a 29-point comeback — the largest in Finals history, surpassing Boston's 24-point rally against the Lakers in 2008. New York became the first team to win a title while trailing by double digits in every one of its four Finals victories. It was also the most-watched Finals since 1998, averaging about 20.6 million viewers a game.

For San Antonio, the loss was only the second Finals defeat in franchise history, after 2013. Victor Wembanyama had just become the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year in league history at age 22 — a detail covered in Every NBA Defensive Player of the Year Winner.

When This Page Updates

A new row is added every June, when the Finals end. The next update to this list will come after the 2027 NBA Finals. If you want the same treatment for pro football, we keep List of Every Super Bowl Winner by Year on the same schedule.

FAQ

Who won the first NBA championship? The Philadelphia Warriors, in 1947, beating the Chicago Stags 4-1. The league was called the Basketball Association of America at the time, but the NBA counts it as the first championship in its history. Joe Fulks led the Warriors and scored 34 points in the clinching Game 5.

How many NBA championships have been played? Eighty, covering the 1946-47 season through 2025-26. Every one of them has been decided by a best-of-seven series.

Which team has won the most NBA titles? The Boston Celtics, with 18. The Los Angeles Lakers are second with 17, though the Lakers hold the record for Finals appearances with 32 to Boston's 23.

Has any team won more than eight championships in a row? No. Boston's eight straight from 1959 to 1966 is the record, and no other NBA team has won more than three consecutive titles. The Lakers (1952–54), Bulls (1991–93 and 1996–98) and Lakers again (2000–02) are the only franchises with a three-peat.

Do ABA championships count as NBA titles? No. The NBA treated the 1976 arrival of the Nets, Nuggets, Pacers and Spurs as an expansion and does not recognize ABA records. The Pacers' and Nets' ABA titles are not part of the NBA list.

Who won the 2026 NBA championship? The New York Knicks, beating the San Antonio Spurs 4-1 in a series played June 3–13, 2026. Jalen Brunson was named Finals MVP. It was New York's third title and its first since 1973.

When did the Finals MVP award start?

1. Jerry West of the Los Angeles Lakers won the first one, and he remains the only player to win it while playing for the losing team. The award was renamed for Bill Russell in 2009 — the full list is at Every NBA Finals MVP Winner in History.

Which franchises have never won an NBA title? Ten of the 30: the Nets, Hornets, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Timberwolves, Pelicans, Magic, Suns and Jazz. Five of those ten have never even reached the Finals.