Ranking the 5 NBA Franchises Most Desperate for a Championship
Winning a championship is every NBA team's ultimate goal. Some aren't necessarily run like it and longer timelines disqualify certain squads before training camps ever open, but hoisting trophies, hanging banners and getting fitted for rings is the universal endgame.
The candidates most seriously pushing for their next (or first) title vary each season. The same goes for the urgency with which contenders approach every year.
Not all championship hopes are created equally. Where a handful of teams enjoy more open-ended windows or are at the start of their contender's life cycle, others are subject to more delicate circumstances. They can be approaching the end of their own timelines for any number of reasons: age, injuries, aprons, general staleness, mounting failures, etc.
These squads, in theory, have the most at stake next season. Ranking their desperation to win it all entering 2025-26, as we are tasked with doing here, will take into account their proximity to the end.
Basically, we're being guided by a central question: Which rosters stand to look most different in 2026-27 if they can't steal a piece of genuine title equity this year?
5. Los Angeles Clippers
1 of 5
Desperation levels for the Los Angeles Clippers can cut one of two ways: They are either itching to win a title right now because they know their core has limited time left, or they've already decided to chase bigger fish and are positioning themselves to maintain some semblance of title equity in the interim.
This feels like a classic "Why choose?" situation.
Kawhi Leonard (34), James Harden (35) and Bradley Beal (32) are all old enough to up the urgency factor. Throw in checkered health bills for Leonard and Beal, along with a spotty playoff track record for Harden, and you've got a piping-hot crockpot of urgency.
At the same time, while the Clippers are clearly angling for contention, theirs is now a window borne from convenience. Clearing their books in anticipation of the 2027 offseason has become the priority. Given the unique structure of Harden's deal—$13.3 million guaranteed for 2026-27—Los Angeles seems to be leaving the door open for a wholesale pivot next summer.
None of which overly dilutes expectations for the 2025-26 campaign. The Clippers added personnel and juiced up their offense in the image of a should-be contender. Unlike others to follow on this list, though, they clearly have contingencies—if not preferred alternatives—already in place.
4. New York Knicks
2 of 5
Mikal Bridges (2029-30 player option), Jalen Brunson (2028-29 player option), OG Anunoby (2028-29 player option), Karl-Anthony Towns (2027-28 player option) and Josh Hart (2027-28 team option) are all under team control for at least the next two years. And the New York Knicks have skirted the second apron for 2025-26, so their window isn't quite the shortest.
But urgency needs to be high. The Knicks have already made all the most plausible and obvious changes. They can't trade a first-round pick again until next summer, they already changed the head coach, and barring epic salary dumps, they won't have cap space for years. The Leon Rose-led front office has effectively decided this core is it.
Returning to the conference finals feels like a mandate. Anything less, and the Knicks will enter next summer staring the second apron in the face, with a core that will have delivered multiple years' worth of evidence it's not good enough.
Failing that, expect a monumental blow-up.
3. Denver Nuggets
3 of 5
Winning a title in 2023 and reorienting their books this past offseason buys the Denver Nuggets a semblance of goodwill. But it's nowhere near enough to bounce them from this list.
Having the best player in the NBA on your roster begets annual desperation. That urgency crescendos to mountainous peaks when said player could be entering a contract year next summer.
Sure, Nikola Jokić may have just passed on signing an extension so he could lock down more years and guaranteed money after this coming season. He also might have turned it down to put tacit pressure on the front office, and to keep his options open. Literally.
You better believe his 2027-28 player option will be the subject of intense discussion if Denver's 2025-26 campaign ends in anything other than a title.
Laugh off the idea of Jokić developing a wandering eye. You could be right. But the Nuggets are running out of ways to retool. They are the only team to have dealt away the rights to their 2032 first-rounder. It doesn't get much more desperate than that.
2. Cleveland Cavaliers
4 of 5
Putting the Cleveland Cavaliers this high feels counterintuitive at first glance. All four of their stars are younger than 30, and Donovan Mitchell is the only one among them under team control for fewer than three years.
Still, the first three seasons of the Core Four era have resulted in just two playoff-series victories. Legitimate reasons for Cleveland's early exits abound—and they're almost all related to injuries. But windows open and shut quickly in today's NBA, even when nucleuses are by and large locked up for the long term.
Pressure in Cleveland mushrooms further when looking at its operating costs. The Cavs are the sole team in the second apron—and they're almost $20 million above the threshold. When factoring in projected luxury taxes, this roster is about to run nearly $400 million.
Anything short of an Eastern Conference Finals appearance will invariably force Cleveland to recalibrate. And with Mitchell entering a contract year after this one (2027-28 player option), even that might not be enough to stave off the winds of significant change.
1. Philadelphia 76ers
5 of 5
The Philadelphia 76ers’ level of desperation is very much in the eye of the beholder.
On the one hand, they aren't short of long-term contingencies. Tyrese Maxey is only 24 and under contract for another four years. Jared McCain is 21 and fresh off a season in which he would have won Rookie of the Year if he never got injured. Philly just took 20-year-old wing VJ Edgecombe at No. 3. And it has a handful of first-round picks to include in prospective trades.
On the other hand, the Sixers signed what became two of the five worst contracts in the NBA last summer. The Joel Embiid situation flat-out stinks—and is unfair. But by his own admission, availability is always going to be an issue. That is ultra-problematic, if not organizationally damning, when he's owed $245.8 million over the next four seasons, which takes him through his age-34 campaign.
Poaching Paul George in 2024 free agency, meanwhile, has gone from a coup to a catastrophe. Various injuries limited him to 41 games last year, and he needed to undergo left knee surgery in July. At 35, with an overabundance of health issues in his past, he doesn't have much time left as a high-impact player. That's not what the Sixers want to hear when they owe him $162.4 million over the next three years.
If Philly plans to genuinely contend with this group, it has to happen next season. Two of its most critical players are basically ticking time bombs for disaster or stark regression. Every opportunity doesn't just count; it could be the last one the Sixers get.
Dan Favale is a National NBA Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
