The Oklahoma City Thunder’s championship-clinching win on Sunday ended one of the strangest runs in sports. For eight straight years, a former WashingtonWizard had lifted the Larry O’Brien Trophy as a champion with a new team.
That streak is now dead.
Center Thomas Bryant — who played with the Wizards from 2018 through 2022 — had a chance to keep the run alive with the Indiana Pacers. But their championship hopes disintegrated when star guard Tyrese Halliburton left Game 7 with a torn achilles.
The streak began in 2017, when former Wizards point guard Shaun Livingston and center JaVale McGee tasted their first title with the Golden State Warriors.
They repeated the following year and started a trend for ex-Washington players like guard Jodie Meeks, who won with the Toronto Raptors in 2019, and forward Bobby Portis, who accomplished the feat with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021.
Seven-footer Kristaps Porzingis carried the Wizards’ unintended legacy with him during last year’s championship run with the Boston Celtics.
While the Thunder’s roster doesn’t have any ties to the Wizards, the coaching staff does. Assistant coach Eric Maynor, a VCU product, spent the 2013-14 season as a point guard for Washington.