Joelle Gross’ NBC News analysis lands on a blunt conclusion: the New York Knicks have gone longer without a championship than any other NBA team with at least two titles. The finding puts Saturday’s victory in a colder historical light, because it did not end a drought measured against only modern contenders. It pushed the Knicks into the top spot on a list they would rather not lead.
The comparison matters now because NBA fans are searching for a simple answer to a very old question: how long has it really been since the Knicks last won it all? NBC News went back through NBA data to the 1946-47 season and measured the gap between each team’s titles. By that count, the Knicks’ wait is the longest among multiple-title franchises, even before the league’s best-known repeat powers enter the picture.
That is what makes the ranking sting. The Boston Celtics have 18 NBA championships, the Warriors have stacked four titles from 2015 to 2022, and the Chicago Bulls turned six trophies into one of the league’s defining runs from 1991 to 1998. Some teams also bridged long gaps of their own: the Milwaukee Bucks went 50 years between titles, the Oklahoma City Thunder had a 46-year period between wins, and the Golden State Warriors once went 40 years between their third and fourth championships. Still, none of that changes the Knicks’ place at the top of the drought list among teams with more than one championship.
The friction comes from the next line in the history book. Among one-championship teams, the Kings, now in Sacramento, California, and the Hawks, now in Atlanta, have both gone longer without another title than the Knicks. The Suns have never even seen a championship in their 58-year history, and the Clippers have never reached the NBA Finals. So the Knicks are at once one of the league’s oldest and most celebrated franchises and, by this measure, still behind some teams with far thinner title résumés.
That mix explains why the list feels harsher than a simple count of trophies. The Knicks are one of only three teams that have lasted since the league’s inaugural season, but durability has not translated into recent hardware. The drought now sits beside a larger NBA story built on extremes: 23 back-to-back championships, another 10 titles won within two years of a previous crown, and a league history where dynasties have often made the distance between titles look even longer for everyone else.
For Knicks fans, the answer is plain enough. Saturday stopped one drought from becoming even older, but it did not change the larger ranking. On the historical ledger, the Knicks still have the longest wait of any NBA team with more than one championship, and that is the comparison that will follow them until the next title arrives.
