List of NBA champions
The NBA Finals is the annual championship series for the National Basketball Association held at the conclusion of its postseason. 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, except in 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, the playoffs were a three-stage tournament where the two semifinal winners played each other in the finals. The winning team of the series receives the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy, which has been awarded since 1977.
Champions
The most recent champions are the Oklahoma City Thunder, who won their first championship since relocating from Seattle in 2008, and their first since 1979 as the Seattle SuperSonics. The Boston Celtics have won the most championships of any team in the league at 18., the Eastern champions have a 41–38 advantage in NBA titles over the Western champions. The Minneapolis Lakers season|1949–50 Minneapolis Lakers], who won the NBA Finals, are counted in the Eastern versus Western champions record as they played that sole season in the Central Division before returning to the Western Division.- The first parentheses in the Western champions and Eastern champions columns indicate the teams' playoff seed. The second parentheses indicate the number of times that teams have appeared in an NBA Finals as well as each respective team's NBA Finals record to date.
| Bold | Winning team of the BAA/NBA Finals |
| Italics | Team with home-court advantage |
| Italics | Finals MVP was on losing team |
| Only defunct team to win championship |
Consecutive championships
Eight consecutiveThree consecutive
Two consecutive