Curated playlist
NBA Finals
- 2022 NBA FinalsThe 2022 NBA Finals began on the 2nd of June with the highest three-point total ever recorded in a championship game. Both teams combined for 40 made three-pointers, breaking the previous Finals record of 35 set in 2017. Stephen Curry hit…
- 2007 NBA FinalsThe 2007 NBA Finals matched the San Antonio Spurs against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the result left little room for suspense. San Antonio swept the series in four straight games, and Tony Parker, not Cleveland's young star, was named…
- 2003 NBA FinalsThe 2003 NBA Finals opened on the 4th of June in San Antonio with a question that hovered over every tip-off: could a team that many viewers found boring actually hold the country's attention? The San Antonio Spurs and New Jersey Nets met…
- 2006 NBA FinalsIn June 2006, the Dallas Mavericks walked into the NBA Finals as heavy favorites. They had swept through the Western Conference bracket. They had Dirk Nowitzki playing some of the best basketball of his career. And they had just dismantled…
- NBA Finals television ratingsNBA Finals television ratings begin with a single entry from 1974. That year, CBS broadcast the Boston Celtics against the Milwaukee Bucks to a 13.5 rating and a 32 share. That figure sits at the start of five decades of Nielsen numbers.…
- 2013 NBA FinalsThe 2013 NBA Finals came down to a single moment on the night of the 18th of June, 2013. Ray Allen stood in the right corner with 5.2 seconds on the clock, the Miami Heat trailing the San Antonio Spurs by three points, a season and a…
- 2016 NBA FinalsThe 2016 NBA Finals turned on a secret hidden above a ceiling panel in an Oakland locker room. After Cleveland's Game 5 win, the Cavaliers still trailed three games to two. Head coach Tyronn Lue collected two hundred dollars from every…
- 2005 NBA FinalsThe 2005 NBA Finals came down to a single game for the first time in eleven years. Two teams that had defined defensive basketball for three straight seasons met in a series nearly every sportswriter called too close to call. The San…
- 2023 NBA FinalsThe 2023 NBA Finals opened on the 1st of June. The Denver Nuggets led for all but 34 seconds of the first game. Their opponent, the Miami Heat, had barely qualified for the postseason: they lost to the Atlanta Hawks in a play-in game…
- 1999 NBA FinalsOn the 25th of June 1999, exactly two years to the day that Tim Duncan was drafted by the San Antonio Spurs, a young point guard named Avery Johnson hit a go-ahead basket with 47 seconds left in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. The Spurs led by…
- 2018 NBA FinalsThe 2018 NBA Finals opened on the 31st of May with the score tied at 107 and fewer than five seconds remaining in Game 1. George Hill of the Cleveland Cavaliers stepped to the free throw line with a chance to win. His first attempt went…
- 2008 NBA FinalsThe 2008 NBA Finals opened with one of basketball's strangest sights. Boston Celtics forward Paul Pierce was wheeled off the court in Game 1 after falling awkwardly on teammate Kendrick Perkins' leg. He returned to the game minutes later…
- 2011 NBA FinalsThe 2011 NBA Finals was supposed to be a coronation. Miami's newly assembled trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh had made the Heat heavy favorites heading into the series against the Dallas Mavericks. The Heat won Game 1.…
- 2012 NBA FinalsThe 2012 NBA Finals began on the 12th of June with a question nobody could fully answer: was LeBron James ready to be a champion? He had arrived in Miami two years earlier as the most scrutinized player in the league, forming a "Big Three"…
- 2025 NBA FinalsThe 2025 NBA Finals began on June 5 and concluded on June 22. The Western Conference champion Oklahoma City Thunder defeated the Eastern Conference champion Indiana Pacers in seven games. This marked the first Game 7 of an NBA Finals since…
- NBA FinalsThe NBA Finals is the annual championship series of the National Basketball Association, played since April 1947 when the Philadelphia Warriors beat the Chicago Stags in five games. In the decades that followed, the trophy changed its…
- 2009 NBA FinalsThe 2009 NBA Finals opened on the 4th of June with a matchup almost nobody predicted. All spring, fans and analysts had been waiting for a showdown between Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, the two most popular players in the league. Instead,…
- 2017 NBA FinalsThe 2017 NBA Finals matched the Golden State Warriors against the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third consecutive year, closing out the NBA's 2016-17 season. This was the third year in a row the two teams had met in the Finals, following…
- 2004 NBA FinalsOn the 6th of June 2004, the Detroit Pistons walked into the Staples Center as 12-point underdogs and walked out with a victory. Their opponents, the Los Angeles Lakers, had four future Hall of Famers on the roster: Kobe Bryant, Shaquille…
- 2010 NBA FinalsThe 2010 NBA Finals came down to a single game on the 17th of June, 2010, with Kobe Bryant shooting 6 for 24 from the field. That is 25 percent. One of the most celebrated players in the game, misfiring again and again, and yet the Los…
- 2014 NBA FinalsThe 2014 NBA Finals ended with a margin that left no room for debate. San Antonio outscored Miami by an average of 14.0 points per game across five games, the largest differential in Finals history at the time. A franchise that had already…
- 2024 NBA FinalsThe 2024 NBA Finals concluded on June 17 with the Boston Celtics defeating the Dallas Mavericks four games to one. This victory marked the franchise's first championship since 2008 and secured their eighteenth overall title, surpassing the…
- 2019 NBA FinalsThe 2019 NBA Finals ended on the 13th of June in Oakland, California, with a final score of 114-110 and a country that had never won an NBA championship celebrating for the first time. The Toronto Raptors, playing in their first Finals…
- 2021 NBA FinalsThe 2021 NBA Finals matched two franchises that had spent generations on the outside of basketball's biggest stage. The series began on the 6th of July, the second-latest tip-off in championship history, pushed back by the COVID-19…