NBA: 5 Franchises with the Longest Championship Droughts

#4 Los Angeles Clippers, never won - 47 years

Chris Paul can't believe he just choked away game 5 vs the Thunder in 2014.

Quite possibly the worst franchise in NBA history, not even reaching the conference finals in a history that has spanned 3 cities and 48 seasons. Before 2012, they hadn't even won more than 50 games in a season. This franchise has been snake-bitten by injuries, bad management, and weird luck, never able to string together players and teams with any consistency.

People thought this might be broken when Chris Paul was traded to the Clippers in 2011, teaming up with rookie of the year Blake Griffin, and after a few years of learning the ropes together, they seemed primed to make a championship breakthrough. 2013-2015 saw the team win 57 and 56 games, reaching the conference semifinals with momentum and belief that they were the best team.

In 2014, Paul self-combusted in the last 30 seconds of a perceived win in game 5 vs the Oklahoma City Thunder that would have given them a 3-2 lead. Two days later they were eliminated on their home court. The next season, they coughed away a 20 point lead in the fourth quarter of game 6 vs the Houston Rockets, in a series they were up 3-2 before losing in game 7. Those two series were as close the Clippers have ever gotten to even sniffing a Finals series.

Now, they have no Chris Paul or Blake Griffin, no All-Star on their team to help recalibrate and hope to end their title drought. They are on the outside looking in at the West playoffs and don't have any hope of upsetting the top two seeds if they get there. Even worse, they don't have a young player who can develop into a top 5 player in the league and very little assets with which to acquire one. The Clippers seem to be back in their normal place of being one of the forgotten franchises in the league.