According to a report from ESPN’s Shams Charania, the NBA will once again place the Larry O’Brien Trophy and script “The Finals” on the court for this season’s NBA Finals after fans voiced their displeasure during last year’s championship round.
The NBA previously placed the oversized trophy at midcourt behind the home team’s logo during the 2005-09 NBA Finals, while the script last appeared beyond the three-point line during the 2014 NBA Finals, with that piece of nostalgia dating back to the 1989 NBA Finals.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver immediately saw the complaints and, during an interview with reporters the week the Oklahoma City Thunder captured their first their first title with a 4-3 series win over the Indiana Pacers, cited player safety as to why the league stopped adding the decals to the courts.
“One of the reason we moved away from the logos on the court is – whether it was perception or reality – there was a sense that maybe the logos added some slipperiness to the court,” Silver said. “Maybe it’s for superstitious reasons or just a sense from teams that we shouldn’t be changing things around such important competition. That’s largely why we stopped putting the logos on the court.
“Maybe there’s a way around it. To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about it until I (saw) it (on social media. I’m nostalgic, as well, for certain things. I also think for a media-driving culture, whether it’s people watching live or seeing those images on social media, it’s nice when you’re looking back on highlights and they stand out because you see that trophy logo or some other indication that it’s a special event. So, we’ll look at it.”
There was nothing on the court during Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals that suggested it was anything more than a regular-season matchup. The only details that matched the moment were the small “NBA Finals” wordmarks on the basket stanchions, the sideline video board and scorebug on the bottom of the screen.
In the games that followed, ABC digitally superimposed a small trophy and the script onto the broadcast. But that still drew criticism from fans, especially when compared to the courts the league has used for the Emirates NBA Cup, its annual mid-season tournament.
Those brightly colored courts complemented each team’s City or Statement Edition uniforms and prominently displayed the NBA Cup trophy at midcourt and in the lanes. There was also a special design for the semifinals and finals, which took place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas last December.
“In the case of the (NBA) Cup, we have the opportunity to plan well in advance and to design a specific neutral court for a cup championship game, and the teams design their own cup courts,” Silver said. “It actually takes a significant amount of time to create new courts in terms of how they’re painted, et cetera.”
ESPN also reported on Wednesday that the trophy and script will be painted onto the courts this season, which is interesting since it would be impossible to manufacture a team-specific court in the days between the end of the Eastern/Western Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, as it takes two weeks to stain, seal and paint a new court, as well as another two weeks to cure.
We’ll leave the logistics to Silver, who also oversaw the league moving the Finals patch – and Logoman –from the front of the jerseys to above the players’ nameplates in 2015, paving the way for advertisements. We humbly request he revisits that decision, too, even if means placing it above the Nike Swoosh or advertisement patch.
Photos courtesy of @nbaonespn on Instagram and @okchunder on X/Twitter.
