The 2026 NBA Finals begin Wednesday with the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs meeting in a rematch of the 1999 Finals. The series will also revive a mid-2000s aesthetic, with the Larry O’Brien Trophy returning to center court.
Starting with the 2005 NBA Finals, the trophy decal appeared at center court for each game, a practice that continued through the 2009 postseason before the decals were discontinued.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed the change on ESPN during the 2025 NBA Finals, saying, “I’ve seen some of the chatter on social media around on-court decals. People don’t realize they went away a decade ago because there were claims that some of the players [were saying] they were slippery when we had the decals on the floor.”
Photos of the decal would later resurface and go viral on social media, prompting fan calls to bring the design back. The league returned the image digitally for Game 2 of the Oklahoma City Thunder-Indiana Pacers series last year.
Sources told ESPN’s Shams Charania in October that the trophy would return for the upcoming Finals. On Sunday the league made the move official, unveiling court designs for San Antonio and New York that feature the Larry O’Brien painted on the hardwood rather than applied as a decal. San Antonio previously played in Finals that featured the decal in 2005 and 2007, winning both; New York has not been to the Finals since 1999.
The trophy design previously appeared in the following Finals: 2005 Spurs vs. Detroit Pistons; 2006 Miami Heat vs. Dallas Mavericks; 2007 Spurs vs. Cleveland Cavaliers; 2008 Boston Celtics vs. Los Angeles Lakers; and 2009 Lakers vs. Orlando Magic.
