Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy

• 1. Introduction

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  The Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy stands two feet tall, weighs fifteen and a half pounds, and is made of sterling silver and vermeil with a twenty-four karat gold overlay. Every year, the winner of the NBA Finals lifts it on the court, a ritual that defines an entire season of professional basketball. But the trophy that circulates today looks nothing like the one first awarded in 1977, and the name on it honors a man whose career stretched far beyond the hardwood. How did a trophy first called the World Championship Trophy become the sport's most recognized piece of hardware? And why does the NBA still struggle to make it as iconic as the NHL's Stanley Cup?

• 2. The Man Behind the Name

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  Larry O'Brien served as NBA commissioner from 1975 to 1984, but his path to professional basketball ran through the halls of government rather than through gyms. He was the United States postmaster general under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1968. That background in public administration shaped a commissioner who understood institutions and their symbols. When O'Brien retired in 1984, the NBA honored him by renaming the World Championship Trophy in his honor. The Boston Celtics became the first team to hoist the newly named Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games during the 1984 NBA Finals.

• 3. A Trophy Born From Merger

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  The original trophy was created for the 1977 NBA Finals, the first championship played after the ABA-NBA merger brought the two rival leagues together. Portland Trail Blazers fans remember that summer well: their team defeated the Philadelphia 76ers in six games to claim the inaugural award. The NBA made a deliberate choice to model the new trophy's distribution on the Vince Lombardi Trophy, awarded annually to the Super Bowl winner, and the Commissioner's Trophy, given to the World Series champion. Each winning team would keep their trophy permanently, and a new one would be manufactured every year. That policy has held, with one notable exception involving the Houston Rockets decades later.

• 4. Design and Materials

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  Tiffany and Co. manufactures each Larry O'Brien Trophy, and the basketball depicted at the top is the same size as a regulation NBA ball. The trophy underwent its most significant redesign for the league's 75th anniversary season, when artist Victor Solomon reworked its foundation. Solomon replaced the previous square base with two round discs, explaining that he found the square base awkward to hold and prop up. The top disc displays the league's first seventy-five championship teams, spanning from 1947 to 2021. The bottom disc is designed to carry the next twenty-five champions, from 2022 through 2046, in time for the NBA's hundredth anniversary. Solomon also tilted the ball and net to the right to represent the league's forward-looking orientation.

• 5. The Rockets Exception

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  When Leslie Alexander sold the Houston Rockets to Tilman Fertitta in late 2017, he kept the team's 1993-94 and 1994-95 championship trophies as personal mementos. That arrangement left the Rockets without their own hardware. The team commissioned Tiffany to build replica versions of both O'Brien trophies. The 1993-94 replica replaced not just a missing trophy but a damaged one: reserve center Richard Petruska had unexpectedly dropped the original during the celebration, denting it. The replica trophies were publicly unveiled on the 20th of September 2018.

• 6. Promotion and Public Reach

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  After the Detroit Pistons won the NBA Finals in 2004, the O'Brien Trophy toured the state of Michigan, the first time it had ever traveled to the home region of the winning team. The NBA followed that with the NBA Legends Tour, launched in New York City in 2005, which brought the trophy to cities hosting playoff games for fan photo and autograph sessions. Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Russell were among the former players who escorted the trophy on tour. In August 2007, the trophy traveled to Hong Kong for the first time as part of the NBA Madness Asia Tour. Leading up to the 2023 NBA Finals, the trophy went on a tour described as a bucket list, visiting locations across sports and entertainment and meeting numerous celebrities, alongside the launch of social media accounts created specifically for the trophy.

• 7. Center Court Controversy

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  From the 2004-05 through 2008-09 seasons, the NBA painted a version of the O'Brien Trophy at center court during the Finals. Players raised objections to the painted logo, specifically citing the slipperiness it caused. The image was removed after the 2009 Finals. Then in 2025, the absence of a physical trophy at center court during the NBA Finals drew significant public backlash, after the league used a digital hologram in its place. Commissioner Adam Silver responded by announcing that the physical O'Brien Trophy would return to center court, alongside the Finals script logo, with its official return set for the 2026 NBA Finals. The Los Angeles Lakers lead all franchises in trophy wins with eleven, while seventeen different teams have won the award since its introduction in 1977.