On June 8, 2018 — almost eight years ago to the day — the buzzer rang at Quicken Loans Arena. By that point, the stars of the game were all on the sidelines, getting ready for what would come next. Nearly three minutes of action had eclipsed since Steve Kerr sent Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Kevin Durant, and Andre Iguodala to the bench, replacing them with Nick Young, Pat McCaw, Jordan Bell, Kevon Looney, and Zaza Pachulia. More than four minutes had passed since Ty Lue had pulled
LeBron James off the court following his final stint as a Cleveland Cavalier.
The garbage time minute eaters battled it out until the buzzer sounded, concluding a dominant 108-85 win for the Warriors, and an even more dominant sweep in the NBA Finals.
Golden State was on top of the world, having won their third championship in four seasons and, most impressively, their second in a row.
They lost the crown the next year against the Toronto Raptors. A year later, James returned to the finals and this time emerged victorious, now a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. Giannis Antetokounmpo, years before discontent with the Milwaukee Bucks would brew, hoisted the trophy in 2021, and then the Warriors snuck back in for a surprise revival in 2022. In 2023 it was the Denver Nuggets, and in 2024 the Boston Celtics.
It felt like something changed when the Oklahoma City Thunder won it all in 2025, and then opened this season by winning 24 of their first 25 games. For the first time since those world-beating Golden State teams, the NBA had a the potential for a dynasty. The Thunder were young, elite on both sides of the court, had immeasurable chemistry, were loaded with stars who played their role, and, in perhaps the most apt comparison to the Dubs, had a magical point guard who was winning MVPs and laying a solid argument for the claim of best player on the planet.
After those first 25 games of the 2025-26 season, many started anointing the dynasty in Oklahoma. The conversation shifted away from if the Thunder could repeat, and into whether or not they would break Golden State’s single-season record of 73 wins along the way. It was morbidly humorous that everyone crowning the Thunder before the calendar flipped to 2026 apparently forgot what happened to the Dubs in that famous and infamous season one decade ago.
Ultimately, Oklahoma City suffered a similar fate. Just as the Warriors did in 2016, the Thunder dealt with injuries to a few key players, and lost in a Game 7 to one of the most unique, talented, and athletically alarming players in NBA history.
And so we get a new champion. As I write this, the San Antonio Spurs are in the midst of an attempt to even up the NBA Finals against the New York Knicks, who stole Game 1 on Wednesday. We don’t know who will win the series, but we do know that it will give the league remarkable parity: eight different champions over the last eight years, with only three teams (the Warriors, Celtics, and Miami Heat), even making multiple Finals appearances during that time.
That means we’ll have to wait until 2027, at the very earliest, to see the first repeat champion since the Warriors in 2018.
Repeat champions are, it goes without saying, special. And they are a singular entity that go down in basketball lore. The teams who have repeated since 1990 are teams that every basketball fan can identify in seconds: Curry and Durant’s Warriors; the Heatles; Kobe’s last push with Pau; Kobe and Shaq’s threepeat; Jordan’s pair of threepeats; and Hakeem’s pair while MJ was tightening his batting gloves.
It will happen again in the NBA, and maybe even soon. The Thunder with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Spurs with Victor Wembanyama both look prepared to play at the highest level for the better part of the next decade. But then again, they do exactly as they did this year: play each other so well, that each side keeps the other from ever truly dominating. I expect both of those teams to win championships in the next few years, and probably even multiple. But will they achieve NBA history with the hardest thing in sports, a repeat? Will the Knicks, or anyone else?
That will be a storyline heading into next season, and probably into the next season as well. The Warriors may no longer be championship favorites, and their dynasty may be snuggly closed, but for a while longer they get to hold onto a title that certainly means something to those in the league: they’re the last team to repeat as champions.
