Longest Winning Streak in NBA Playoffs: Ranked

The 2017 Golden State Warriors hold the longest winning streak in NBA playoff history: 15 straight wins within a single postseason. They swept their first three rounds, took a 3-0 Finals lead, then lost Game 4 to Cleveland and finished 16-1. As of 2026, only one team has gotten closer — the New York Knicks won 13 in a row on the way to this year’s title, the second-longest single-postseason streak ever recorded.

The record measures consecutive wins within one playoff run, against nothing but playoff teams in best-of-seven series (best-of-five, in the older first-round format). That’s a much harder mark than the regular-season streak, and it’s distinct from streaks that cross from one postseason into the next — a separate category the Warriors still own too. Here’s the full ranked list, how it’s counted, and where the 2026 Knicks fit in.

Longest single-postseason winning streaks, ranked

The table below ranks every double-digit playoff winning streak in NBA history — 10 or more consecutive wins within one postseason — verified against Basketball-Reference’s playoff logs and NBA.com’s historical coverage.

Six of these ten runs ended in a championship. The two that didn’t — the 1989 Lakers and the 2017 Cavaliers — are proof that even a historic streak doesn’t guarantee a title if it ends against the wrong opponent at the wrong time.

The 2017 Warriors and the near-perfect run

Golden State’s 2017 team, with Kevin Durant added to a core that had already won a title, tore through the West without dropping a game — sweeping Portland, Utah and San Antonio — then went up 3-0 on Cleveland in a Finals rematch. The only blemish came in Game 4, a loss that denied them the first perfect postseason in league history and left the record at 15 rather than a clean 16-0. Even so, 16-1 remains the best winning percentage any team has posted in a modern playoff run.

The 2026 Knicks: closest anyone has come

New York’s run is the newest entry on this list and the second-longest ever. The streak started with a Game 4 comeback win over Atlanta on April 23, in a first-round series the Knicks eventually closed out 4-2. From there, they swept Philadelphia 4-0 in the second round and swept Cleveland 4-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals, then opened the championship series by beating San Antonio in Games 1 and 2 — 13 consecutive wins in all, outscoring opponents by roughly 270 points along the way.

San Antonio snapped the streak with a 115-111 win in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden. New York regrouped, won a one-point Game 4 and closed out the series 94-90 in Game 5, giving the Knicks their first championship since 1973 and Jalen Brunson the Finals MVP award. It’s the same shape as the 2017 Warriors’ run — a long unbeaten stretch snapped by one loss, followed by a title — just two games shorter.

How the 2001 and 1989 Lakers compare

Before 2026, the conversation started with the 2001 Lakers. They swept the first three rounds to go 11-0, lost Game 1 of the Finals to Philadelphia in overtime, then won the next four to finish 15-1 — a quarter-century standard for peaking at the right time, and still tied for third on this list.

The 1989 Lakers are the outlier among the double-digit streaks: 11 straight to open the playoffs, sweeping three rounds in the old best-of-five first-round format, then swept themselves by Detroit in the Finals to finish 11-4. A long streak measures dominance against inferior early-round opponents, not necessarily a team’s ceiling against its equal.

Playoff streaks versus the regular season

Keep the two straight: the longest regular-season winning streak belongs to the 1971-72 Lakers, who won 33 in a row across the full schedule — a number that dwarfs any playoff streak because it includes non-playoff opponents and back-to-backs, while a playoff streak survives only postseason-caliber teams in a seven-game format. See how the NBA playoffs work for how that bracket is structured, longest winning streak in NBA history for the Lakers’ 33, and longest losing streak in NBA history for the other end of the spectrum.

Streaks that cross two postseasons

Some of the longest playoff win streaks ever recorded didn’t happen within one postseason at all — they started at the end of one run and carried into the next. The 2016-17 Cavaliers won 13 straight starting with a Game 3 Finals win over Golden State in June 2016 through the start of the 2017 playoffs, before Golden State snapped it in the Finals rematch. The 1988-89 Lakers did nearly the same, reeling off 13 straight from June 1988 through early June 1989 before Detroit ended it. Both cross-year runs match the Knicks’ 2026 total but still fall two games short of the Warriors — 15 is the ceiling by any counting method.

Where the 2026 season leaves the record

The record book is unchanged at the top: the Warriors’ 15 straight is still the longest winning streak in NBA playoff history, within one postseason or across two. What changed in 2026 is the runner-up spot — the Knicks’ 13-game run pushed the 1999 Spurs down to third. Anyone chasing the record next needs at least three straight sweeps, the way Golden State, San Antonio and New York each managed, since one loss anywhere in the bracket resets the count.

If you like a run that ends the moment you slip, our Flawless Six game captures the same tension as a playoff streak, where one wrong pick wipes out everything you built. And for teams that turned a single-game deficit into a series win instead of a streak, our roundup of the biggest comebacks in NBA history covers the flip side of this list.

The short version: the 2017 Warriors’ 15 straight wins is still the longest single-postseason streak in NBA history, the 2026 Knicks’ 13 is the closest anyone has come, and both sit well below the 33-game regular-season record because the playoffs are a far steeper climb.