The NBA began in 1946 with 11 teams and currently has 30 teams throughout the United States and one in Canada. The Boston Celtics have won the most championships with 16 and the Los Angeles Lakers are second with 14. The league has had several expansions, reductions, and relocations over its long history. In the beginning, teams were often relocated to larger markets or sold off and moved to other cities. The Syracuse Nationals were moved to Philadelphia, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks moved to Milwaukee and then to St. Louis, and the Minneapolis Lakers were moved to Los Angeles. The league also added the first expansion teams: the Chicago Bulls, Seattle SuperSonics (who later moved to Oklahoma City), and the San Diego Rockets.
In 1954 the NBA introduced a 24-second shot clock to liven up play and increase scoring. They also began awarding the MVP to the best player in the league instead of to the overall best player. The league has continued to evolve through a series of changes and innovations.
Each season the top eight teams in each conference go to the playoffs. Teams play a best of seven game series, with the winner advancing to the next round. The teams are seeded according to their records and whether they won their division. In the case of a tie, the team with the better record goes to the playoffs.
In the finals, the two top seeds meet in a best-of-seven game series. The winners advance to the Eastern and Western conferences championships, respectively. The winners of those games then face each other for the final championship.
The league also has other playoff systems. In the 2022 playoffs, all 66 regular season games were played and the top eight teams in each conference advanced to the semifinals, where the winners went to the finals. The finalists then played in a best-of-seven series to determine the champion.
This year was the third time in five years that both a conference and a championship had teams go up 3-0 before losing. The 2015 and 2023 finalists lost in the fourth and fifth games, respectively.
The NBA has a complex system for determining draft order. In addition to a lottery comprised of ping-pong balls drawn in an audited event, the league assigns value to teams’ draft picks and other factors. For example, teams with a higher regular-season finish get a higher priority in the lottery. As a result, many star players are traded before they hit free agency. In the future, more players will likely come to the NBA from foreign nations rather than from American universities. The league is still experimenting with ways to make the game more attractive to viewers in the international market, which has a lower tolerance for physicality and slow-paced basketball. As the sport continues to change, some traditionalists are wondering if it will have a place in the modern sports landscape.