NBA Finals Continue to Strip Away Pageantry

Game 1 of the NBA Finals delivered elite drama from a basketball perspective as Tyrese Haliburton’s final-second shot led a stunning Pacers comeback over the Thunder. However, in the hours preceding that moment, the overall presentation left a lot of fans wondering what has happened to some time-honored traditions. 

The longstanding Finals patches are now on the back of the jerseys; they used to be on the front. And there are no indications on the floor that it’s the NBA’s marquee event.

The league removed the “NBA Finals” decal from the court over a decade ago, citing “player safety.” 

“There were a lot of considerations taken into account in making this decision, including player safety,” an NBA spokesman said in 2014 of removing playoff decals. “We decided to remove the playoffs logo from the court for a variety of reasons, including cleaning up the playing surface.”

The Larry O’Brien Trophy has been missing from center court for even longer. 

Despite the “player safety” claim, the NBA has slapped several huge ads on the Finals court, and turned its midseason tournament courts into seas of paint—which players complained about being too slippery in 2024. At the Finals, the classic cursive lettering is comparatively buried on the basket poles and on screens behind the shot clocks.

NBA spokespeople did not respond to an email from Front Office Sports.

As has been the case for several years, there was a chorus on social media lamenting the missing logos.

“I don’t know why this pisses me off so much but there’s literally nothing on the court that would indicate we’re watching an NBA Finals game,” Sporting Tribune founder Arash Markazi wrote on Twitter/X. “Yes, the Larry O’Brien Trophy on the court was beautiful and should be brought back but there isn’t a Finals logo anywhere. Ridiculous.”

Frank Isola, a longtime NBA reporter and current host on the league’s SiriusXM channel, wondered aloud why the logo was missing from the court and uniforms. 

Additionally, ABC’s coverage of Game 1 did not include the player introductions or national anthem. This has also been the case for years. Disney/ESPN has to pay a fortune to air these games and right before tipoff is a valuable spot for ad inventory, but it means an abrupt start to the series for the TV audience.

Perhaps if there are loud enough complaints these traditions could return next year when the NBA’s massive new $77 billion TV deal has begun.