List of NBA champions

All NBA 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 1950 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 (BAA), the playoffs were a three-stage tournament where the two semifinal winners played each other in the finals.

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 1947, 1948,[5] 1950–1952,[6][7][8] 1957–1970, 1972–1974, 1976, 1977, 1979–1984, and since 2014.

[13][14]As of 2024[update], the Eastern champions have a 41–36 advantage in NBA titles over the Western champions, with their most recent being the Boston Celtics who have won 18 titles, the most of any team in the league.

[15] The 1949–50 Minneapolis Lakers, who won the NBA Finals, are not counted in the Eastern versus Western champions record above as they played in the Central Division.