Which NBA Team Has the Most Championships?

The Boston Celtics have won more NBA championships than any franchise, with 18 titles. The Los Angeles Lakers sit one behind on 17, and no other team has ever won more than seven.

Those two clubs have decided the argument between themselves for 70 years. Between them they hold 35 of the championships ever awarded, and the gap to third place is enormous. Everything else in the record book is a race for bronze.

Boston Celtics: 18 titles, the all-time leader

The Celtics reached 18 championships with their 2024 win over the Dallas Mavericks. What makes the number hard to catch is how much of it was banked early: 11 of the 18 came in a 13-season stretch from 1957 to 1969, built around Bill Russell, including eight consecutive titles from 1959 to 1966. That is the longest championship streak in the history of North American major-league sport.

The context matters and is easy to skip over. During Russell’s run the NBA had between 8 and 14 teams. A champion needed to win two or three playoff rounds, not the four best-of-seven series a modern team survives across a 30-team league. The 18 banners are real, but the path to the first 11 of them was shorter than anything a team faces today.

Los Angeles Lakers: 17 and the only real threat

The Lakers are the one franchise that could still catch Boston. Their 17 titles split across two cities: five in Minneapolis between 1949 and 1954, then 12 in Los Angeles from 1972 onward, through the Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James eras. Their most recent came in the 2020 bubble season.

Relocated franchises keep their full history in the NBA record book, so the Minneapolis titles count. One more Los Angeles championship ties the Celtics; two would break the record. Given that no other club is within a decade of them, the all-time lead is likely to stay a two-horse race for years.

Full list of NBA championships by franchise

Here is every franchise with multiple NBA titles, current through the 2026 Finals. Counts include championships won under a team’s former names and in former cities.

Franchise	Titles	Most recent
Boston Celtics	18	2024
Los Angeles Lakers	17	2020
Golden State Warriors	7	2022
Chicago Bulls	6	1998
San Antonio Spurs	5	2014
New York Knicks	3	2026
Miami Heat	3	2013
Detroit Pistons	3	2004
Philadelphia 76ers	3	1983
Milwaukee Bucks	2	2021
Oklahoma City Thunder	2	2025
Houston Rockets	2	1995

Ten more franchises hold a single championship: the Denver Nuggets (2023), Toronto Raptors (2019), Cleveland Cavaliers (2016), Dallas Mavericks (2011), Washington Wizards (1978, as the Washington Bullets), Portland Trail Blazers (1977), Atlanta Hawks (1958, as the St. Louis Hawks), Sacramento Kings (1951, as the Rochester Royals), and the long-defunct Baltimore Bullets (1948), a separate club from today’s Wizards.

Where the counts get complicated

Franchise totals reward reading the fine print, because several of them combine cities and names that fans no longer associate with the team.

The Golden State Warriors’ seven titles reach back to 1947, when they won the first championship of the Basketball Association of America as the Philadelphia Warriors, a full three years before the modern NBA name existed. The Oklahoma City Thunder’s two titles are stranger still: one was won in 2025 in Oklahoma City, the other in 1979 by the Seattle SuperSonics, before the franchise relocated in 2008. Philadelphia’s 76ers count a 1955 title earned as the Syracuse Nationals.

None of this is bookkeeping error. The league treats a franchise as continuous through relocation and renaming, so those older banners stay attached. It does mean a “titles by franchise” list and a “titles won by a city” list are not the same thing.

The most recent champion

The New York Knicks are the reigning champions after beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games in the 2026 NBA Finals, with Jalen Brunson named Finals MVP. It was New York’s third title and its first since 1973, ending one of the longest droughts among the league’s original franchises.

For the individual side of this record, see who among the players has collected the most rings in our guide to the NBA player with the most championships, and for the teams at the other extreme, the worst NBA teams ever. If you are curious how title-winning and value line up, our list of the richest NBA players covers the money side of the sport.

The Celtics-Lakers duel has run since the 1960s and shows no sign of resolving. As of 2026 Boston leads by a single title, which means one Lakers championship would tie the oldest, most contested record in the NBA.