How long does it take to win a championship? For some teams, never. As of last year, the Denver Nuggets became the 21st franchise to win the NBA championship. Eleven have still never won, and even those that have won it all had to go through all the challenges teams face to simply grow from bad to good, let alone turn into a champion.
Let’s look at recent history for some perspective — specifically, the last five champions — and see how long before they won the championship did they have a losing season. In other words we are looking for when they went from bad to good to champions, beginning with the 2023 Nuggets.