Pacific Division (NBA)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Pacific Division sits inside the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association. Of its five teams, only the Phoenix Suns are based outside California. That detail connects it to an odd piece of trivia. Alongside the American League West in Major League Baseball, it is one of only two North American major league divisions with no animal-themed nicknames. The Golden State Warriors, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Suns and the Sacramento Kings make up the division today. None of them started there.

  What happened to the franchises that once wore the Pacific Division's colors but no longer do? Why does one team's name dominate the division's record book so thoroughly? And what does a trophy created only a few seasons ago have to do with events from decades earlier in league history?

• 2. The 1970 Realignment

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  In the 1970-71 season, the NBA expanded from 14 to 17 teams. The league added the Buffalo Braves, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Portland Trail Blazers. For the first time, the NBA split into two conferences, the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference, each holding two divisions. The Pacific Division opened with five members: the Lakers, the Trail Blazers, the San Diego Rockets, the San Francisco Warriors and the Seattle SuperSonics. Four of those five, the Lakers, the Rockets, the Warriors and the SuperSonics, transferred over from the old Western Division. Only the Trail Blazers arrived as a brand new expansion team.

  Within a year of that first season, one of those five founding franchises would already relocate to a different city.

• 3. Teams In Motion

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  In 1971, the San Diego Rockets relocated and became the Houston Rockets. That same year, the San Francisco Warriors moved north to Oakland and were renamed the Golden State Warriors.

  The Phoenix Suns joined the Pacific Division from the Midwest Division in 1972. The Houston Rockets left the division that same year for the Central Division.

  In 1978, the Buffalo Braves relocated and joined the division as the San Diego Clippers, arriving from the Atlantic Division. Six years later, in 1984, the franchise moved again and became the Los Angeles Clippers.

  The Sacramento Kings joined the Pacific Division from the Midwest Division in 1988.

  By 2004, two of the division's five founding teams, the Portland Trail Blazers and the Seattle SuperSonics, had both left to join the Northwest Division.

  Of the division's five original 1970-71 teams, only the Lakers and the Warriors remain in the Pacific Division today.

• 4. The Lakers' Record

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  The Lakers have won 25 Pacific Division titles, the most of any team in the division's history. The Phoenix Suns hold a distant second place, with eight division titles.

  Nineteen NBA champions have come out of the Pacific Division altogether. The Lakers account for 12 of those championships, the Warriors for five, and the Trail Blazers and the SuperSonics for one each. Only three of those 19 champions were not also division champions in their title year. Those exceptions were the 1976-77 Trail Blazers, the 2001-02 Lakers and the 2021-22 Warriors.

  In the 1991-92 season, six teams from the division qualified for the playoffs at once. In the 1977-78 season, every team in the division finished with a winning percentage above 0.500, or 50 percent.

  The most recent Pacific Division championship belongs to the Los Angeles Lakers. That same franchise's name dominates the list of teams honored by a trophy the division only began awarding in recent seasons.

• 5. The Chuck Cooper Trophy

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  Since the 2021-22 season, the Pacific Division champion has received the Chuck Cooper Trophy. It is named after Chuck Cooper, a Hall of Famer and one of the league's many African American pioneers.

  Chuck Cooper became the first African-American player drafted by an NBA team. The Boston Celtics selected him with the first pick of the second round in the 1950 draft.

  The trophy itself is built around a 200 millimeter crystal ball.

  That crystal ball now travels each year to whichever locker room finishes atop the division. The division's identity, though, is shaped just as much by its long-running rivalries.

• 6. Rivalries That Define The Division

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  Six rivalries anchor the Pacific Division's identity. The Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers share a crosstown matchup, alongside the Suns against the Lakers, and the Lakers against the Golden State Warriors. The Sacramento Kings carry rivalries of their own, against both the Lakers and the Warriors.

  The sixth listed rivalry, the I-5 rivalry, pits the Portland Trail Blazers against the Seattle SuperSonics. It takes its name from the interstate highway connecting Portland and Seattle. Games between those two home cities still carry the weight of decades of shared division history.