Seven years ago, I ranked the 32 most cursed franchises in the “big four” North American professional sports — the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. In order to qualify at the time, a team had to have been championship-less dating back to the 1960s. But I am turning 40 this week, and that led me to conclude that any team that hasn’t won a title since the year I was born can certainly qualify.
Incredibly, all four of the 1983 title winners — the Philadelphia 76ers, New York Islanders, Baltimore Orioles, and Los Angeles (later Oakland and then Las Vegas) Raiders — have not won a title since that year. That gives me an excuse to add all four to my new rankings, while removing the Denver Nuggets, who just won their first NBA title in their 47th year in the NBA. (The Detroit Tigers and Chicago Bears (oh my!) fall short of my cutoff by one and two years, respectively, but I don’t think either is in danger of winning a title anytime soon, so they should be on this list the next time I update it.)
I look at three factors when determining how “cursed” a franchise is. The first is the team’s performance during its drought. A team that is never in contention isn’t cursed so much as it’s pathetic. The second, which is related, is the number of high-profile heartbreaking losses they’ve endured. A team has to be good enough to play in important playoff games, and it has to suffer “stomach punch” losses. The third is the passion of the fan base. The Arizona Coyotes could go a century without a Stanley Cup, but I’m not sure that too many people would care.
For similar reasons, a team that has relocated during its drought moves down the list. Generational suffering requires a team to stay (and lose) in the same city for decades. So without further ado, here’s how I rank the 37 teams that haven’t won a ring since 1983, from least to most “cursed.”
The original Jets were always a joke, finishing higher than third in their division just twice in 17 years (and never higher than second), only to become a bigger joke by abandoning Manitoba for the hockey hotbed of Phoenix in 1997. The franchise has been so irrelevant there that nobody wanted them and the league had to take them over.
They’ve won two playoff series since relocating, both in 2012, when they surprisingly won their division and made it to the Western Conference Final, where the Los Angeles Kings easily dispatched them in 5 games. (They also won a special COVID pre-first-round qualifier in 2020.) This is one of the least cared about and most irrelevant franchises in sports.
Despite the ABA/NBA merger stacking the league with extra talent, the late 1970s were a nadir in the NBA. The 44-win Washington Bullets won the 1978 title as probably the worst champion in NBA history. The following year, the Bullets made it back to the Finals only to lose to Seattle. And that’s pretty much it. Since then, the Wizards have been among the most irrelevant franchises in the NBA, never winning 50 games in a season, and not even winning 46 between 1979 and 2015.
The Islanders won four straight cups from 1980–83, so it would be hard to consider them cursed for a long time thereafter. By the end of the ‘80s, they were no longer a contender, and they fell largely into irrelevancy behind a fisherman logo until they finally made the second round for the first time in 23 years in 2016. They were a Cinderella underdog making it to the Eastern Conference finals in each of the COVID-shortened seasons of 2020 and 2021, but they lost a 1–0 heartbreaker to the Lightning in game 7 two years ago, and they haven’t won another playoff series since.
The Brewers led the 1982 World Series three games to two only to fall in seven to St. Louis, but other than that, they’re as forgettable a franchise as exists in baseball with nary a noteworthy playoff moment. They’ve switched cities (Seattle to Milwaukee), divisions (West to East to Central), even leagues (AL to NL), but all the while, nobody really cares.
They have a claim to being the worst MLB franchise of my lifetime–the only teams to make the playoffs less frequently are the Marlins and Royals, each of whom have won rings. Now the Brewers at least occasionally make the playoffs, but they’ve yet to make themselves truly relevant. The Brewers went all-in before the 2018 season and made it to game 7 of the NLCS, and they’ve stayed competitive, but they’ve won just a single playoff game since then.
At 33 on our list, the Cardinals haven’t been able to win despite jumping around the map over the years. They won a title in Chicago in 1947, lost the title the next year, then were terrible for another decade before moving to St. Louis. They were mostly irrelevant for nearly three decades in the Gateway City before moving to Arizona in 1988. They’ve been mostly irrelevant there as well, other than the fluky (they were 9–7) 2008 Kurt Warner/Larry Fitzgerald playoff run that left James Harrison and Santonio Holmes permanently in the nightmares of Cards fans.
The emergence of Kyler Murray gave them hope for a new era of contention, but that has turned bad pretty quickly. Arizona made the playoffs in 2021 but was one of the worst teams in the NFL in ’22.
Their curse is compounded by sharing a city with the Bills. They’ve been around for 52 years with 29 playoff appearances and two Stanley Cup Final losses. The 1999 loss was particularly brutal.
It also must’ve been frustrating to ride Dominic Hasek’s incredible playoff runs so many times without finishing any of them. But they haven’t even made the playoffs now in a dozen years, which seems impossible in a league where a majority of teams make it every year.
(Sorry San Diego, but when I think of the championships in my life that most seemed to be a fait accompli because of the massive disparity between the teams, the 1998 World Series and Super Bowl XXIX are foremost in my mind.) In recent times, they’ve spent big money on star free agents and become the only team in San Diego. Yet they still haven’t managed to achieve relevancy. One would think that the huge financial investment will ultimately move them up or off this list, and last year they did make it to the NLCS for just the third time ever, but we’ll have to wait and see. They’re currently under .500.
They won a Super Bowl in 1968 and have been generally mediocre since then. The Jets lost four AFC championships between 1982 and 2010, but they were underdogs in all of them (by a combined 22.5 points) and lost by more than the spread in all four (a combined loss of 45 points). And since that last loss a dozen years ago, they’ve had more butt fumbles than playoff appearances.
They’ve only won more than 11 games once in the history of the franchise. The only reason they’re this high is because I know a lot more whiny Jets fans than I do any of the teams below them. According to Akiva Wienerkur, the biggest Jets losses of the last 40 years are:
The Jets are comparable to the Knicks in that on occasion, they come out of nowhere to make the playoffs only to lose to a much better team, but otherwise they don’t really matter. It’s New York chauvinism to assume that just because your team plays in New York you deserve to win titles, and if you don’t, you must be a really cursed franchise. You’re not. You’re mid.
The Clippers have been around since 1970 without a title, spending time in Buffalo, San Diego and Los Angeles. They were one of the most irrelevant franchises in sports–until they got Chris Paul in 2011. But the CP3/Blake/DeAndre teams never got past the second round, and few people actually cared with the exception of the temporary bandwagon jumpers when the Lakers and Clippers briefly swapped positions locally during the Lakers’ gap between Kobe and LeBron.
Getting rid of owner Donald Sterling was a blessing, and then the Kawhi/PG13 combo gave the Clippers as great chance of winning a title and getting off this list as they’d ever had. But those two stars have not been able to stay healthy at the same time. The Clippers actually made their first-ever conference finals in 2021 even without Leonard, but since then, Kawhi and PG13 have played just two playoff games combined. They can’t even stay healthy enough to suffer heartbreaking playoff losses.
After winning the World Series in 1983, the only thing the Orioles really had to be excited about for the next dozen years was Cal Ripken playing every day and breaking Lou Gehrig’s record in 1995. The following two years, Baltimore finally returned to the playoffs. In the 1996 ALCS, they were on the wrong end of the moment that made Jeffrey Maier a household name.
In ’97, the O’s won 98 games and held an early ALCS lead over the Indians, but they would lose all four games by one run (two in extra innings) as Cleveland won the pennant in six. It would be 15 years until the Orioles were above .500 again, as they fell to the bottom of an impossibly deep AL East while also sometimes even falling behind the Washington Nationals in regional attention. Buck Showalter would lead them to a brief run of relevance in the last decade, but they never won a postseason game past the divisional round, and then they fell to historically awful depths until a turnaround that began last year.
I’ve lived in or near New York City for nearly half my life and rarely met a Nets fan. Although they won two ABA titles in the 1970s behind Dr. J, they were never competitive in the NBA, other than 2002 and 2003, when they took advantage of the greatest conference disparity in NBA history to make it to the Finals twice. Those Nets teams might not have even made the playoffs had they been in the West. And again, nobody here cared.
After moving to Brooklyn, they took a big swing at competition with the KG/Paul Pierce trade, which almost immediately backfired. And then in 2019 Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving decided to join the Nets, and the team traded for James Harden the following year. Suddenly, Brooklyn had a good chance to either get off this list entirely or at least move up it. But injuries and personality conflicts destroyed what on paper was one of the best Big Threes in NBA history, and now they’re all gone–leaving the Nets to basically start from scratch.
In 1958, the St. Louis Hawks were champions. In the next decade, they lost in the NBA Finals twice and in the division finals five times before moving to Atlanta in 1968. Their first two years in Atlanta saw them destroyed by the Lakers in the division finals. And that was the last time they’d make it that far until 2015, when they won 60 games and lost to LeBron in the conference finals. That 2015 season was one of only two times they’ve won more than 50 games in the last 25 years.
The franchise’s only truly crushing loss in the past several decades was in 1988, when they led the Celtics three games to two in the second round only to lose each of the final two games by two points. That was the only time Dominique Wilkins’ Hawks even won more than one second-round game. Trae Young puts up ridiculous numbers, but ultimately, he’ll primarily be remembered as the guy the Hawks chose over Luka Doncic.
Trae’s Hawks actually made the conference finals in 2021, but now his teammates reportedly hate him, and the team seems solidly stuck in the middle going nowhere fast.
The Raiders won the Super Bowl in their second year in Los Angeles in 1983, and they remained a contender in LA for the next decade. In 1985, they had a bye behind NFL MVP Marcus Allen but lost their first playoff game at home, blowing a third quarter lead when Sam Seale fumbled a kick return, which was recovered in the end zone by New England for the winning score. The next year, they were 8–4 only to lose in overtime on the last day of November, which started a tailspin of four straight losses out of the playoffs entirely. They would again end the season on a playoff-eliminating losing streak in 1988 and 1989.
They not only returned to the playoffs in 1990 but won a postseason game for the first time since the ‘83 Super Bowl, but they were annihilated 51–3 by the Bills, who won their first of four straight AFC championships. The Bills again eliminated the Raiders with a fourth quarter comeback in the divisional round in 1993 as well. The next year the Raiders once again blew a shot at the playoffs by losing to end the regular season, and then Al Davis shocked everyone by returning the team to Oakland.
The Oakland Raiders struggled until the turn of the century, when Jon Gruden and Rich Gannon rebuilt them into a contender. Gruden’s Raiders lost in the AFC championship game after the 2000 season to Baltimore after Tony Siragusa literally crushed Gannon, forcing him out of that game. Two years later, the world was introduced to the “tuck rule,” which started the Brady-Belichick dynasty at the expense of the Raiders.
After that game, Davis was not impressed enough with Gruden’s horizontal passing game, so he traded him to Tampa Bay, where in his first season, Gruden upset the Raiders in their first return to the Super Bowl in two decades. Starting lineman Barret Robbins forgot to take his depression medicine the day before the game and went AWOL, while Gruden’s replacement at coach, Bill Callahan, forgot to change the calls from the previous year, allowing Gruden’s defense to dance all over the Raiders.
And that was effectively it for the Oakland Raiders. Davis got old and senile and the Raiders fell into an embarrassing tailspin. They’ve been above .500 just twice since then, both times losing their first playoff game, and they again abandoned Oakland, moving to Las Vegas in 2020.
They lose points because the Titans have only been in Tennessee for 25 years. The Houston Oilers won the first two ever AFL titles over the Chargers in 1960 and 1961 and lost in double OT the next year. Their first truly painful moment in the NFL was The Comeback (the Frank Reich game). After moving to Tennessee, the Oilers became the Titans and got revenge on the Bills for The Comeback with the Music City Miracle. They rode that wave all the way to the Super Bowl, where Kevin Dyson was stopped just one yard short.
Otherwise the Titans have been largely irrelevant, and they haven’t been in their current city long enough to rank much higher on this list. Yes, they’ve made the playoffs most years in the Mike Vrabel era, and they even made it to the AFC Championship in 2019 and were the one-seed two years later, but at no point were they ever considered a real title contender.
This sad team is still living off an undefeated season in 1972 (and a repeat title the next year). The Dolphins would stay competitive with Bob Griese over the rest of the 1970s, but they wouldn’t win another playoff game until David Woodley became their quarterback and Don Shula led them back to the Super Bowl in 1982, where they blew a fourth-quarter lead in a game in which Woodley went 4-for-14 with 97 yards and two turnovers.
But then they hit the jackpot, drafting one of the greatest QBs of all time in Dan Marino. Marino broke just about every QB record that existed in 1984 in just his second season as he led the Dolphins back to their second Super Bowl in three years. They took a lead into the second quarter, but were outscored 31–6 from that point forward, getting blown out by a historically great 18–1 San Francisco team. But with a HOF coach and the greatest QB in the world who was only 23, the Dolphins had every reason to believe they’d have many more chances to win a Super Bowl.
Marino would never get back there. The following season, the Dolphins were home favorites in the AFC championship against the Patriots, only to get blown out. Then they wouldn’t even make the playoffs again for five years. They would make it nine times in 11 years over the 1990s, and they’d win a playoff game in six of those nine trips, but their nine playoff losses included scores of 17–3, 20–3, 29–10, 27–0, 38–3 and 62–7 in the last game of Marino’s career.
In the last two decades, the Dolphins have only made the playoffs three times, and last year was the first time they didn’t lose by 18 points. In that time they’ve gone through 11 coaches and 12 primary QBs, with the only one who held onto the job for more than a couple seasons never having won a playoff game until he joined the Titans as a backup in 2019. They fired a good coach because he was winning too much. The Dolphins think they’re on the upswing right now. To me, that just sounds like a recipe for more heartbreak, and a move up this list.
The Canucks won their division five times in a row in the previous decade, only to crash and burn in the playoffs each time. They finally made the Cup Final in 2011, and they led Boston two games to zero and then three games to two, only to blow those leads to lose game 7 at home. Safe to say, the loss didn’t go over well with the faithful in British Columbia.
Allowing America’s Original Six teams to end their own droughts is a thing the Canucks do. They also lost the 1994 Stanley Cup Final to the Rangers, also in seven games. (Their other Stanley Cup Final loss is less noteworthy. They were a losing team in 1982 who got hot in the playoffs until they ran into an Islanders team that is one of the greatest in history and was in the midst of four consecutive championships.)
Since I first made this ranking seven years ago, the Canucks have fallen into irrelevance, only making the playoffs once, which was during the weird COVID season. Part of the reason I have the Canucks as high as I do is because they’re Canadian, and so they care a lot more about hockey than most American fans do.
It seems as if the Mariners are always competitive — they’ve been .500 or better for most of our lives — yet they’ve never even come within two games of reaching a World Series. After losing three of the best players in baseball history in consecutive seasons (Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Alex Rodriguez), the 2001 Mariners were arguably the greatest team ever, going 116–46. But then they managed just one victory in the ALCS. (To add insult to injury, the World Series MVP that year was Randy Johnson–for the newly invented Arizona Diamondbacks.)
The Mariners can’t even win the award as most cursed team in their division, having been surpassed on this list by the Texas Rangers in recent years. With the Brewers having moved to the NL, the Mariners may be the most irrelevant AL franchise. Certainly my podcast cohost Akiva thinks so. Nothing of note has happened to them since 2001 other than Ichiro. Right now they’re entering a new window of competitiveness, so let’s see if they move up or out.
I’ve known a number of Sonics fans over the years–and a few Thunder fans–but not a single person who identifies as both. So while Seattle could be considered a cursed basketball town for their team having been stolen — the same way Minnesota is in hockey, for example — it’s hard to count the franchise as having gone 40+ years without a title, as Seattle stopped counting after 30 years and it’s only been 14 years for OKC.
That having been said, let’s briefly review the history: Seattle stayed competitive for a couple of years after the ’79 title, but was largely dormant until Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp united with George Karl in the early ‘90s. In the mid ‘90s, Seattle was the best regular season team in the West, but they lost a shocking and historic 1 vs. 8 matchup to Dikembe Mutombo’s Nuggets in 1994 and then lost in the first round yet again the next year, blowing both chances with the Bulls not at full capacity. They won a franchise-record 64 games the following year, but unfortunately the Bulls won a league-record 72 games and beat them in six in the NBA Finals.
Seattle would never again get past the second round, as Payton was eventually flipped for Ray Allen, who was flipped for Jeff Green. And then Howard Schultz sold the team to an Oklahoma-based group when he failed to get public funding for a new arena.
In OKC, the franchise incredibly acquired not one, not two, but three future MVPs in quick succession, and they immediately became a contender. But every year they lost to the eventual champions: In 2010 to the Lakers, in 2011 to the Mavericks in the conference finals, and in 2012 to the Heat in the NBA Finals. Then they shockingly let their third MVP-to-be, James Harden, go to Houston.
The Thunder were still great, though, as Kevin Durant won his MVP in 2013 and the Thunder had arguably the franchise’s greatest regular season ever. But Westbrook was injured in the first round of the playoffs, dooming the Thunder’s season. The next year OKC somehow looked even better in the playoffs, and they had a two games to zero lead over San Antonio in the Western Conference Finals with a planned NBA Finals rematch with the Heat. But then Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs went nuclear, winning four straight en route to their own rematch with the Heat. The next year was lost with Durant injured. And the year after that the Warriors had literally the greatest season in NBA history (even better than the ‘96 Bulls who had previously stymied this franchise’s title hopes). But Durant and Westbrook were otherworldly, as the Thunder won blowouts in games three and four by 28 and 26 points, respectively, to take a three games to one series lead over the greatest team of all time. Tragically for OKC, the Warriors won three straight close games to come back and eliminate OKC in seven games. And then the snake Durant up and joined the 73-win Warriors that offseason.
Westbrook put together a herculean MVP performance of his own the following season, but the Thunder, who had never been below a 50-win pace with a healthy KD and Westbrook, never hit 50 wins again with just Westbrook, and they lost in the first round four straight years. Their smart front office has quickly rebuilt them, and they look ready to contend again for the next decade. Maybe they’ll move off this list. Or maybe they’ll move up it.
The Pacers were the model franchise of the ABA, winning three titles in four years between 1970 and 1973 led by Mel Daniels and coach Slick Leonard. Yet once the Pacers joined the NBA they struggled, making the playoffs just twice in their first 13 seasons and not winning a playoff series until they hired Larry Brown in their 18th NBA season. They made game seven of the Eastern Conference Finals in each of the two seasons of MJ’s absence, but each time they lost to the team that would then lose the NBA Finals to Houston.
They again made game seven of the ECF in 1998, the only time a team ever took Michael Jordan to a game seven. In 1999, they made the conference finals for the fourth time in six seasons, but it ended the way the first one did, losing to the Knicks. The following year proved that the fifth time was the charm, as the Pacers finally made their first and only NBA Finals, but the Shaq/Kobe Lakers were too much, and after that season coach Larry Bird stepped off the court and back into the front office.
With a mediocre replacement in Isiah Thomas, the Pacers fell back to being first-round fodder. New coach Rick Carlisle arrived in 2004 and built a team around Jermaine O’Neal and Ron Artest (and an aging Reggie Miller) to a team-record 61 wins. And despite losing in the conference finals, the Pacers were well set up to compete … until Artest and Stephen Jackson took on the entire city of Detroit in the “Malice at the Palace” brawl, which effectively ended that team’s period of contention.
Carlisle left and the Pacers missed the playoffs four years in a row, but new coach Frank Vogel built a team around Danny Granger and then his replacement Paul George, and the Pacers made their seventh and eighth Conference Finals in a 21-year span in 2013 and 2014. But just as the team of the 1990s ran into then-GOAT MJ, the team of the 2010s ran into new-GOAT LeBron, and George eventually demanded a trade. The Pacers now haven’t won 50 games in a decade, and there’s no clear path towards them doing so anytime soon.
Like the Titans/Oilers and Bills, the Chargers won an AFL title in the 1960s, but those are essentially meaningless. The Air Coryell Chargers lost consecutive AFC Championships in 1980 and 1981 and lost perhaps the least competitive Super Bowl ever in 1994 (they were 19 point underdogs and still weren’t close to covering).
In the Philip Rivers era, they were competitive with several tough home playoff losses, all of which can be at least partially blamed on one man. In the 2004 Wild Card, they came back from down 10 to score the touchdown that sent the game to overtime with just 11 seconds left. They chewed up nearly the entire overtime clock with a 14-play drive that ended with a missed Nate Kaeding field goal, then the Jets kicked their own game-winning field goal with eight seconds remaining.
In 2006, they were the best team in the NFL, and they led the Patriots by eight with under five minutes remaining in their divisional game, only for the Patriots to score 11 points to take the lead. With seconds remaining, the Chargers drove the ball into field goal range, only for Kaeding to miss another field goal. In the 2009 Wild Card, Kaeding missed three field goals in a game the Chargers lost to the Jets by three.
Did we mention that Nate Kaeding was the most-accurate regular season kicker in NFL history over the span of his career in San Diego? Oh, and in 2010 the Chargers had the NFL’s No. 1 offense and No. 1 defense and still missed the playoffs. So why aren’t they higher on this list? Because they don’t really have any fan base. No one in LA cares about them and nobody in San Diego followed them there. They have fewer fans than any other NFL team despite playing in the second-largest market.
The Broad Street Bullies won consecutive Cups in 1974 and 1975 and lost a chance at a threepeat by getting swept by the Canadiens in 1976. The Flyers continued to be one of the best teams in the NHL for the next decade, losing four Cup Finals between 1976 and 1987. After bottoming out in the early 1990s, they rebuilt around Eric Lindros, John LeClair, Ron Brind’Amour and Eric Desjardins. But that team never met their potential.
They’ve always reminded me of the Sacramento Kings of about the same era, as they were built around a guy who should’ve been an all-timer (Lindros/Chris Webber) who couldn’t stay healthy, and they constantly competed in the playoffs only to fall short.
Their period of competition continued into the aughts under Ken Hitchcock with the addition of Mark Recchi and Simon Gagne, and the Flyers even made a surprise Stanley Cup Final in 2010 led by an aging Chris Pronger, which ultimately became their sixth Stanley Cup Final loss since their last title. And then they fell on hard times again, with their only playoff series win over the last decade being during the COVID season.
The Browns are overrated as a cursed franchise; it’s more a compounding effect of all three Cleveland teams, an effect which LeBron James dissipated. One demerit against the Browns ranking higher on this list is that they were once not just a great team but perhaps the greatest team ever. They played in 10 consecutive championships through 1955, winning seven (including five in a row).
They played for three more the following decade, winning their last in 1964. So Browns fans on Social Security still remember enjoying a championship team. Since then the Browns have mostly just been bad, other than in the 1980s, when they suffered consecutive stomach punch losses to the Broncos in 1986 (The Drive) and 1987 (The Fumble).
Those losses were horrific, but at the time the Browns were within two decades of having won a title, so they weren’t quite yet “cursed.” Losing the franchise to Baltimore was obviously even a bigger stomach punch, especially when the new team won a Super Bowl so soon thereafter. They got the franchise back very quickly, but now they’re just bad. And the Deshaun Watson trade made them go from sympathetic to villainous. Nobody feels bad for you, nobody likes you, nobody wants you to succeed. Go away.
Since their two titles in the early 70s, the Knicks have lost three times in the conference finals and twice in the NBA Finals. The Knicks’ most devastating losses in that time are games 6 and 7 of the 1994 Finals (#JohnStarks), games 6 and 7 of the second round in 1997 vs. the Heat (which they had to play without Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, John Starks and Charlie Ward, all of whom were suspended one game for their reactions to P.J. Brown’s bodyslam of Ward), and of course Reggie Miller’s eight points in 8.9 seconds in the second round the following year (they made a whole movie about that one!).
But now they’re basically the Jets of the NBA; if they weren’t in New York, they’d be among the most anonymous teams in the league. Nothing of relevance has happened to this team this century, aside from a couple weeks where a rando named Jeremy Lin made a very short term deal with the devil. As I always like to tell my Knicks friends: a star free agent not signing with the Knicks is not a story about the Knicks.
The Rangers spent their first several decades in existence completely irrelevant, but in the 1990s, they got good thanks to an offense built around Juan Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Ivan Rodriguez, and buckets of steroids. But they never had a sniff of postseason success until 2010, when they finally made their first World Series.
The next year they made it back, losing a brutal World Series in which they led three games to two and blew two-run leads in the bottom of both the ninth and tenth innings of game 6, eventually losing in the 11th on David Freese’s home run and Joe Buck’s crib of his dad’s famous Kirby Puckett call. Before that moment, they were one out away before tragedy struck.
Those back-to-back World Series losses alone are why they’re this high on this list. They stayed competitive for a few years before bottoming out again, but now they’ve spent a ton on free agents, almost like the AL’s version of the Padres, including a huge deal for Jacob deGrom. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for them. (Spoiler: It already hasn’t.)
After winning the 1983 title, the Sixers remained a contender for the next decade, as Moses and Dr. J eventually gave way to Charles Barkley. But the Sixers were continuously stymied in the Eastern Conference playoffs by better teams.
The greatest heartbreak was in 1986, when Philly enjoyed its seventh consecutive 50+ win season (they wouldn’t match 1986’s 54 wins again until the 21st century). In the second round they faced Milwaukee, who they had eliminated from the playoffs in 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1985, and who was now missing injured star guard Sidney Moncrief. But Moncrief returned, and Barkley’s block of his go-ahead basket late in game 7 was ruled goaltending, giving the Bucks a 113–112 lead with seconds to go. Dr. J missed a wide-open jumper from the free throw line at the buzzer, and the Sixers lost.
When they finally gave up on Barkley’s ability to make it out of the East in the early ‘90s, they went into a tailspin until Allen Iverson and Larry Brown arrived to take Philly all the way back to the NBA Finals in 2001, where an upset in game 1 gave the historically great Lakers their only postseason loss that season.
Once Iverson left Philly sputtered along as an irrelevant team for a while until they bottomed out in “The Process,” which led them to their current Joel Embiid-led team, who has lost in the second round in five of the last six seasons, the most dramatic loss being on Kawhi Leonard’s buzzer beater in Toronto in 2019.
Their most pathetic loss being Ben Simmons forgetting how to play basketball in game 7 versus Atlanta in 2021. They still haven’t gotten past the second round since Iverson in 2001, including their most-recent heartbreak of blowing a three games to two advantage in the conference semifinals over Boston in 2023.
Their advantage over the Titans and Cardinals and Raiders and Chargers is that they’ve been in the same city for 50 years, but the Falcons have essentially been irrelevant for most of their existence. Their 1998 Super Bowl loss was entirely expected in a Cinderella season in which they weren’t that great anyway. But of course, 28–3.
That may be the most cursed heartbreaking loss in American sports history. If it happened to the Vikings or Bills they would’ve had to put the entire fan base down for its own good. And that alone is tragic enough to shoot the Falcons way up this list.
They haven’t been back to the Finals since their 1951 title, but they have been in Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha and Sacramento. In their nearly four decades in Sacramento, the Kings‘ only period of relevance was in the early 2000s, when they were legitimately great and only lost the 2002 Western Conference Finals because the league conspired against them. That series alone vaults them up this list.
They finally ended the longest postseason drought in the league this past season, but I think people are massively overrating their future potential. Their greatest skill this past season was that they were the healthiest team in the league in a season in which everyone else was injured. With baseline health they’re a borderline playoff team at best.
They were good around the same time as the Browns, winning three titles in the 1950s behind Bobby Layne. Then they traded Layne after the 1957 title, and he cursed them not to win again for 50 years. Now we’re two decades past that, and they’ve still won just a single playoff game in 66 years. They’re so depressing they drove Hall of Famers Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson to early retirement.
The only reason they’re not higher is because they’ve been so bad as to just be irrelevant. They began this offseason with more hope than they’ve had in a long time, and then they completely “Lions’d” the first round of the draft. The NFC, and especially the NFC North, are bad enough that the Lions probably have greater than even odds of making the playoffs this year. But that doesn’t mean they’ll do anything of consequence. And anyway, nobody in Michigan cares more about the Lions than they do about college football anyway.
After the “We Are Family” Pirates won the World Series in 1979, they immediately devolved, failing to win more than 85 games in any season in the 1980s. But a core of Barry Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, Doug Drabek, Jay Bell, and Bobby Bonilla led the Pirates to the top of the NL in the early 1990s. In 1990, they lost the NLCS to the Reds after winning game 1 in a tightrope series in which four games were decided by a single run. The next year the Pirates were heavy favorites against the upstart Braves, but they lost in seven in another incredibly close series, yet again with four one-run games–one of them in extra innings and the other three all by a 1–0 score! The Pirates returned home up three games to two in the series, but were shutout 1–0 and 4–0 in the deciding two games.
The Pirates returned to the NLCS for the third consecutive season in 1992, again against the Braves, and again they lost in seven games, this time in even more heartbreaking fashion. Down three games to one the Pirates outscored Atlanta 20–5 in the next two games, to make it to a game 7. The Pirates were winning 2–1 in the bottom of the ninth of game seven, but with the bases loaded, pinch-hitting nobody Francisco Cabrera got a base hit to left field, and former Buc Sid Bream slid under Barry Bonds’ throw to the plate to give the Braves their second consecutive pennant.
That offseason, Bonds signed with San Francisco and the Pirates were done being a relevant franchise, setting a record with 20 consecutive losing seasons. The Pirates briefly mattered from 2013–15, making the playoffs three years in a row, but they failed to get past the divisional round, and they fell back into irrelevance. Now they’re rebuilding again behind a couple of the most exciting young players in baseball, and hope abounds yet again for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Portland’s NBA franchise had never even finished .500 or made the playoffs before they won it all in 1977 with a team made legendary by David Halberstam, led by coach Jack Ramsay and center Bill Walton. The following year the Blazers and Walton would be even better, until an injury which ultimately led him out of Portland and not long thereafter the NBA. Honestly I’m kind of pissed at Halberstam, because his book has made Walton arguably the most overrated player in American sports.
In the early 1980s Portland’s first round draft picks gave them an opportunity to put together another contender: in 1982 they took Fat Lever, in 1983 they took Clyde Drexler, and in 1985 they took Terry Porter. None of those players were taken higher than 11, and in between them, in 1984 the Blazers had the second pick in the draft. This was incredibly fortunate in a draft that included four of the best 30 players in history in Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and John Stockton. Unfortunately for the Blazers they took Sam Bowie.
Nevertheless the Drexler/Porter backcourt led the team to the Finals in both 1990 and 1992, but the first time they ran into the defending champion Pistons on their way to a repeat title, and the second time they ran into Jordan’s Bulls in the middle of a threepeat. The Blazers continued to maintain an incredible streak of relevance, making the playoffs 21 consecutive seasons and 26 of 27. In 1999 they had no superstars but a hole-less starting lineup of Damon Stoudamire, Isaiah Rider, Brian Grant, Rasheed Wallace and Arvydas Sabonis made it to the Western Conference Finals.
Not willing to rest on their laurels, the Blazers upgraded the two weakest spots in that lineup the following year, adding Scottie Pippen and Steve Smith. That lineup, coupled with a deep bench (Detlef Schrempf, Grant, Greg Anthony, Stacey Augmon, and young Bonzi Wells and Jermaine O’Neal), led Portland to 59 regular season wins and a 16-point lead late in game seven of the Western Conference Finals (which at this point in NBA history was the de facto NBA Finals). But the Lakers outscored Portland 31–13 in the fourth quarter of game 7, with the Kobe-to-Shaq alley-oop clinching the series for LA.
The Blazers stayed relevant for a couple more years, but off-the-court issues eventually led the “Jail Blazers” to clean house, and neither the LaMarcus Aldridge-led team of the beginning of the previous decade or the Dame Lillard-led team that followed has managed to give the Blazers much relevance beyond first-round playoff fodder. Now they’re at a crossroads, trying to determine this summer whether they trade the number three pick in a historic draft to try to build one more contender around Dame, or whether they trade Dame and use that pick to start over again, the way they did 40 years ago.
Their fans care more than any other hockey fans, and they haven’t won a title since 1967, which was the last season of the NHL’s Original Six. In fact, they haven’t even made it to the Stanley Cup Final since then. They’re the pre-2016 Cubs of hockey: mostly terrible (just one playoff appearance in the preceding decade from when I first made this list, worst in the NHL), yet they still make tons of money thanks to a passionate fan base in a huge market.
When they got Auston Matthews they at least started making the playoffs again, though they lost in the first round six straight years (technically the pre-first-round qualifier in the COVID season) until they finally won a playoff series last month, their first in two decades. But the Leafs then bowed out of the second round in just five games. Their fans are extraordinarily passionate and angry. I know the feeling.
From 1984–2003 the Jazz made the playoffs an incredible 20 years in a row behind two of the top-30 players of all time. There are other players (Barkley, Ewing) and franchises (Suns) that had titles stolen by MJ’s run of dominance, but none more so than the Malone/Stockton Jazz.
They were the best team in the league over a six-year span in the late 1990s. In 1994, they lost in the Western Conference Finals to the Rockets. In 1995, they had terrible luck as the Rockets started slow and ended up as a low seed, so they were matched up with the 60-win Jazz in the first round. But by then the Rockets had added Clyde Drexler and were even better than the previous year’s championship team. The Jazz took a two games to one lead in the series, only to blow games four and five.
Finally in 1999 MJ was out of the league, but a lockout resulted in a truncated 50-game season. Yet again the Jazz were the best team in the league, but a team whose best three players were all 36+ by the playoffs ran out of steam in that prestissimo schedule. In the last decade they tried to become a serious contender around Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell, but despite regular season success, they were unable to make a serious dent in the playoffs. Now they’re starting over once again.
They’re a consistent contender, always in contention, but never going all the way. But the Suns haven’t had that many heartbreaks. They’ve lost in the Western Conference Finals seven times, but only once did they stretch it to seven games. Their loss in the 1976 Finals included the greatest game ever played (a three-OT game five loss), but they were a 42–40 team just happy to be there. Their only other NBA Finals appearance was 1993, and even though they only lost game six on a last-second shot by James Paxton, Jordan’s Bulls always seemed to have control of the series.
The mid-2000s Suns are one of the best NBA teams never to win a title, but ultimately they never had enough defense to get past the Spurs and Lakers. They lost the 2005 Western Conference Finals rather pitifully to the Spurs in five games.
In 2006 they got one game further against the Mavs. But the most painful loss is probably the next year, when Amar’e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw were suspended for game 5 for leaving the bench after Robert Horry hip checked Steve Nash into the boards in game 4 in the second round. The shorthanded Suns still played great at home in game 5, leading the Spurs by 11 in the fourth quarter, only to see the Spurs come back and take a three point lead in the final minute. With six seconds remaining Nash missed a three to tie, and the Spurs won 88–85. Even with Amare and Diaw back, the Suns were finished off in game 6.
The Suns would make the Conference Finals once more in 2010, but then they fell out of relevance until another 30-something future HOF point guard joined the team. Chris Paul’s arrival coupled with the continued development of Devin Booker and DeAndre Ayton took the team directly from a decade plus streak out of the playoffs to the NBA Finals in 2021. They lost in six, but the next year they were easily the best team in the NBA, and probably the best team we’ve seen since KD left Golden State.
But they suffered a truly shocking second-round loss to the Mavs the following year, a 33-point game 7 shellacking that I still don’t understand. Just when it seemed as if Paul was past his prime and Ayton was regressing, they managed to acquire KD at the trade deadline this past season, and after not losing a single game with him in the regular season, they entered this year’s playoffs as the Western Conference favorite.
But despite KD playing like KD and Booker playing like MJ, Paul’s injury, the disappearance of Ayton and the rest of the roster, and Nikola Jokic playing like a GOAT combined to knock Phoenix out of the playoffs yet again. They can take solace in being the only team to beat Denver twice this past postseason, but it wasn’t enough for Monty Williams to keep his job, and now Frank Vogel will try to get Phoenix to the promised land.
The Bengals lost two Super Bowls to the Niners in the 1980s, the second thanks to epic performances by Joe Montana and John Candy. And then over the next 35 years they won a grand total of one playoff game, despite becoming an annual playoff team under Marvin Lewis. The most dramatic loss in that time was in 2015 to the Steelers. With 32 seconds remaining the Bengals’ win probability was 85%. But then, when the Bengals stopped Pittsburgh on fourth down, the dynamic duo of Vontaze Burfict and Pacman Jones each committed 15-yard penalties, pushing a dead ball forward 30 yards and into field goal range, where the Steelers promptly won with seconds remaining.
But then a messiah came to southwest Ohio–a messiah named Joseph Lee Burrow. In 2021 the Bengals made a surprise run to the Super Bowl, where they led with under 90 seconds to go. And now they are fully ensconced as a contender. Last year they lost the AFC championship game to KC on the last play of the game. In the next five years, the Bengals — like the next team on this list — could either win a Super Bowl or have a claim for the top spot on this list.
The Bills won the final two AFL title games that existed before the Super Bowl, so they just missed a shot at an early Super Bowl. Then they never got that close again until the 1990s, when they lost their historic four Super Bowls in a row, although Wide Right was the only one that was close.
After the Super Bowl run they stayed competitive in the late 1990s, losing several first-round playoff games. In 1996 they were leading the Jaguars 27–20 in the fourth. After the Jaguars tied it, Jim Kelly got strip sacked on the ensuing possession. Worse, he was injured and had to come out of the game. The Jaguars kicked a field goal to take a 30–27 lead. Here is a list of Bills’ offensive plays once Todd Collins came in for Kelly: sack, incompletion, incompletion, punt; 7-yard completion, incompletion, strip sack turnover to end the game. The 1999 season ended with the Music City Miracle, then the Bills were just terrible with 18 years between playoff appearances.
The current team, like the Bengals, is an elite team with championship aspirations, and the Bills are hoping to get off this list. But in 2021 they infamously lost to the Chiefs after an unfortunate 13 seconds. And last year the unprecedented game cancellation following the Damar Hamlin injury put a damper on a season that had championship hopes.
An important thing to discuss here is the cumulative effect of failures across all the major teams in a single market. The Vikings are the only Minnesota team on this list because the North Stars moved, the Wolves and Wild haven’t existed long enough, and the Twins won the World Series 32 and 36 years ago. But the toxicity of the various Minnesota fan bases melts into one another. The Wolves are one of the most pathetic franchises in sports, but if their fans weren’t also fans of these other teams, they might not be so angry. Same with the Twins and their current historic run of 18 consecutive playoff losses. It’s similar to what the three Cleveland teams experienced until LeBron finally delivered one for the city and what the two Buffalo teams are dealing with now.
But the locus of Minnesotan sports fandom anger and depression centers on the purple. The only teams on this list who come close to the Vikings’ level of consistent competitiveness over the decades are the Jazz and Suns. The Vikings have lost four Super Bowls (no franchise has lost more) and six conference championship games (only the Cowboys, 49ers, Steelers and Raiders have lost more, but they’ve also won a combined 19 Super Bowls). And no team has had as many stomach punch losses as the Vikings.
I don’t even need to discuss the Super Bowl losses or the (original) Hail Mary in 1975, or the Darrin Nelson drop in the 1987 NFL Championship, because those all happened before my time as a Vikings fan. Just in the last 25 years, the Vikings lost the Gary Anderson Game despite — at the time — the greatest offense and one of the greatest teams in history).
The 41–0 debacle (as road favorites in the NFC championship) followed, along with the Nate Poole game (the first time in history a team led the division for the entire season yet failed to make the playoffs, leading Green Bay to award Nate Poole a key to the city), Twelve Men on the Field (or the Brett Favre game, or the game that led the NFL to change its overtime rules, or the first time my wife saw me cry, or whatever you wanna call it), the Blair Walsh Game, the 2017 NFC Championship (a redux of 41–0 in that they were favored on the road against an obnoxious NFC East team only to get destroyed).
The Vikings have enjoyed a few positive moments in the last few years, including two dramatic playoff victories over the Saints and last year’s miraculous regular season. But each of those was just a prelude to a stomach punch to come. Kill me now.
So why don’t I have the Vikings No. 1? Well part of it is I want to avoid accusations of homerism. And part of it is because of the difference between baseball and football. In baseball tension builds with every pitch. Also, with the Red Sox, White Sox and then Cubs winning, every other baseball team with a drought longer than half a century has won. The gap between the Guardians and the next most cursed baseball team is bigger than the gap between Nos. 1 and 2 in any other sport. On the other hand, the Vikings have never won. At least a non-senile 90-year-old fan of the then-Indians remembers what a championship feels like.
Cleveland last won the World Series in 1948. In 1954 they had a historically good team (111–43) yet got swept in the World Series by the Giants. From the 1970s through the early 1990s the Indians embarked on a run of incompetence, but they emerged in the ‘90s as an incredible team. They ended up making the playoffs six times in seven years, including two World Series, the latter being the devastating 1997 loss, in the 11th inning to a silly expansion team wearing teal in Miami after Jose Mesa blew a save in the ninth inning.
In 1999 the Indians blew a two games to zero ALDS lead to the Red Sox, losing by the comical football scores of 9–3, 23–7 and 12–8. (At one point during those three games the Red Sox scored 40 runs in 16 innings!) In 2001 they again blew a two games to one ALDS lead, although this time it was as huge underdogs to the 116-win Mariners.
But everything culminated in the 2016 World Series, in which they blew a three games to one lead and the game 7 loss to the formerly cursed Cubs coming in brutal extra innings. In 2017 the Indians won 22 straight and were World Series favorites only to blow a two games to zero series lead to the Yankees. Then the front office basically decided not to invest further in competing, but thanks in part to a horrific division, they’ve continued to be a playoff contender, only to collapse in October. They were swept in 2018 and 2020 and then last year blew another two games to one lead to the Yankees, losing in five. But hey, at least they’ve abandoned their racist logo and team name.
With all due respect to the holiday season that just passed, the most wonderful time of the year for NFL fans is upon us. Sure, conference championship Sunday and Super Bowl Sunday are great days. But over a nine-day span starting this...
Read more NFL Wild Card Weekend Best Bets: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
We had another productive outing last week. C.J. Stroud and Tyreek Hill played like they normally do, and if you followed our advice, you made money off of that. We do apologize about the Browns suggestion. We didn’t know at the time that D...
Read more NFL Week 12 Prop Bets: Fade the Dolphins O, Bet Big on Bijan
The midpoint of the 2023 NFL season offers some tasty morsels–much more so than the previous week. Dolphins-Chiefs, Bills-Bengals, Seahawks-Ravens. All three would have been worthy entries in this week’s “Game of the Week” column. But...
Read more NFL Week 9 Preview: Cowboys vs. Eagles Odds and Best Bets
We begin with bangers only. Now that the jam session is out of the way, let’s move on to the halfway mark of the NFL season. We’ve already done the “Can you believe it’s already week…” thing. But yeah, it’s November, and we are starting to ...
Read more NFL Week 9 Best Bets: Whoa, We’re Halfway There
