The

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball sports league, league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues i ...

(NBA) Finals is the championship series for the NBA held at the conclusion of its postseason. All Finals have been played in a best-of-seven format, and are contested between the winners of the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference (formerly Divisions before 1970), except in when the Eastern Division champion faced the winner between the Western and Central Division champions. From 1946 through 1949, when the league was known as the

Basketball Association of America The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA absorbed most of National Basketball League (NBL) and rebranded as the National Ba ...

(BAA), the playoffs were a three-stage tournament where the two semifinal winners played each other in the finals. The winning team of the series receives the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy. The current home-and-away format in the NBA Finals is 2–2–1–1–1 (the team with the better regular-season record plays on its home court in Games 1, 2, 5, and 7), which has been used in –, –, –, –, –, –, and –present. It was previously in a 2–3–2 format (the team with the better regular season record plays on its home court in Games 1, 2, 6, and 7) during , –, and –, in a 1–1–1–1–1–1–1 format during and , and in a 1–2–2–1–1 format during and . , the Eastern Conference/Division led the Western Conference/Division 40–36 in championships won. , the Boston Celtics and the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers have won a combined total of 34 NBA championships (with 17 apiece). , the defending champions are the

Golden State Warriors The Golden State Warriors are an American professional basketball team based in San Francisco. The Warriors compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. Founded in 194 ...

Champions

* The first parentheses in the ''Western champions'' and ''Eastern champions'' columns indicate the teams' playoff seed. The second parentheses indicate the number of times that teams have appeared in an NBA Finals as well as each respective team's NBA Finals record to date. * As of 2022, of the 76

NBA Finals The NBA Finals is the annual championship series of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Eastern and Western Conference champions play a best-of-seven game series to determine the league champion. The team that wins the series is a ...

series played, the Eastern champions have won 40 titles while the Western champions have won 36 titles.

Champions

Results by team

Frequent matchups

See also

Notes

References

External links