The NBA has been around for a very long time. We’ve seen an awful lot of great teams come and go in the league, with long seasons coupled with it. Over the years, this combination has resulted in a variety of excellent win streaks for a few of these teams. However, what is the longest NBA game winning streak?
What is the Longest NBA Game Winning Streak? As it stands right now, the Los Angeles Lakers currently hold the record for the longest recorded winning streak in the NBA at 33 games. The Lakers did this in the 1971-1972 NBA season with Wilt Chamberlain leading the charge. 33 consecutive wins for an organization is nearly half a season, they would finish with a 69-13 record on the way to winning the title.
Even so, there are a handful of other excellent winning streaks put together by NBA teams over the years that deserve to be talked about as well.
Los Angeles Lakers – 33 Game Win Streak
The Lakers started the season off slow this year. They actually lost to the Golden State Warriors near the end of October to fall down to a 6-3 start. While a 6-3 launch to the year doesn’t sound that bad, it just wasn’t expected considering that they were a group made up of Chamberlain, Pat Riley and Jerry West. They must have sat down and worked things out from that point on, beating the Baltimore Bullets on November 5th to start the streak. This streak didn’t end until they lost on January 9th. Yes, you read that correctly. Months without a single loss for this crew. It wasn’t until Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Milwaukee Bucks took them down with his 39-point, 20 rebound performances. Then, just to top it all off, this Lakers squad eventually went down to win the NBA Championship later down the line.
Miami Heat – 27 Game Win Streak
The Miami Heat were filled with a ridiculous amount of talent during the 2012-2013 NBA campaign. This resulted in them recording a whopping 27 straight wins. The trio of Chris Bosh, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade was just unstoppable throughout the year. This streak lasted a whopping 52 days, with the Heat taking down 20 different teams in the process.
The entire team shot 51 percent from the field during this span as well. Simply put, these guys just weren’t missing their shots at all, ripping win after win like it was nothing. Right in the middle of this streak, the Heat were looking so good that analysts were claiming that they could go further than the 33-win streak set by the Lakers a few decades ago. Miami wound up ending that season with 66 wins, but that streak was certainly something to remember.
Golden State Warriors – 28 Game Win Streak
This is a bit of an interesting one as this is split up into two parts. The Golden State Warriors were able to win four straight games to end the regular season in 2014-2015. They eventually went on to win the NBA Championship that year and marched into the 2015-2016 year with a lot of momentum under their belt. Because of all that speed behind them, they flew out of the gates with a 24-game winning streak. So, if you combine their regular season games, they’ve been able to win approximately 28 straight games. If you want to stick with a single season, then they are still one of the best winning streaks in basketball history at 24 anyways. Assuming that we are using their stats from both of these years, Golden State’s opening regular season win of this streak occurred on April ninth. They didn’t lose another game in the regular season until December 12th. Their first loss after this came against the Milwaukee Bucks despite the incredible efforts put forth from both Steph Curry and Klay Thompson.
Longest Losing Streaks In NBA History
We’ve already talked about the best winning streaks that we’ve ever seen in NBA history, but now it’s time to put that on its head. There has been a load of horrendous losing streaks over the years, with some of these teams scraping the bottom of the barrel for any type of momentum to get out of the basement. The worst streak came by the Cleveland Cavaliers, dropping 26 consecutive games before racking up a win. Cleveland picked this awful streak up the year after LeBron James chose to get up and take his talents to the Miami Heat. Just in case you didn’t think that this loss wasn’t bad enough, Cleveland lost more games during this streak than they won games in the regular season. Now that’s bad. But it was equally as bad as the Philadelphia 76ers during their 26-game losing streak a few years afterwards. Philadelphia surprisingly started the regular season with a 3-0 record, but quickly came back down to reality. They wound up going two full months without picking up a single win. They also won less games than they had lost consecutive games in this streak just like the Cavaliers. Luckily though, the 76ers nabbed Joel Embiid because of this ridiculously bad year. Then finally, we have to cover the Vancouver Grizzlies and their 23-game losing streak. They were finally able to snap this streak off of an excellent final second shot from Blue Edwards to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves. Unfortunately, this was their first year in the NBA due to being an expansion team. If you happened to be interested in how they ended this particular regular season, they were able to finish with a 15-67 record. The following year they went 14-68 as well. The Grizzlies have definitely turned things around for the better since then, just like the 76ers and the Cavaliers, but boy were there some rough years for each of these organizations to get up to this point.