The old NBA Finals logo has been missed on the court more than usual this season, as the Indiana Pacers face off with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
NBA Finals games used to feature a giant script “The Finals” logo somewhere on the court, but that logo has fallen out of use over the past decade. However, after days of social media chatter about the ambience of this year’s Finals, NBA commissioner Adam Silver acknowledge the issue, and hinted at a possible solution.
From The Athletic:
“Maybe there’s a way around it,” he told a small group of reporters during an NBA Cares charity event at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County. “To be honest, I hadn’t thought all that much about it until I [saw] it [on social media]. I’m nostalgic, as well, for certain things. And also, I think for a media-driven 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.”
The “Finals” logo ceased to become a court feature in 2014, with the league citing player safety due to the slipperiness of the decals. It has since made some cameos, appearing in a small form on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ court in 2017 and as the featured logo on the COVID-19 bubble court of the 2020 NBA Finals.
As Front Office Sports broke down Friday, the league has been trending away from such pageantry in other ways for years. The league has moved Finals patches from the front of player jerseys to the back. Broadcasts don’t feature player introductions or the national anthem. The Finals logo is actually present… in a small version on the padding under the baskets.
Outside of some extra ads and the logo on scorebug, the broadcast didn’t look much different from a regular-season game.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen this logo on an NBA Finals court. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
(Mike Ehrmann via Getty Images)
Many have noted the division in the league’s apparent effort to dress up the Finals vs. its newer event, the in-season NBA Cup tournament. Those games feature custom-painted courts for every team and a giant trophy at center court.
Silver addressed that difference as well, basically saying the Cup was easier to plan for:
“In the case of the Cup, of course, we have the opportunity to plan well in advance and to design a specific neutral court for a Cup championship game,” he said. “And the teams design their own Cup courts. It actually takes a significant amount of time to create new courts in terms of how they’re painted, et cetera.
“One of the reasons we moved away from the logos on the courts is — whether it was perception or reality — there was a sense that maybe the logos added some slipperiness to the court, and it was a change sort of on the court that was coming just at the time of the Finals. … 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.”
With the demand clearly there, the ball is in the NBA’s court, as it were. For now, Game 2 of the 2025 Finals is scheduled for Sunday in OKC.
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