The NBA is putting the Larry O’Brien Trophy back at center court for this season’s Finals, bringing the league’s most recognizable title-stage image back to the floor in San Antonio and New York. The logo will be painted on the court at the Frost Bank Center and Madison Square Garden, while the handwritten “The Finals” wordmark returns to both sides of the hardwood.
The timing matters because the Spurs and the Knicks open the series on Wednesday in San Antonio, giving the league only days to unveil the updated look before the championship round begins. It is the first Finals since 2009, when the Lakers faced the Magic, to feature the trophy logo at center court, and the Finals wordmark and logo were last on the floor in 2014, when the Spurs met the Heat.
The center-court trophy was once a familiar part of the league’s biggest stage. The NBA first used the Finals wordmark on the court in 1989, moved to a wordmark-and-trophy combination in 2004 and then featured the prominent trophy logo from 2005 through 2009. This year’s version folds the trophy mark into each team’s visual identity, tying the championship presentation more closely to the two arenas that will host it.
That shift comes after years in which fans complained on social media that the Finals floor did not feel special enough, especially because the league regularly commissions alternate courts for events such as the NBA Cup. The contrast was hard to miss: fresh designs for some marquee league events, but a more restrained look for the championship series itself.
The NBA did not say why it chose to bring the logo back now or whether the design will remain part of future Finals. For this year, though, the answer is already on the floor: the championship series will finally look like the championship series again.
