In 2019, a new era of NBA title contention began. This was the year that the Toronto Raptors won the championship and ended the dynastic run of the Golden State Warriors, who’d won three of the past four Larry O’Brien trophies. The Raptors did not repeat, and no team has since then. Seven years, seven champions. None of them, in fact, have even been back to the Finals—the Los Angeles Lakers, champs in 2020, got closest when they made the Western Conference Finals in 2023. But once they got there, they were swept.

This is not a mysterious matter. The league has made it harder for teams to win consecutive titles, with onerous penalties inflicted upon franchises that enter into luxury tax territory more than once to pay their high-value talent. The new emphasis, for prolonged contention, is on constant renewal. 2025’s big winners are the Oklahoma City Thunder, who got their trophy but are still loaded with future draft capital that allows them to part with any number of the young members of their title team once they become too expensive to retain.

This is still not an ideal situation, of course. You can have the greatest materials and construction crew in the world, but you still wouldn’t want to build a house on land that’s always under attack and where it’s permanently storming. Oklahoma city does have a much better chance than the Raptors, Lakers, Warriors, Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets, or Boston Celtics to break the pattern of the 2020’s, but doing so will require continued managerial perfection in conditions that will get rougher, not smoother. It’s no safe bet.

The Celtics, currently taking apart a team that won it all just a year ago, clearly indicate this difficulty. Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, both essential to their golden accomplishment, are gone as of this week. In their place are Anfernee Simons—a score-first guard whose value is mostly related to the fact that he probably won’t be a Celtic for long—a few second-round picks, and role player Georges Niang, who also goes off the books in 2026. The ability to take a year off from trying, and then have the financial freedom to maybe construct a team as effective as the one just sacrificed… this is considered a win, relative to what the other struggling post-champions of the 2020’s have been through.

The Raptors have only been out of the first round once since their championship, ditto for the Bucks. There is one shining example of a modern team that sunk after their title and then rose all the way back to glory again, though, and it’s the same one that fizzled out just before this era. In 2022, the Warriors won another title. Over those previous two seasons, they’d only won just 35 percent of their games, and had to rebuild around the core of Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson. Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Otto Porter Jr. became key supplementary players; one a distressed asset acquired via trade, the other a low draft pick, the other a scrap-heap free agent.

That’s about where Boston will have to look, for their own attempt at revival. In retrospect, the Warriors flash-rebuild was an uncommon act of alchemy, enough so that it does not quite figure as a blueprint for anyone else, though the Celtics will try. The alternative route, already denied, is still being taken by Denver, who have a chance to more seriously reimagine their 2023 title team this summer. But, so far, all they’ve done since then is let end-of-rotation veterans walk away for bigger contracts elsewhere, while keeping five of their eight championship players together. Both attempts at another title have ended in seven games, in the second round, with the need for just a bit more help off the bench getting louder each time.

That’s how the league-induced hangover looks. In Milwaukee, it’s worse, with Giannis Antetokounmpo’s supporting cast now whittled down to something so meager that no matter how many times he says he wants to stay there, the whole population of the sport will keep turning to him expectantly, waiting for a bidding-war trade bonanza for a two-time MVP. In Toronto, the longer scene of post-championship shambles are more destitute yet. They’ve been out of the playoffs for three years straight, and even in the dismal Eastern Conference, their path back is not clear.

The Thunder have all the hydration tablets, mineral waters, spa passes, and banana bags that anyone could want for dealing with a hangover. In fact, they’re so prepared for what the booze of championships does to you that they might stay fully sober for another season or two, and push off the consequences of success for longer than any of their modern forebears. It’s obvious that they’ve studied the highs and lows of each of them, in their effort to synthesize a straight line through the jagged chaos of new roster-building rules. The NBA has damned continuity, and forced us to care more about these managerial dances. So lock in, now, as this July will show us a lot about who wins next June.