NBA Finals

• 1. Introduction

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  The 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 name, the series changed its format, and franchises rose and fell across eight distinct eras. Some moments cut through: a 60-foot shot in the dying seconds of Game 3. Balloons hung in a Los Angeles arena before the game was over. A rookie point guard playing center and finishing with 42 points, 15 rebounds, and 7 assists. The series has crowned 21 different franchise champions. How did eight straight titles become possible for one team? Why did an entire decade scatter trophies to eight different cities? And what does the arc from those postwar seasons to the present reveal?

• 2. The Name and the Format

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  Before 1984, the award hoisted by the winning team had a different name: the Walter A. Brown Trophy. It was called the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy starting in that year, though the physical trophy it replaced had been awarded under the O'Brien name since 1976-77. The series itself went through its own sequence of rebranding. Known as the BAA Finals before the 1949-50 season, it shifted to the NBA World Championship Series when the Basketball Association of America merged with the National Basketball League. That name held from 1950 to 1985, with a brief interlude as the Showdown, before the league settled on NBA Finals in 1986. Since 2018, the internet television service YouTube TV has been the presenting sponsor, making the full official title the NBA Finals presented by YouTube TV.

  The playing format proved equally unstable. The original structure was 2-2-1-1-1, placing games one, two, six, and seven at the arena of the team with the better regular-season record. In 1985 the league switched to a 2-3-2 arrangement, clustering three consecutive games in one city to cut the volume of cross-country flights. That experiment lasted nearly three decades before the 2-2-1-1-1 format was restored in 2014. Home-court advantage under both regimes has always gone to the team with the superior record in the regular season.

• 3. Lakers and Warriors in the Early Years

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  Future Hall of Famer George Mikan anchored the Minneapolis Lakers to the third and final BAA championship in 1949 over the Washington Capitals, whose coach was Red Auerbach. When the BAA merged with the NBL before the 1949-50 season, the Lakers kept winning. They claimed the inaugural NBA title in 1950, then won three straight from 1952 to 1954, becoming the first team to three-peat while accumulating five championships in six seasons.

  The Philadelphia Warriors had taken the very first BAA title in 1947 over the Chicago Stags and won again in 1956. The Baltimore Bullets defeated the Warriors in 1948 and hold a unique distinction: they are the only defunct franchise ever to win a championship. Rochester beat the New York Knicks in 1951 in the only Finals contested between two teams from the same state, a matchup impossible under the current NBA alignment. The Knicks then lost three consecutive Finals starting that year. By 1964 every surviving champion from the 1947-56 era had relocated: the Warriors, Lakers, Royals, and Syracuse Nationals all moved to new cities.

• 4. Bill Russell's Eight Straight

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  The Boston Celtics won 11 of 12 Finals across 13 seasons from 1956 through 1969, including eight consecutive championships from 1959 through 1966. Center Bill Russell drove that run and assembled a statistical record that remains untouched: 12 Finals appearances, 70 games played, and 1,718 career rebounds, all all-time highs. His 40-rebound game in 1960, matched again in 1962, remains the single-game record.

  The central obstacle was Wilt Chamberlain. In 1964, Chamberlain led the San Francisco Warriors to the Western Division title but again fell to Boston. The next season he returned east to join the Philadelphia 76ers. Coach Alex Hannum's tactical decision to have Chamberlain play a team-first game in 1966-67, avoiding the double-teams that had hurt him in Finals play, produced a then-record 68 wins and a championship. Boston came back the following year, overcoming a 3-1 deficit against Philadelphia before beating the Lakers in the Finals.

  Game 7 of the 1969 Finals arrived with the Celtics as the fourth seed in the East, aging and injured. The Lakers had added Chamberlain to an already formidable lineup of Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. With 10 seconds left and the Lakers leading 87-86, a turnover let Sam Jones score to give Boston an 88-87 lead, tying the series at 3-3. Before Game 7 in Los Angeles, owner Jack Cooke hung balloons in the Forum expecting a celebration. West suffered thigh and hamstring injuries during the series but played through them. Russell used West's reduced mobility to organize fast breaks, and the Celtics held off a late Lakers charge to win 108-106 and claim their eleventh championship in 13 years.

• 5. A Decade of Eight Champions

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  Ten different teams reached the Finals in the 1970s, and eight distinct franchises won titles, the most of any decade in NBA history. In 1970 the New York Knicks met the Los Angeles Lakers in a series remembered for Jerry West's 60-foot basket that tied Game 3 in its final seconds, though the Knicks won in overtime and eventually took the series in seven games. Willis Reed returned from injury for Game 7 and scored just 4 points, but his presence energized the team to victory.

  The Milwaukee Bucks, led by Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, won the title in 1971. Two seasons later, the Lakers ran off 33 consecutive wins, still the longest winning streak in NBA history, and finished with 69 victories, breaking the 68-win record the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers had set. The Knicks won again in 1973, and Boston took its 13th title in 1974. Golden State swept Washington 4-0 in 1975 after finishing the regular season at 48-34. The following year, the Phoenix Suns recovered from an 18-27 midseason record to finish 42-40. Nicknamed the Sunderella Suns, they upset Seattle and the Warriors before facing Boston in a series where Game 5 went to three overtimes and ended 128-126. The Celtics closed it out 87-80 in Game 6 for their 13th championship. The decade ended with Seattle defeating Washington in five games in 1979, one year after losing to that same Bullets team.

• 6. Showtime, Bird, and the Bad Boys

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  Magic Johnson was a rookie point guard when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was injured before Game 6 of the 1980 Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers. Johnson shifted to center, played every position on the floor, and finished with 42 points, 15 rebounds, and 7 assists to win the championship. He became the first and only rookie to win Finals MVP honors.

  Boston reached the 1981 Finals with a 62-20 record against the Houston Rockets, who had carried their run almost entirely through Moses Malone and were only the second team in NBA history to reach the Finals after posting a losing regular-season record. The Celtics won in six games. Philadelphia then acquired Malone, the reigning MVP, and swept the Lakers in four games in 1983.

  The Celtics and Lakers met in 1984, 1985, and 1987. The final game of the 1984 series drew the largest television audience ever for an NBA game, second only to the 1979 NCAA Championship matchup between Johnson and Larry Bird. In 1985, Los Angeles lost Game 1 by 34 points in what was called the Memorial Day Massacre, then won the series in six games. Game 4 of the 1987 Finals ended on Johnson's hook shot with two seconds left, giving the Lakers a 107-106 win and a 3-1 lead. Detroit swept the Lakers in 1989, ending their bid for a three-peat. The Pistons, nicknamed the Bad Boys for the physical play of Joe Dumars, Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, and Dennis Rodman, went back-to-back in 1989 and 1990, winning the 1990 title over Clyde Drexler and the Portland Trail Blazers in five games.

• 7. Jordan, Olajuwon, and the Bulls Era

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  Phil Jackson coached the Chicago Bulls to six championships in six Finals appearances from 1991 to 1998, always with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. The only other titles of that decade belonged to the Houston Rockets, who won in 1994 and 1995 while Jordan was pursuing a career in baseball.

  In the 1991 Finals, Pippen guarded Magic Johnson for most of the series, freeing Jordan to score. In Game 5, Jordan took over guarding Johnson directly and forced 6 critical turnovers, and Chicago won 4-1. The following year, Jordan broke the record for most three-pointers in a first half of a Finals game with six, in a Game 1 win over Portland by 33 points. In 1993, Jordan scored 55 points in Game 4 against Phoenix to tie Rick Barry for the second-most points in a Finals game, and John Paxson's three-pointer in Game 6 sealed the series 99-98, making Chicago the third franchise to three-peat.

  Hakeem Olajuwon won MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, and Finals MVP in the same season with Houston in 1994, a combination no player had achieved before or since. Houston's 1995 title came as the sixth seed, the lowest-seeded champion in NBA history. Jordan returned and the Bulls went 72-10 in 1995-96, the best regular-season record in history at the time. After Seattle fell into a 3-0 hole, guard Gary Payton asked coach George Karl to switch onto Jordan; the Sonics won Games 4 and 5, but Chicago closed the series in Game 6. In 1997, Steve Kerr hit the winning shot in Game 6 in Chicago. In 1998, Jordan hit it in Utah to complete the second three-peat. Jordan retired, and the Bulls became a lottery team for the next six seasons, unable to build a foundation of youth to sustain what had been built.