THE RAFTERS — NBA CHAMPIONSHIPS (Complete List)

8StarSports · The Rafters · NBA foundation pack. Compiled October 19, 2026.

The roll ends at the 2026 NBA Finals (2025-26 season) — New York Knicks def. San Antonio Spurs, 4–1, Finals MVP Jalen Brunson; Game 5 played June 13, 2026. That is the last Finals completed as of this compile. The 2026-27 season has not produced a champion and no result is shown for it. Method: No figure from memory alone. Every row below was corroborated by at least two independent sources actually fetched during research; the full verification trail — source log, disputes register, and rejected sources — is in the companion file nba-sources-and-notes.md. Season convention: series are listed by season (e.g., 2025-26), the standard Basketball-Reference convention. The Finals are played in the spring of the season's second calendar year. League basis: the 1946-47 through 1948-49 championships were played under the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The BAA is the NBA's direct predecessor and its titles are counted as NBA championships in all official league accounting; they are printed here on that basis and marked (BAA).

Sources (summary)

Full source log [S1]–[S14] and verification trail: see nba-sources-and-notes.md. In brief: §1 rests on the NBA Hoops Online champions roll [S1], cross-checked against the NBC Sports Finals MVP list [S2], TopEndSports / SportsBrackets MVP lists [S3], Fox Sports' champions list (1999–2025 agreement), and June 2026 reporting for the 2026 Finals (USA Today + ESPN + StatMuse game log, three-way agreement). §2 (ABA) rests on Wikipedia's List of ABA champions + Remember the ABA, in full agreement. One misprint found in [S1] (the 1956-57 series score) is corrected on four-source agreement and logged as dispute D-1 in the companion file. A mislabeled Finals table at nbanewsplus.com was identified and not used (see D-5).

1. NBA FINALS ROLL — BAA 1947 through 2026 (80 championships)

Sources for this section: [S1] for all rows (champion / runner-up / series); Finals MVPs cross-checked against [S2] + [S3] (full agreement 1969–2026); the 2025 and 2026 rows additionally against Fox Sports and USA Today / ESPN reporting. The Finals MVP award was first presented in 1969; rows before that show —.

⚠ 1956-57: [S1] prints this series 4–2. Four other fetched sources — the 1957 NBA Finals article (Wikipedia), NBC Sports Boston's Game 7 history, SportsCasting, and FanSided — print 4–3, with Game 7 decided 125–123 in double overtime on April 13, 1957 (still the only double-overtime Game 7 in Finals history). Printed 4–3 on that agreement; the [S1] misprint is logged as dispute D-1 in the companion file, not silently corrected.

Notes on the roll:

• Jerry West (1969) is the first Finals MVP and remains the only Finals MVP from the losing team [S1][S2].
• The 1947-48 Baltimore Bullets are a defunct franchise with no connection to the later Baltimore/Washington Bullets (today's Washington Wizards). The two are never combined anywhere in this pack (basis decision B-B3, companion file).
• The Chicago Stags (1947 runner-up), Washington Capitols (1949), and Fort Wayne Pistons (1955, 1956) are defunct or relocated identities; Fort Wayne is the same franchise as today's Detroit Pistons, which won its titles only after the move.
• The 2019-20 Finals were played in the Orlando bubble (concluded October 2020); the season label follows the standard convention.

2. ABA CHAMPIONSHIP ROLL — 1968 through 1976 (separate league, never merged)

The American Basketball Association played nine seasons alongside the NBA before four of its teams were absorbed in the 1976 merger. Its championships are printed here in their own roll, on their own basis. ABA titles are never added to NBA franchise totals (§3 prints the two leagues' totals in separate tables).

Sources for this section: [S4] Wikipedia, List of ABA champions + [S5] Remember the ABA — full agreement on all nine rows.

The ABA named no Finals MVP award in the NBA sense; none is shown. The Stars franchise appears as Los Angeles (1970 runner-up) and Utah (1971 champion, 1974 runner-up) — one franchise, two homes, counted once in §3.

3. FRANCHISE CHAMPIONSHIP TOTALS

Basis (stated, per house law): NBA table counts BAA titles as NBA titles (1947-49 included); a franchise keeps its titles across relocations and name changes (Minneapolis Lakers → Los Angeles Lakers; Syracuse Nationals → Philadelphia 76ers; Seattle SuperSonics → Oklahoma City Thunder). ABA titles are counted only in the ABA table. Totals are computed from the §1 and §2 rolls above; the NBA table sums to exactly 80 and the ABA table to exactly 9, matching the rolls.

NBA basis

The Seattle/Oklahoma City line follows the league's franchise-lineage accounting (one franchise, relocated 2008). The 1948 Baltimore Bullets folded in 1954 and share nothing with the Washington franchise but a city and a nickname; their title is not credited to the Wizards.

ABA basis (separate — never added to the NBA table)

Of the ABA champions, only Indiana and the Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) survived the 1976 merger into the NBA; neither has won an NBA title. Kentucky and the Stars were folded in the merger settlement; Oakland's franchise (by then the Virginia Squires) and Pittsburgh had folded by 1976.