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Vegas Golden Knights forward Ivan Barbashev (49) hoists the Stanley Cup after defeating the Florida Panthers in Game 5 of the 2023 Stanley Cup Final. Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

Nuggets, Golden Knights on opposite end of title-winning spectrum

By Eric Smithling | Last updated 6/14/23

In back-to-back nights, the Denver Nuggets and Vegas Golden Knights won their first league championships, but took drastically different journeys to get there.

For Denver, the NBA Finals win was the culmination of a half-decade of frustration. Meanwhile, Vegas hoisting the Stanley Cup marked a nearly historic ascent to the top of the food chain by an expansion franchise.

How do the two wins stack up in the "Big Four" North American sports leagues as far as shortest and longest waits in history? Let's find out.

Shortest waits

NBA | Milwaukee Bucks (third season): The Bucks began playing in 1968 and three seasons later, won their first NBA title (pre-merger) with all-time greats Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson. Despite the abrupt ascent to the top of the league, it was 50 years before Milwaukee won a second title when Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks in a 4-2 series win over the Suns.

NFL | Baltimore Ravens (fifth season): NFL history is a little wonky. Four NFL franchises began in the AFL and won AFL titles, but it's hard to count those since that entire league was just getting started. NFL records give the designation to the Ravens despite them not being a true expansion team. They won Super Bowl XXXV five seasons after relocating from Cleveland.

The Dolphins won a Super Bowl in their seventh season. They joined the AFL in 1966, four years before the AFL/NFL merger, and won Super Bowl VII in February 1973 to cap the only undefeated season in NFL history.

MLB | Arizona Diamondbacks (fourth season): The Diamondbacks, led by the great pitching duo of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, won the franchise's first (and only) World Series in 2001 in a seven-game thriller against the New York Yankees. Luis Gonzalez drove in the series-clinching run off of Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth of a 3-2 win.

November 4, 2001: Diamondbacks’ Luis Gonzales singles home the winning run off Mariano Rivera in the Bottom of the 9th of Game 7 and Arizona wins the World Series over the Yankees. pic.twitter.com/0wVzNY2TgE
— This Day In Sports Clips (@TDISportsClips) November 4, 2022

NHL | Edmonton Oilers (fifth season): The Golden Knights nearly cleared this mark in their inaugural season when they reached the Stanley Cup Final. Vegas needed one more season than Edmonton needed to win a Stanley Cup. The Oilers' first season was in 1979 and by 1983 were on top of the hockey world. That shouldn't matter too much to Vegas after the Knights got the job done this year. The six-year gap is certainly better than what the next four franchises endured.

Longest waits

NBA | Denver Nuggets (56th season): It took the Nuggets 10 more years than it took the Cavs to win their first title, and the wait for a championship is not only the longest in NBA history but also among active franchises across the four major North American sports. Denver's 56-year wait tied the Houston Astros for the fourth-longest. Only the Orioles, Dodgers and Phillies waited longer for a first league title.

NFL | New Orleans Saints (43rd season): The Saints were such a punchline in the NFL that even the animated series "South Park" joked about the organization's ability to win a Super Bowl in 2004. The team earned the unfortunate "Aints" nickname with some truly horrid seasons. Things changed in 2009 as the Saints got off to a 13-0 start before eventually winning Super Bowl XLIV over Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts.

MLB | Philadelphia Phillies (98th season): When the Phillies began playing, the price of gas was $0, mostly due to the fact that the automobile was 18 years away from being mass-produced. It took nearly a century for the Phillies to finally produce a winner, in 1980 when the price of gas was $1.19. Entire technological and social revolutions took place in the generations between the team's birth and first championship and it took another 28 years until the Phillies won their next title, in 2008, after the internet blew up and with the electric car in production.

NHL | St. Louis Blues (52nd season): For once in their history, the Blues weren't singing the, well, blues, after the season but "Gloria" instead. In June 2019, St. Louis won its first Stanley Cup and Laura Branigan's 1982 hit "Gloria" became the team's unofficial theme. The Blues reached three Stanley Cup Finals previously, all in a three-year span from 1967-70, the franchise's first three years in the NHL.

When Vegas reached the finals in its first season, we sort of expected a championship moment wasn't far behind. But based on the Blues' history, we know how rare it is to witness what the Golden Knights accomplished.

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