The pageantry of the NBA Finals has been washed away in the digital age, leaving the championship series between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers unrecognizable from any other January matchup if you didn’t know better. Remember when the league used to put the Larry O’Brien Trophy at center-court to make the stakes immediately known? That’s gone the way of Bob Costas voiceovers and starting lineup introductions being televised: a relic of the past.
Before Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals turned into an instant classic, fans were critical about the lack of spectacle and branding of the series. The league saw the social media posts, and decided to come up with a cheap and unsatisfying solution. As Game 2 was about to tip off from Oklahoma City, small versions of the Larry O’Brien Trophy were digitally rendered onto the court … at least until the NBA and ABC decided to switch them in the middle of the game.
Here are some before and after images from Game 2 of the NBA Finals, with the league putting the trophy on the court, and then switching it up with a different Finals logo.
Digital Larry O’Brien Trophies have been placed on the court to appease people (like me) who complained about no Finals logos or signage on the court during Game 1 of the NBA Finals. You can see them magically appear just before tip-off. pic.twitter.com/Jp6Oc5mU99
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) June 9, 2025
The NBA might have thought it was listening to its fans and giving them what they want by putting the Larry OB on the court, but instead it just felt half-assed and forced. The logos were grainy, and their placement was rushed.
The whole thing just made fans even more angry. Here’s a small sampling of the posts:
FANS: The NBA Finals are supposed to be special. You could at least put the logo back on the court.
NBA: Here are the terribly low-res digital Larry O’Brien Trophies superimposed on the court like you wanted. They’re glitchy and disappear if we cut back to them too quickly. pic.twitter.com/nVmaDXhjjT
— Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) June 9, 2025
laughing incredibly hard at the internet yelling about not having the trophy on the court for the finals so espn has a crappy looking larry o’brien cgi overlay that looks even worse
— Robby Kalland (@RKalland) June 9, 2025
Adam silver really saw the tweets and CGI’d a 720p image of the trophy lmfao
— g (@freewave3) June 9, 2025
The NBA is so online that they had to respond to the lack of Finals pageantry somehow. The tiny ass digital logos are a perfect representation of ESPN’s care and attention to detail for basketball, though.
— CT (@CT_WIU) June 9, 2025
Super imposing the Finals logo on the floor instead of just painting it on is almost even worse than leaving it off entirely.
Disgusting
— Carter Donnick (@CDonnick1) June 9, 2025
Back in the day, the NBA actually used to put some thought into how they marketed the Finals. The trophy placement and Finals logo on the court was always a big element of that. Having broadcast partners that didn’t constantly talk down to today’s stars and publicly criticize the product was nice, too.
We dug into the archive to find some old photos of a time when the league put more thought into branding the finals on the game floor. How great does this look?
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NBAE via Getty Images
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NBAE via Getty Images
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NBAE via Getty Images
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NBAE via Getty Images
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NBAE via Getty Images
Back in the day, fans knew it was a big game with championship stakes as soon as they saw the NBA Finals logo and Larry O’Brien trophy on the floor. The league is more worried about selling every inch for ad space these days, and it comes at the expense of actually selling the game to the fans.
Here’s a look at the original criticism during Game 1:
The NBA not including the trophy logo anymore on the floor so they can show super imposed ads is peak late stage capitalism.
— P. Fuerte (@cfuerte13) June 6, 2025
I understand that the virtual signage on the court pays the bills, but an NBA Finals game WITHOUT the Finals logo on the floor? Big oversight. It’s on the stanchion, but needs to be on the court.
— Pete Pranica (@PetePranica) June 6, 2025
The Thunder beat the Pacers, 123-107, in Game 2 of the 2025 NBA Finals to even the series. With three more wins, one of these clubs will be lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy for the first time (no, I’m not counting Seattle’s 1979 championship for the Thunder). The basketball has been great so far. It would be nice if the league actually tried to market that to fans instead of just selling ad space.
