Don't read this, Spurs fans: Young NBA teams with bright futures that never returned to the Finals
· Yahoo Sports
Despite the disappointing loss to the New York Knicks in the 2026 NBA Finals, one in which the Spurs very much showed their youth and inexperience at that stage, there is a silver lining for San Antonio in that the team is quite young (and talented), led by a superstar 22-year-old in Victor Wembanyama.
Some eventual NBA champions had to pay their dues before being ready to bring home titles, as is very much expected to be the case with this San Antonio squad. The team has a strong foundation not just in Wembanyama, already one of the most impactful two-way players in league history, but also in its talented, even younger, backcourt, featuring Stephon Castle (21) and Dylan Harper (20). Wembanyama is already seemingly on a potential GOAT trajectory, while Castle and Harper look like future multi-time All-Stars with All-NBA potential.
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But, of course, what we're here to remind everyone is that nothing is guaranteed in the NBA. In league history, there has been no shortage of NBA finalists who thought the best was yet to come, before the door shockingly shut on them forever. (At least for those specific renditions of those teams.)
Today, with the Spurs officially falling short of winning a title in 2026, we're here to break down five NBA teams that thought they had bright futures but never returned to the Finals with that group.
1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers
A little-known fact is that the 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers are the youngest team in league history, by weighted average age, taking into account minutes played, to not only reach an NBA Finals, but win a championship outright, edging out this year's Spurs and last season's Oklahoma City Thunder (via X):
They accomplished that magnificent feat thanks to the efforts primarily of Bill Walton, who was on a historic pace early on in his career before injuries cut his peak as a player short. From '76 through '78, Walton's second season through his fourth, the UCLA legend averaged 17.5 points, 13.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.5 blocks on 50.3 percent shooting, earning one 1st Team All-NBA and one 2nd Team All-NBA in that stretch, while winning MVP in '78 and finishing second in the vote to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in '77.
That's the level of player Walton was before turning 26.
That Blazers group was loaded outside of Walton, however, as five-time All-Star Maurice Lucas actually led the team in scoring in '77, the year they won the title, averaging 20.2 points and 11.4 rebounds that campaign, his age-24 season. Portland also had Lionel Hollins as its starting point guard. Hollins is best remembered for his time spent as an NBA head coach, but he was a very effective two-way lead guard as a player, too, earning two All-Defensive Team nods in his career, including one as a 1st Teamer in 1977-78. The year the Blazers won that 1976-77 championship, Hollins was just in his age-23 season.
So why was that team never able to reach that championship level again?
The primary cause of that was Walton's body failing him. The season after winning the '77 championship, Walton suffered a broken foot in the regular season, still won MVP, returned for the playoffs, only to get hurt in Game 2 of the opening-round series, forcing him to miss the rest of the postseason, as Portland would fall in the first round without its star big man.
To make matters worse, Walton would demand a trade that summer, due to being unhappy with the Blazers' front office and its treatment of player injuries. Walton's trade demand would be ignored, and the big man would sit out the entire '79 season before finally leaving the team and joining the San Diego Clippers for the 1979-80 season. Foot injuries would continue to plague Walton, and he'd never reach that MVP level again.
Lucas would also leave Portland, via trade in his case, just a couple of seasons after the team's championship, as would Hollins. Even so, it was primarily Walton's health issues that caused the Portland team to not reach another championship series until the Clyde Drexler days over a decade later.
Who would have thought that possible after the team, led by three players younger than 25, won a championship in '77?
That Blazers team is a cautionary reminder to never count your chickens before they hatch when it comes to the NBA and predicting future success for very young squads.
And this next example will be even fresher in the minds of most current NBA fans.
2011-12 Oklahoma City Thunder
When the 2011-12 Thunder made their magical run to the Finals, taking down Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks in the first round in a sweep, Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers in five games in the second round and Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals in six games, before falling short to the Miami Heat in the championship series, many thought that was just the beginning for that Thunder squad.
And how could anyone be blamed for thinking that?
Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook finished second and 12th in the MVP vote that year, respectively, while Durant was 1st Team All-NBA and Westbrook was 2nd Team. And they both accomplished that in their age-23 seasons, no less.
Meanwhile, the team also had a 22-year-old James Harden, who won Sixth Man of the Year that season, too, as well as a 22-year-old Serge Ibaka, a shot-blocking, floor-spacing menace, who finished second in the Defensive Player of the Year vote that campaign.
The team looked primed for multiple championship runs with a roster loaded top to bottom. And yet, the Durant-era Thunder never even made it back to the Finals, despite coming close in 2015-16. Harden was traded to the Houston Rockets following the 2012 Finals run, after the two sides were unable to come to an agreement on a contract extension. Hindsight is always 20/20, but Sam Presti and Co. probably should have at least let Harden finish out his contract and figured out his contract situation afterwards, because it made no sense to break the team up after making a Finals run. The very next season, as a member of the Rockets, Harden would break out, earning All-Star honors for the first time and becoming a 3rd Team All-NBAer.
Even after the botched Harden situation, Oklahoma City remained elite, going 60-22 in 2012-13 and getting to the second round of the playoffs, and then going 59-23 in 2013-14, getting to Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals before falling to the eventual champion Spurs. 2014-15 would be a down year, as Durant would only suit up for 27 games due to injury, but OKC bounced back in 2015-16, going 55-27 in the regular season and taking a 3-1 series lead over the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals before falling in seven games.
And it would be that series that ended that edition of Thunder basketball, as Durant would shock the world and join the Warriors in free agency the following summer, eventually winning two championships and two Finals MVPs with his new team.
If a team like the Thunder, with three eventual Hall-of-Famers, including two players who will go down among the Top 30 all-time, can only make one trip to the Finals, that goes to show there are no guarantees for future success when young teams make surprising runs at the NBA's championship series.
The Thunder are the prime example of that.
1994-95 Orlando Magic
The 1994-95 Eastern Conference Finals looked like a potential changing of the guard in the East, as a third-year Shaqulle O'Neal not only capped the regular season with a second-place finish in the MVP vote, a 2nd Team All-NBA nod, an All-Star appearance and averaging a league-leading 29.3 points per game, to go with 11.4 rebounds and 2.4 blocks on 58.3 percent shooting, but he also led his team, the Orlando Magic, all the way to the NBA Finals.
As if that wasn't impressive enough, O'Neal helped Orlando take down a recently returned from baseball Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference semifinals that year. O'Neal looked unstoppable against Jordan's Bulls, averaging 24.3 points, 13.2 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.0 blocks in the six-game series victory.
That wasn't a solo effort by O'Neal, either, as his running mate out of the backcourt, Penny Hardaway, looked like a future superstar that season, averaging 20.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, 7.2 assists and 1.7 steals on 51.2 percent shooting from the floor.
The most impressive and promising part of all that is that O'Neal was 22 years old at the time and Hardaway was 23, leaving the impression that the East was about to belong to that super duo in Orlando, even if the Magic were humbled in the Finals by Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets, who would sweep Orlando in the championship series. Even after getting swept, it looked like Orlando could dominate the East for the second half of the '90s based mostly on its superstar big-guard tandem.
As we all know by now, that would not turn out to be the case, as the Magic would get swept in the Eastern Conference Finals the following year by the same Bulls, and the offseason after that, O'Neal would depart in free agency. The Magic thought they might still have a franchise cornerstone with Hardaway, but injuries would cut his prime short, and by 1999-00, he would also be on a different team.
From looking like the next dynasty in the Eastern Conference to having to start from scratch just three years later, the 1994-95 Magic are another cautionary tale against putting huge expectations on young teams.
2023-24 Dallas Mavericks
Like some of the other young teams on this list, the 2023-24 Dallas Mavericks' run to the Finals was downright shocking, as the team went 50-32 in the regular and boasted a mediocre plus-2.1 net rating in the regular season, the No. 15 mark in the NBA.
Then, the playoffs rolled around and Luka Doncic went nuclear, averaging 28.9 points, 9.5 rebounds and 8.1 assists in the postseason, and carrying the Mavericks to shocking series victories over the Los Angeles Clippers in Round 1 (in six games), over the Thunder in Round 2 (in six games) and over the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals (in five games). Making that feat even more impressive is the fact that the Thunder would win the title the very next season, so Doncic and Dallas' accomplishment was that much more impressive in hindsight.
So, obviously, led by their then-24-year-old superstar, many thought the Mavericks had figured out the recipe to contending and were set for the future under Doncic's magnificent play, throwing lobs to the likes of Daniel Gafford and Luka Doncic, and playing alongside another backcourt magician, Kyrie Irving.
So what did Dallas do?
Nothing besides trade Doncic to the Lakers half a season later, seemingly botching their future in the process. Saving the Mavericks (when they did not deserve to be saved after making such a terrible decision in trading Doncic) was winning the lottery the following offseason and drafting a potentially generational talent in Cooper Flagg.
So with Irving still around and a Year-2 Flagg loading, we can't even rule out Dallas becoming a force in the West again sometime relatively soon. But they won't be winning a title with Doncic leading the way, which is the point we're trying to make in this exercise, proving once again that you can't just expect future success out of young teams that make surprising, early Finals runs.
1975-76 Phoenix Suns
The '76 Phoenix Suns were an interesting story, as they went from missing the playoffs five years in a row, and six out of the first seven years of existence, to making a shocking run to the Finals in 1976, led by star point guard Paul Westphal, an eventual three-time 1st Team All-NBAer, and the fantastic play of two rookies: Alvan Adams, the Rookie of the Year, and John Shumate, who finished fifth in the vote.
Phoenix would fall in the Finals that season to the Boston Celtics in six games, a series defeat that featured an absolutely gut-wrenching Game 5 triple-overtime 128-126 loss that could have swung the series had the Suns found a way to win. For the younger NBA fans reading this, that was arguably the craziest Finals contest in league history, featuring ridiculous late-game shot-making and much more:
Even so, with a rookie Adams on the roster (the former No. 4th overall pick was named an All-Star in his first season, he was that good upon getting to the league), as well as the promising Shumate, and led by Westphal's elite play at lead guard, many thought the Suns would be making multiple trips to the Finals with that core.
But as it turns out, Adams peaked as a rookie, never earning another accolade in his career, and the Suns wouldn't reach the Finals again until nearly two decades later, far after the days of Westphal and Adams.
In fairness, Phoenix did come close to reaching the Finals again in 1979, losing in seven games in the Western Conference Finals that year to the eventual champion Seattle SuperSonics. Not only did the Suns lose to the eventual champs in seven, no shame in that, but they did so in painful fashion, blowing a 3-2 series lead. Phoenix lost Game 6 at home by a single point, 106-105, and then fell in Game 7 on the road by four points, 114-110.
That's how tight things can get at the highest level of basketball, as just five points separated that Phoenix group from potentially winning a championship, considering Seattle made light work of the Washington Bullets in the '79 Finals. Instead, we remember the mid- to late-70s Suns as a talented young team that should have enjoyed more success together.
Will this San Antonio group join these ranks? We don't think so, but if we learned anything in this exercise, it's that championship opportunities should not be taken for granted, and future success cannot just be assumed, no matter how young and talented Finals participants are.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Young NBA teams with bright futures that never returned to the Finals