This is the 80th season of the league known today as the National Basketball Association, and several eras have defined the league and shaped how we view certain landmarks.
The shot clock arrived in 1954. The last team to fold did so after the start of the 1954-55 season: the 1948 champion Baltimore Bullets. The NBA-ABA merger came in 1976, followed by the placement of the 3-point line in 1979. The first 16-team postseason came in 1984, and the lottery era began in 1985. For statistical purposes, the play-by-play era started in 1996.
Every season is an opportunity for something that has never been done before. But some anomalies range from captivating to preposterous. Our NHL colleagues did their own version of this analysis in January. We’re borrowing the idea to look at some curious milestones that NBA teams are still chasing or have been lacking for a very long time.
The Pistons haven’t won a home playoff game since 2008
We’re not just talking about a team winning a playoff series — just one playoff game that they were hosting. The Pistons snapped a five-year playoff drought last year, and even stole two games in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs against the New York Knicks. But the Pistons lost all three games in that series on their home floor. Detroit owns the longest home playoff losing streak in NBA history at 10 games. Little Caesars Arena has never seen a Pistons postseason win; the building opened in 2017, and Detroit is 0-5 in its home games there.
The last time the Pistons won a home game came in the 2008 Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics — a 94-75 Game 4 victory at The Palace of Auburn Hills that tied the series. That season marked the last of six consecutive trips to the conference finals.
This may be the year that streak ends. The Pistons have the East’s best record at 45-15 and are not far off OKC’s league-leading pace. It would be shocking if the Pistons have come this far just to have their season end before May.
The Celtics have never had a scoring champion
Boston is the league’s most decorated franchise with an NBA-record 18 championships, and the Celtics have even won them all in the same city! They are also one of three NBA teams that played in the league’s inaugural 1946-47 season, along with the Knicks and the Warriors (based originally in Philadelphia). No team has had more Hall of Famers suit up for them.
And yet, in their 80-season history, the Celtics have never had a scoring champion. They have had MVPs, but no player has ever led the league in scoring while wearing a Celtics uniform.
The only time the Celtics have had a player average 30 points per game in a season was in 2022-23, when Jayson Tatum’s 30.1 points per game was only good for sixth place in the NBA. Jaylen Brown is averaging a league-high 22.2 field goal attempts per game, but his career-high 29 points per game is only fourth.
The Nuggets and Heat have never had a Rookie of the Year
The NBA’s Rookie of the Year award was established in 1948, and there are only two franchises that have never had a recipient. While the Denver franchise had two ABA Rookies of the Year in Hall of Famers Spencer Haywood and David Thompson, the Nuggets haven’t had one since joining the NBA at the 1976 merger. The Heat came into the league via expansion in 1988 and also haven’t produced a winner.
Both teams have had standout rookies, most notably in 2003 when Denver drafted Carmelo Anthony third and Miami drafted Dwyane Wade fifth. Anthony finished second in Rookie of the Year voting, while Wade finished third. The winner that year was top pick LeBron James.
It won’t change this season. Miami’s first-round rookie and 20th pick Kasparas Jakučionis is getting more burn lately, but he’s not a serious candidate for even an All-Rookie team. DaRon Holmes, a first-round pick in 2024, was eligible for rookie awards since he missed last season with a torn Achilles but is buried on the depth chart.
The Lakers have faced every current West team in the playoffs … except one
The Lakers have a long and storied history beginning in Minneapolis, where they won five championships before the shot clock era was established. Today, there are 14 other teams in the Western Conference besides the Lakers. Here’s the last time the Lakers faced each of those teams in the playoffs:
- Minnesota Timberwolves (2025)
- Denver Nuggets (2024)
- Golden State Warriors (2023)
- Memphis Grizzlies (2023)
- Phoenix Suns (2021)
- Houston Rockets (2020)
- Portland Trail Blazers (2020)
- San Antonio Spurs (2013)
- Oklahoma City Thunder (2012)
- Dallas Mavericks (2011)
- New Orleans Pelicans (2011)
- Utah Jazz (2010)
- Sacramento Kings (2002)
There is a glaring omission: the LA Clippers, the franchise that the Lakers have shared a city with for more than 40 years. Both franchises have blown 3-1 leads that could have led to postseason meetings, with the Clippers faltering in the 2020 bubble and the Lakers failing to finish off the Suns in 2006.
The Lakers are going to be hard-pressed to secure a top-four seed this season, and the Clippers will likely need to survive the Play-In Tournament, so a first-round matchup is improbable. But if both teams can win a playoff series, the NBA might finally get a freeway series.
The Suns have never had a 30-point scorer or scoring champion
We went over the Celtics not having a scoring champion, but they at least have had a 30-point scorer. The Suns, now in their 58th season, have had neither.
This is a franchise that has boasted some special scorers, but it’s the oldest franchise in the league without a player averaging at least 30 points per game. They haven’t even really come close, either, as Tom Chambers holds the record for most points per game in a season with 27.2 in 1989-90.
Devin Booker is the obvious candidate, but he topped out at 27.8 points per game in 2022-23. He’s at 24.6 points per game this season. Booker is the franchise’s all-time leading scorer, but he might not be the one to break the 30-point-per-game barrier.
Devin Booker shoots the ball over Terance Mann during a January game between the Suns and Nets. (John Jones / Imagn Images)
The Wizards don’t have a 50-win season in the 3-point era
Between the 1970-71 and 1979-80 seasons, only the Celtics, Lakers and Bucks have won more games than Washington. No team won more playoff games in that span than the Washington franchise, which played as the Baltimore, Capital and Washington Bullets during the 1970s.
But since the 3-point line was introduced in 1979-80, the 47 seasons since then have not been kind to Washington. There have only been five postseasons in which Washington won a playoff series in that time, and the Wizards have not won 50 games since losing the 1979 NBA Finals to the Seattle SuperSonics. The Wizards had a chance to win a 50th game in the 2016-17 regular-season finale at Miami, but they lost 110-102. The Wizards went on to lose Game 7 at Boston in the East semifinals.
After trading for injured All-Stars Trae Young and Anthony Davis, the Wizards are hoping their next relevant team arrives next season. But even those two veterans have rarely been a part of 50-win seasons; Young’s Atlanta Hawks topped out at a .569 win percentage in the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season (the equivalent to 47 wins in an 82-game season), while the only 50-win team that Davis finished a season with was the 2019-20 Lakers.
The Nets are the only franchise without an MVP, DPOY, MIP or 6MOY
The Nets had a strong run in the ABA when it came to awards. Julius Erving won three straight MVPs, and Brian Taylor was the 1973 ABA Rookie of the Year. Erving was also the MVP when the Nets won the final ABA championship in 1976 over the Nuggets.
Since the merger, the Nets have been shut out of major individual awards. They’re the only team that does not have an NBA MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Most Improved Player or Sixth Man of the Year. The only major award that the Nets have been able to secure in the NBA is Rookie of the Year, won by Buck Williams in 1982 and Derrick Coleman in 1991 when the team was based in New Jersey.
Michael Porter Jr. might receive some Most Improved Player votes this spring, but the award drought will likely continue in what is the 50th NBA season of Nets basketball. Perhaps the 50th anniversary of Erving’s departure will be marked with the Nets drafting a franchise player capable of securing awards past their rookie season.
The Pelicans don’t have a Hall of Famer
This note already has an expiration date: Chris Paul, who spent his first six seasons with the New Orleans Hornets, recently announced his retirement. A year after Paul’s departure, New Orleans drafted Anthony Davis No. 1 overall. The franchise became the Pelicans in 2012, while Charlotte reclaimed rights to the Hornets name. That little bit of history is important here, as Charlotte has all of the franchise records from 1988 to 2002, and then again from the time the expansion Bobcats brought pro basketball back to Charlotte starting in 2004.
As of now, though? Charlotte has had multiple current Hall of Fame members play for it — Alonzo Mourning, Robert Parish and Vlade Divac in the 1990s and then late-career cameos from Dwight Howard and Tony Parker in the late 2010s. New Orleans is the only franchise that doesn’t have a single game played by a player who is in the Hall of Fame today. But Paul, already a member of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team, is expected to enter as an individual in 2029. That is assuming that Paul doesn’t get the Bill Belichick treatment.
The Pacers have never had a game played by a No. 1 pick
We are back with another former ABA team in their 50th NBA season. It’s not just that the Pacers have never had the first pick in a draft. There has never been a No. 1 pick in the draft who has played in a single game for the Pacers.
Oh, the Pacers have had some No. 2 picks: Steve Stipanovich (1983), Wayman Tisdale (1985) and Rik Smits (1988). They also have had the services of Kenny Anderson, Evan Turner, Victor Oladipo and, most recently, James Wiseman. But Indiana remains the only franchise that has never had a top pick play for it.
Indiana did sign 2018 No. 1 pick Deandre Ayton to a four-year, $133 million offer sheet in 2022. This was despite having Myles Turner under contract, so the Pacers must have really wanted restricted free agent Ayton coming off the best regular season in Suns franchise history. But Phoenix matched the offer sheet.
Ayton plays for the Lakers now, a team that has had 21 No. 1 picks play for it, the most of any NBA franchise. This spring’s lottery will be one to watch for the Pacers. As part of a trade for center Ivica Zubac the Pacers will only keep their lottery pick if it is not between Nos. 5 and 9. In a loaded draft and in one of the worst seasons in franchise history, Indiana could have the first top pick in franchise history join a team that includes Zubac, All-Star Pascal Siakam and injured franchise point guard Tyrese Haliburton, one year after losing Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
No East team has ever had a 10-year playoff drought
It’s not easy to make the playoffs, but it is also just as hard for Eastern Conference teams to miss them for a decade. No franchise missed the playoffs for 10 straight years before the merger, even before the league expanded the playoff field in 1984.
That changed when the Clippers franchise missed the 1986 playoffs. A team that started as the Buffalo Braves in 1970 and relocated to become the San Diego Clippers in 1978 was in Los Angeles by the mid-1980s and on a drought that the league had never seen. The Clippers spent the entire 1980s out of the playoffs, the only team to ever pull off those depths of futility. Ultimately, the Clippers franchise missed the playoffs for 15-straight seasons, ending the streak in 1992.
Since then, only five other franchises have ever spent a decade out of the playoffs, and all of them were in the West: the Dallas Mavericks (1990-2000), the Golden State Warriors (1994-2006), the Minnesota Timberwolves (2004-2017), the Phoenix Suns (2010-2020) and the Sacramento Kings (2006-2022, breaking the record the Clippers set).
East teams have always found a way to make the playoffs before hitting a 10-year streak, although some teams have come close. The Hawks had an eight-year drought from 1999 to 2007, while Washington had an eight-year drought from 1988 to 1996.
The team to keep an eye on now is Charlotte, which already holds the longest playoff drought by any East team ever.
The Hornets haven’t made the playoffs since 2016, when they lost a best-of-seven first-round series that they led 3-2 against the Miami Heat. The Hornets started 11-23 this season and looked to be a sure bet to extend their futility streak to a decade. But Charlotte has been one of the best teams in the league since the first weekend of January and could finally end this drought if it can survive the Play-In Tournament. If the Hornets do that, they might want to make sure Purple Shirt Guy chills this time around.