The Best Teams Since 2010 that Didn't Win an NBA Title, Ranked

If we were to sit down and extensively list all of the best teams to have ever played in the NBA that list is going to look a whole different than simply listing out every team that's won a championship. Things don't always turn out like they should - they never have and never will - and it leads to some often significant discrepancies between the best team in any given year and who is crowned champions. Plenty can be at the forefront of that - injuries, an unexpected collapse, a particularly bad matchup, and a plethora of other factors that might impact a person on any given day - and it's worth showing a little love to some of those awesome teams that can't quite crown themselves champions. A team can still go down in history and be remembered for their greatness even if they didn't quite go all the way, and I'm here to rank the five best teams in that department since 2010. These teams were stocked with star-power and potential but for one reason or another couldn't quite get it done, often in situations that give us some eternally fascinating what if's and others that just couldn't pull it off when the moment mattered most. We'll take a look into the top five, what made them so good, what went wrong, and how their downfall ensured.

1. 2015-16 Golden State Warriors

You could take the "since 2010" out of the title of this article and the spot on the list isn't changing. The Warriors broke the regular season record going 73-9 in 2015-16, and it took the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history to keep them from rolling to a second straight title. Draymond Green's Game 5 suspension was the most recent addition to my 'Biggest What If's' volume for what it did to that series, tossing Cleveland a lifeline in a battle they had no chance of winning. We know what happened next, with LeBron and Kyrie exploding in Game 5 and the Cavs dominating Game 6, shifting the momentum entirely for a Game 7 Cleveland would get the best of. Had the Warriors hung on, which seemed nothing more than a formality after Game 4, this would've gone down as the best season of all-time. This Warriors team still holds the title for most wins in a single season with 88 and the 3rd-best winning percentage of all-time, shooting the second-highest three-point percentage of any team in league history on double the attempts as the leader. Who could forget the 24-0 start to the season, the best start any team in American professional sports has ever had, and they'd go on to become the only regular season team to ever not lose back-to-back games and also the first not to ever lose to the same team twice. Unanimous MVP Stephen Curry led the way, and he shattered the all-time record for threes made in a season with 402, 116 more than the next-best, his own mark from the year before. Draymond Green was named Second Team All-NBA and finished as the runner-up in Defensive Player of the Year, while Klay Thompson was named Third Team All-NBA and finished second in the league in three-pointers made. Every aspect of this season was simply incredible, with LeBron and the Cavaliers' historic comeback the only thing standing in the way of the completing their record-breaking campaign. Even falling short of a title this team still goes down as one of the very best teams of all time, and easily the best of any team that fell short of a championship.

2. 2020-21 Brooklyn Nets

When we look back at the saga that was the early 2020s Nets, the narrative will be tainted with memories of dysfunction, underachievement, and general discontent. And these are fair assessments - not one member of the big three of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden went out on very positive terms with the franchise, but that first year the trio was all together, before everything started to fall apart, this team was well-equipped to win a championship and probably had the most ready roster in basketball to get it done. Brooklyn got off to a fast start led by KD and Kyrie, their major free agent signing in 2019 finally seeing the floor together for the first time, and things got a whole lot scarier when they acquired James Harden and officially formed the most powerful big three the league had seen in recent memory down in Brooklyn. Durant was still a consensus top-3 player in basketball, Kyrie still as sharp as ever, and Harden still very much in the prime of his career coming off another unbelievable year in Houston that followed his 2018 MVP. It almost seemed too good to be true and in the end, it was. The trio had no issues lighting it up when on the floor together, with all three looking like some of the best versions of themselves and able to share the wealth accordingly and look as scary as the rest of the league had feared. The problem? It felt like an unsolvable puzzle getting all three of them on the floor together. The three were limited to just seven games together in the regular season but despite that, there were never any issues of chemistry among the stars, they looked terrific in the limited time together, and it was setting up perfectly for all three to be healthy and ready to go entering the postseason. They were the clear favorites heading into the postseason and had their way with Boston in round one. If you want a glimpse into just how dominant this team could be, take a look at Game 4 of that series from TD Garden. Durant scored 42 on 14/20 shooting, Kyrie had 39 points and 11 assists, and Harden scored 23 points with 18 assists. The trio shot a combined 33/56 and the Nets scored 141 points in the win. Durant was the unstoppable scorer, Harden looked like the best facilitator in the game, and Kyrie was picking his spots and getting anything he wanted on the offensive end. It was a big three unlike any we had seen, with external forces the only thing that was going to stop this team from going all the way. But disaster began to struck, as on Brooklyn's very first possession of their second-round series against the Bucks, Harden suffered a hamstring injury, leaving the game and not returning. That didn't phase the Nets as they rolled to a 2-0 series lead but in a pivotal Game 4, Kyrie Irving landed on the foot of Giannis Antetokounmpo and suffered a right ankle sprain, ending his season on the spot. It was a devastating twist Brooklyn couldn't overcome, as even as Harden returned far from 100% for the end of that series, Durant went from a historically good superteam to having to do it all on his own, ultimately coming up short in a second-round loss. Things fell apart in Brooklyn from that point on, and all three would go on to request trades and be dealt away, but to this day there remains little doubt that a healthy Nets team was going all the way in 20220-21, and very possibly with ease.

3. 2017-18 Houston Rockets

No team challenged the Kevin Durant Warriors quite like this Houston Rockets team, built to contend with the superteam in Golden State and coming oh so close to bringing them down in this memorable 2018 series. Houston's regular season was one of the best in recent memory, finishing 65-17 with the best offensive rating in basketball and a , with James Harden finally braking through with his first MVP in his first year alongside Chris Paul. Now the Rockets finished a whole seven games ahead of the Golden State Warriors in the standings and won two of the three regular season matchups, but it's hard to imagine the Warriors were all that afraid coming off such a dominant run to a title the year before and returning the same superteam core the league couldn't help but fear. But this wasn't your ordinary regular season fluke, as after rolling through their first two series and into a Western Conference Finals meeting with the Warriors, it became abundantly clear that Houston not only felt they were on the same level as Golden State, they really were. The Rockets fell behind 2-1 in the series with a 41-point Game 3 loss, a defeat so bad that it wouldn't have surprised anyone if that just about did Houston in. But this Rockets team wasn't like that - they grinded out a narrow Game 4 win on the road in a game they trailed by 12 early in the 4th, and they gutted out another tight victory in Game 5 to suddenly find themselves on the verge of knocking off he mighty Warriors and reaching the NBA Finals. A devastating hamstring injury to Chris Paul very late in that Game 5 was a crushing blow to Houston's dream, as the Warriors would go on to win the net two games against the depleted Rockets and roll to another title. Houston looked more than up to the task of bringing don the Durant-led Warriors, something no team would ever do when the core was fully healthy, but maybe the most brutal of CP3's long list of untimely injuries doomed those hopes when the Rockets held all the momentum. Golden State would win the Finals 4-0, a year after a 16-1 postseason, a testament to just how far ahead of the rest of the league they were and the lengths it would take for anyone to break them down. Houston deserves a ton of credit for pushing the Warriors to the brink, and Chris Paul's injury will always forever live in infamy with how close the Rockets were before the superstar went down.

4. 2015-16 Oklahoma City Thunder

In the final season of Kevin Durant in Oklahoma City, this Thunder team was for real. You can debate forever whether this team was better than 2011-12 team that reached the NBA Finals and still had James Harden, but I think this was the best version of Durant's Thunder to ever exist, and a team on the very same level as the 73-9 Warriors and the eventual champion Cavaliers. This team had a really good regular season finishing 55-27, with Russell Westbrook being voted First-Team All-NBA, Kevin Durant Second -Team All-NBA, and both finishing in the top-5 in MVP voting. The clock was ticking a bit for this team with KD in a contract year and the Thunder still yet to return to even the Conference Finals since reaching the NBA Finals back in 2011-12, and they had to deal with a pair of juggernauts in the West in the 73-9 Warriors and 67-15 Spurs. But the Thunder made their second major breakthrough of the Durant-Westbrook era, taking down the best regular season team in Spurs history in six games in the second round, beating them twice on the road in that series after San Antonio went an impenetrable 40-1 at home in the regular season. KD and Russ had fallen short in the playoffs before, but they weren't messing around this time around, securing that series win with a blowout win in front of a raucous home crowd coming off a gutsy Game 5 win on the road. And that momentum carried into a huge Western Conference Finals meeting with the 73-9 Warriors, as OKC stole Game 1 on the road and after Golden State tied it at two, the Thunder blew the Warriors out in back-to-back games at home, taking control of the series 3-1 and putting the entire league on notice that this was their time. Oklahoma City was rocking, winning the two games by 28 and 24 respectively as the Warriors looked flat-out overmatched and on the verge of elimination. It's hard to pin one specific thing on the Thunder choke that would ensue, as the two stars began to struggle mightily from the field while the momentum started to shift Golden State's way, and after Klay Thompson's legendary Game 6 gave the Warriors the road win they needed, it became their series to lose as they took care of the final game. What happened that offseason would obviously send shockwaves through the league, with Durant breaking up a Thunder core that had been right there against the mighty Warriors and looked more than ready to finally capture that title. This Thunder team was one of the every best to never win a title, giving the Dubs all they could possibly handle and taking out a powerhouse of a Spurs team just to get that chance.

5. 2012-13 San Antonio Spurs

No team in the 2010s, and maybe ever, was closer to a ring they in't get than the 2012-13 San Antonio Spurs. This was one of the very best teams of the 2010s that had rolled through the postseason to set up a long-awaited meeting with LeBron's Miami Heat, and they really looked like the better team while on their way to a convincing Finals victory. Magic would strike as Ray Allen hit the iconic game-tying three in game 6 to force overtime, where Miami would win and then do it again two days later in Game 7. So much went wrong for San Antonio down the stretch of that Game 6, from the missed free throws, to Tim Duncan on the bench on the final possession, to the offensive rebound, and to Allen making one of the more ridiculous three-pointers the basketball world has ever seen, and it robbed the Spurs of a well-deserved championship that would've put that team up there with the best of all time. It was in that in-between period with Duncan and Ginobili getting older but still playing at a high level while the younger guys like Kawhi and Danny Green began to hit the scene, and it was Tony Parker who had taken the reins and was leading the spurs to all this success. The roster was built to win and led by the best coach in basketball in Gregg Popovich, and the cruised in to the Finals with first and third-round sweeps and a second-round win over none other than the up-and-coming Golden State Warriors. It didn't take LeBron and co. long to realize this wasn't a bunch of 23-year-olds standing in the way of another title like it was the year before, and San Antonio grinded out a Game 1 win on the road with Tony Parker hitting a memorable dagger to seal the impressive win. The teams went back-and-forth over the next four games to leave the Spurs up 3-2, looking unphased by a LeBron James at the peak of its powers, the big three still very much intact, and an excellent array of role players that did wonders for Miami down the stretch in their two rings. And with a 93-89 lead and two free throws coming with under 30 seconds left, San Antonio was on their way to another brilliant title run. But then Manu Ginobili missed a free throw, and a 21-year-old Kawhi Leonard missed another one after a LeBron James three, setting up Ray Allen for the unthinkable. Miami went on to win, with a Spurs team built perfectly and just seconds away coming up devastatingly short of a fifth ring of the dynasty.