When you think of the greatest sports franchises in North American sports history, I’m sure several different teams come to mind.
The and their 27 World Series titles have been the blueprint for every modern MLB franchise to follow.
If you’re a football guy, organizations like the and New England Patriots are some of the most historically dominant and consistently great in NFL history.
Unfortunately, those aren’t the teams I wanted to talk about today.
That’s right, folks, we are looking at some of the sports, but with a twist.
It would be easy to just say franchises like the Cleveland Browns or the Sacramento Kings suck and call it a day, but where is the fun in that?
I wanted to identify the biggest underachiever in each of the four major North American sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA).
To me, an underachiever in this sense would be franchises who have seen a ton of talent through multiple eras come through their doors while never winning anything of significance.
Let’s dive right in and piss off some fanbases, shall we?
The NBA has plenty of franchises that have won next to nothing during their existence, but few have underachieved quite as spectacularly as the Phoenix Suns.
For all you youngsters out there, you’re probably well aware that this team wasn’t able to get over the championship hump with future Hall of Famers like , Chris Paul, and Devin Booker, as well as All-Stars like Bradley Beal among their ranks, but even in the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s, the Suns were massive underachievers.
Everyone is aware of Hall of Famers like Steve Nash and Charles Barkley donning Suns jerseys for multiple seasons, but there were also several other HoFers littering the roster throughout the last several decades including Grant Hill, Jason Kidd, Dennis Johnson and Paul Westphal, just to name a few. Guys like Amar’e Stoudemire, Dan Majerle, Danny Ainge and even Shaq spent some time in the Valley of the Sun.
With names like those, you would think Phoenix would have been able to capture at least one Larry O’Brien trophy in the last four decades, but fate had different plans in mind.
They got close a couple of times, namely 1993 and 2021, but both times they were thwarted by the Bulls and Bucks, respectively.
I’m not sure if their arena is built on a American Indian burial ground, but I can’t think of any other explanation for their bad luck.
Buffalo came close to having both of their pro sports franchises make this list, but there is another, more notorious underachiever in the NFL, so the fine folks of Erie County will have to settle for just the Sabres being included.
This particular race to fill the NHL’s spot on the list was a tight one between the Sabres and the , but I gave the edge to the Sabres because I can’t think of any franchise in both recent and historical times to have this many players come through their ranks without ever hoisting a Stanley Cup.
The Sabres have practically been a feeder team lately for modern Cup winners, jettisoning top draft picks Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhardt to Vegas and Florida, respectively.
Eichel led the NHL in points during the playoffs when Vegas won its Cup in 2023 and is fresh off a 94-point season in 2025, while Reinhardt scored the game-winning goal in the Panthers’ 2024 game seven thriller over Edmonton to secure the franchise’s first Stanley Cup, then followed that up with a four-goal performance in their Cup clincher last season.
And that’s just in the past three years!
Think about some of the absurd talent that has walked through the doors of the KeyBank Center, including Pat LaFontaine, Gilbert Perreault and Chris Drury, just to name a few.
They also could make the case for having one of the best all-time goalie rosters, with both Ryan Miller and Dominik Hasek calling Buffalo home at one time or another.
Time will tell if the Sabres can bre
