New York City’s 10 Favorite Championship Teams

Regular season: 87-74
Postseason: 11-5
Hall of Famers: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Joe Torre (manager)
All of the Yankees teams from the mid/late ‘90s and early aughts are beloved, and for a variety of reasons. For bringing the franchise its first chip in 19 years in ‘96, for setting a then-American League record for wins in ‘98; for almost giving the city another World Series after 9/11 in ‘01. But the 2000 edition of the Yankees holds a special place for reinforcing the Bronx’s baseball supremacy in the city.

Here’s a stat from the past that you might not expect: in 2000, the Yankees had the eighth best regular season record in baseball, behind the Giants, Cardinals, Braves, White Sox, Mets, A’s, Mariners, and Indians (that fifth place team is crucial to this story of course). That team had losing records in June and September, and a .500 record in May.

Still, this was peak Yankees Dynasty juggernaut based on star power: Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Bernie, Tino, O’Neill, Pettite, Clemens, David Cone, El Duque. Did anyone really think this team wouldn’t eventually win a chip? (The answer: Not really, but still.)

After beating the A’s in five in the ALDS despite being outscored, the Yankees took out the 116-win Mariners in five to set up a World Series date with the aforementioned Mets. It was the first Subway Series in 44 years, and, as mentioned, the Mets had finished the regular season with seven more wins than the Yanks.

The Mets put up a spirited fight in the World Series; despite the 4-1 game count, the Yankees only outscored the Mets by three runs over the course of the series. But no one ever really thought the outcome was in doubt, especially after Roger Clemens chucked a bat shard at Mike Piazza early in Game 2, and Derek Jeter started doing Derek Jeter things (hitting home runs in Games 4 and 5) on his way to Series MVP. The Core Four Yankees had a number of beloved teams (mostly because the Core Four of Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettite were so beloved) but none of those teams beat a crosstown rival in the World Series.

Regular season: 32-8
Postseason: 8-3 (Won WNBA Finals over Minnesota Lynx)
Hall of Famers: N/A
The Liberty are one of the WNBA’s eight original franchises, and made the WNBA Finals in four of the league’s first six seasons (‘97, ‘99, ‘00, and ‘02). Despite boasting teams led by Teresa Weatherspoon, Rebecca Lobo, and Becky Hammon, the Liberty were never able to take home a chip.

The Liberty also played their first 24 seasons as ostensible tenants of Madison Square Garden, albeit always as second to the NBA’s Knicks (the “ostensible” refers to three seasons the Liberty played at the Prudential Center in Newark in the early 2010s while the Garden was undergoing renovations—renovations that weren’t scheduled when the Knicks were playing).

The team’s trajectory, and the fortunes of a long-suffering New York borough, started to change in 2021 when the Liberty played their first season at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. They’d drafted Sabrina Ionescu the year before and gone just 2-20 in her rookie year, but laid the foundation for a super team.

The super team came to fruition prior to the ‘23 season when the Liberty traded for former MVP Jonquel Jones, and signed former MVP Breanna Stewart and five-time All-WNBA selection Courtney Vandersloot.

The ‘23 team went a franchise best 32-8 but lost the WNBA Finals to the defending champ Las Vegas Aces, dropping the clinching Game 4 at home. The ‘24 squad equaled the previous season’s 32-8 record, took out the Aces in the semis, and won the Finals in five over the Lynx, bringing Brooklyn its first championship since the 1955 Dodgers.

Regular season: 11-3
Postseason: 2-0 (Won Super Bowl III over Baltimore Colts)
Hall of Famers: Joe Namath, Don Maynard, Weeb Ewbank (coach)
How’s this for a New York moment? Go into a Super Bowl as a 17-point underdog. Get heckled at an awards dinner in your honor three days before the game. Respond to the heckler by guaranteeing a win. Back up the guarantee with the greatest Super Bowl upset of all time (oddly enough, the other candidates for that title are New York teams as well).

In 1968 Joe Namath was in his fourth year in the NFL, and won the AFL MVP. That last distinction is important: While the National Football League and the upstart American Football League had begun the process of merging in 1966, culminating in the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game (aka the Super Bowl), the two leagues still played separate schedules in ‘68, and the NFL was considered the superior outfit, having won the first two Super Bowls.

So when Namath’s Jets defeated the Oakland Raiders in the ‘68 AFL Championship and made a date with the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III (the first time the game was marketed as the Super Bowl), the Jets were 17-point underdogs. The Colts were coached by a young Don Shula and had gone 13-1, allowing just 144 points on the season.

Employing a conservative game plan that used short passes to thwart the Colts’ rush, the Jets dominated the time of possession, (36:10-23:50) including a third quarter where the Colts ran only seven offensive plays. Early in the fourth the Jets took a 16-0 lead and milked the clock for the final 16-7 margin of victory. Namath took home Super Bowl MVP honors on 17-28 passing for 208 yards.

Regular season: 100-62
Postseason: 7-1 (Won World Series over Baltimore Orioles)
Hall of Famers: Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Gil Hodges (manager), Yogi Berra (coach)
The Mets were founded in 1962, taking their lineage from the two longtime National League teams, the Dodgers and Giants, that had left the city for California in the late ‘50s (the lineage is literal: the Mets’ blue and orange come from the Dodgers and Giants, respectively). The early years of the franchise were awful on the field. They didn’t lose fewer than 109 games in a season for the first four years of their existence, breaking the streak with a mere 95-loss season in 1966.

But while the baseball was awful, the vibes were lovable loser immaculate, with original manager Casey Stengel reciting dada poetry on a daily basis, and cool accoutrements like calypso jingles separating the team from the uptight Yankees in the Bronx.

After losing 101 games in ‘67, the Mets had their best season yet in ‘68, finishing 73-89-1, with former Dodgers catcher Gil Hodges leading a young core that featured Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman in the rotation alongside outfielders Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee and infielders Bud Harrelson and Ed Kranepool.

On August 19, 1969, the Chicago Cubs led the Mets by 8.5 games; by the end of the regular season the roles had essentially reversed, with the Mets winning the NL East (in the first year of divisions in baseball) by 8 after the Cubs went 8-17 and the Mets 23-7 in September. The Mets went on to sweep Atlanta in the first National League Championship Series, and bested Baltimore in five for the team’s first World Series win.

Regular season: 52-24-8
Postseason: 16-7 (Won Stanley Cup Finals over Vancouver Canucks)
Hall of Famers: Mark Messier, Brian Leetch, Glenn Anderson, Kevin Lowe, Esa Tikkanen, Craig MacTavish
Think 53 years is a long time between championships? Try 54.

In the spring of 1994 Madison Square Garden hosted two epic Finals runs—the Knicks’ best chance at a title prior to 2026, and the Rangers ending a franchise title drought that preceded America’s entry into World War II.

The Rangers ‘93-’94 core—Messier, Leetch, goalie Mark Richter, Adam Graves—was largely the same one that had won the President’s Trophy in ‘91-’92 but collapsed to sixth in their division in ‘92-’93.

The primary difference in ‘94 was coach Mike Keenan, a notorious hardass who had taken both the Flyers and Blackhawks to the Stanley Cup Finals in the previous decade, only to ride teams too hard for a long-term tenure.

GM Neil Smith also brought in a number of Messier’s and Graves’s teammates from their ‘80s dynasty in Edmonton, including Anderson, Lowe, MacTavish, and Tikkanen.

The result was a savvy team led by Messier that overcame a 3-2 deficit to the New Jersey Devils in the conference finals, with Messier guaranteeing a Game 6 win in Jersey and backing it up with a hat trick. The Rangers took a 3-1 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals but lost Games 5 and 6, requiring a winner take all Game 7 at home on June 14 to secure the Cup in Manhattan for the first time since 1940. Three fans at the Garden with a handheld sign summed up the jubilation: It read “Now I Can Die In Peace.”

Regular season: 92-70
Postseason: 11-4
Hall of Famers: Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera
The Yankees have won 27 world championships, more than the rest of New York’s teams combined. There’s an argument to be made that half the teams on this list should be Yankees: The 1927 team won 110 games (in a 154-game season); the ‘98 squad won 114. There are 16 championship teams to choose from between 1936 and 1962 alone. No disrespect, but the Yankees have more dynasties (five) than the Mets have World Series titles (two).

Still, there’s a special place in Yankees’ fans' hearts for the 1996 team. The franchise that won so much hadn’t been to a World Series in 15 years; they hadn’t won a World Series in 18. It wasn’t just that they won; it was who they were and how they won.

The ‘96 team was the first full blossoming of a core that would power Yankees’s teams for most of the next two decades: the first full seasons for Hall of Famers Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter, the second season for should-be Hall of Famer Andy Pettite. It also included all-time Yankee favorites like Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, David Cone, and Paul O’Neill, former ‘86 Mets Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, and vets like Wade Boggs, Tim Raines, and Mariano Duncan, who coined the team’s mantra: “We play today. We win today. Dassit!”

How they won was important, too. After easily handling the Rangers and Orioles on the AL side of the postseason bracket, the Yanks faced the Atlanta Braves in the World Series. The Braves were in dynasty mode themselves, and took the first two games in the Bronx, 12-1 in Game 1 and 4-0 in Game 2. It looked like the young Yanks were too young for primetime.

That feeling continued through Game 4 in Atlanta when the Braves, despite losing Game 3, took a 6-0 lead into the top of the sixth. That’s when Jim Leyritz started a comeback with a three-run homer, propelling the Yankees to an extra-innings win to even the series. They’d take Game 5 in Atlanta and Game 6 back in the Bronx.

Remember that for much of the ‘80s and early ‘90s the Yankees were the second team in NYC, having ceded their previous dominance to the haywire Mets. The modern Yankees—the team that dominates New York’s baseball attention like it’s their birthright—are direct descendents of the foundation laid by the ‘96 team.

Regular season: 108-54
Postseason: 8-5 (Won World Series over Boston Red Sox)
Hall of Famers: Gary Carter
If ever there was a team that matched the mood of its city, it was the ‘86 Mets. They snorted a lot of coke, trashed airplanes, and, for the most part, dominated their opponents. To be fair, they got a little lucky, too.

The ‘86 Mets could’ve been built in a lab designed for champions: take a couple superstars on the rise (1983 National League Rookie of the Year Darryl Strawberry and 1984 Rookie of the Year Dwight Gooden), add a couple All-Star veterans (Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter), then mix liberally with young role players ranging from the plucky and borderline insane (Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backmon, Kevin Mitchell) to the cerebral and crafty (Ron Darling, Bob Ojeda, Sid Fernandez).

After blitzing the National League during the regular season, the Mets ran into substantial headwinds in the postseason. They overcame the Houston Astros in the National League Championship Series in six games, but needed extra innings in Games 5 and 6 to do it. And of course, legendarily, the Mets were down to their final strike in Game 6 of the World Series, only to come back with the help of a grounder that went between Bill Buckner’s legs.

The other legend of the ‘86 Mets, and maybe the reason the team is so beloved and remembered, is because it was the lone chip for a dynasty that could’ve been. The team featured nine players who accumulated more than 3 Wins Above Replacement that season, all of whom were younger than 32, six of them were younger than 28. They only reached the postseason once after ‘86, losing in seven to the Dodgers in the 1988 National League Championship Series. Cocaine, as they say, is a hell of a drug.

Regular season: 98-55
Postseason: 4-3 (Won World Series over New York Yankees)
Hall of Famers: Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges
For sheer cathartic release, there’s probably no greater champion than the ‘55 Dodgers. For much of the preceding decade the Dodgers had been the best team in the National League, only to lose repeatedly in the World Series. And it wasn’t just the losses, it was who they lost to. The list of World Series defeats reads like a catalog of Interborough NYC tragedy:

1947 World Series: Yankees beat Dodgers in 7 (in Jackie Robinson’s first season)
1949 World Series: Yankees beat Dodgers in 5
1952 World Series: Yankees beat Dodgers in 7 (after Dodgers took 3-2 lead with final games at home)
1953 World Series: Yankees beat Dodgers in 6 (after the Dodgers won 105 games during the regular season)

And one of the years the Dodgers didn’t make the Series to face the Yankees was 1951 when Brooklyn blew a 13.5 game regular season lead and lost to the New York Giants in a three-game playoff, capped by a bottom of the 9th inning home run from the Giants’ Bobby Thomson that became the most famous homer in baseball history.

So yeah, heartbreak.

In 1955 catcher Roy Campanella won his third NL MVP award in five years; centerfielder Duke Snider finished second. Playing just 105 games in his second to last season, Jackie Robinson was still an above average player, and the lineup included regular All-Stars like Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, and Carl Furillo, while the rotation was led by All-Star Don Newcombe.

In the World Series (the sixth played between the Dodgers and Yankees in the previous 15 seasons), the Dodgers dropped the first two games at Yankee Stadium, despite Robinson’s steal of home off Yogi Berra in Game 1. Brooklyn took the next three at home at Ebbets Field, and after the Yankees evened the series in Game 6 at Yankee Stadium, the Dodgers won Game 7 on the strength of a complete game shutout from Series MVP Johnny Podres.

No one from the Complex staff was alive to see it, but by all accounts the celebrations in Brooklyn were epic. Famed Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully compared it to the end of World War II ten years before. There were no reports of school buses being lit on fire however.

And then things went downhill for Brooklyn in a pretty epic way: they lost the World Series in 1956 (to the Yankees of course), Jackie Robinson retired after striking out to end that Series, Campanella was in a career-ending car crash in 1958, and the Dodgers moved to LA after the 1957 season—where they proceeded to win three more World Series, including a sweep of the Yankees in 1963.

Regular season: 10-6
Postseason: 4-0 (Won Super Bowl XLII over New England Patriots)
Hall of Famers: Michael Strahan
A selection of moments where it seemed pretty obvious the 2007 New York Giants would not win a world championship:

-Week 2 when they lost their home opener to the Packers to fall to 0-2, having given up 80 total points in their first two games.
-Week 10 when they lost for the second time to the Cowboys to fall to 6-3.
-Week 12 when they lost 41-17 to the Vikings at home with Eli Manning throwing four interceptions, including three that were returned for touchdowns.
-Every other week of the regular season, which saw the New England Patriots go undefeated behind MVP Tom Brady and Randy Moss, setting numerous offensive records along the way.

A moment when you could squint and maybe kinda sorta think the 2007 New York Giants could win a world championship (but not really):

-Week 17 when the Giants hosted the undefeated Pats in the final game of the regular season and Tom Coughlin played his starters despite the game being meaningless for the Giants’ playoff positioning, and New York nearly took down New England, with the Pats needing a fourth quarter comeback to be the first NFL team to get to 16-0.

One more moment where it seemed really just bracingly clear that the 2007 New York Giants magical run, which included consecutive playoff wins against their rivals the Cowboys and Packers to set up a Super Bowl rematch with the Patriots, would not end in a world championship:

-On 3rd and 5 from the Giants’ 44 yard line with 1:14 left in the fourth quarter and the Giants down 14-10, and three different Patriots defensive linemen got complete man-handfuls of Manning’s jersey, seemingly setting up a 4th down to end the game.

The moment when “WTF? Are the 2007 New York Giants actually going to win a world championship?”

-On that same 3rd and 5 play, when Manning does his inimitable drunken praying mantis style scramble, eludes the Pats defenders and launches a 40-yard missile to David Tyree who…catches it off his helmet.

The moment when it first seemed plausible that the 2007 New York Giants would win a world championship:

-Manning hits Plaxico Burress for a touchdown with 35 seconds to go.

If the criteria for an all-time great NYC champion includes “It did not even once seem plausible that they’d win until 35 seconds remained in the season.” then the ‘07 Giants have a secure spot on this list.

Regular season: 53-29
Postseason: 16-3
Hall of Famers: N/A
The ‘25-’26 Knicks are the rare New York entity that defies hyperbole. Unify a city? See: “My mayor’s Muslim, my bagel’s Jewish, etc., etc.” A throwback to both better and worse times? See: Neighborhood watch parties and school buses lit on fire. Make the rest of the country actually like New York? Check.

Most inspiring Knicks team of all time? Let’s say that recency bias is a thing, but how can you argue otherwise? The ‘90s teams never quite finished the job, and the ‘70s teams were loaded with blue chip players. The 1970 champs had five future Hall of Famers; the 1973 team had seven, and while there’s still a lot of career for this Knicks team it seems likely they’ll have two at most.

Jalen Brunson, greatest Knick of all time? Again, you have any number of players from the ‘70s teams (Walt Frazier being the obvious choice) and Patrick Ewing to contend with but did either of them score 45—nearly 48% of his team’s total—in a closeout game or sacrifice $113 million (yes, it’s complicated) to free cap room for his GM? No shots to Clyde and Pat, but the answers are no.