Adam Silver responded to criticism the NBA received during Game 1 of the Finals about the absence of the Larry O'Brien Trophy on the playing court. The NBA stopped putting the trophy on the court in 2014, but there was a swell of users on social media commenting on the issue on Thursday. The league stopped using the logo amid concerns about player safety due to the "slipperiness" of the courts. But as recently as 2023, there was an augmented reality version of the logo during the Finals.
“Maybe there’s a way around it,” Adam Silver told a small group of reporters during an NBA Cares charity event at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County. “To be honest, I hadn’t thought all that much about it until I (saw) it (on social media). I’m nostalgic, as well, for certain things. And also, I think for a media-driven culture, whether it’s people watching live or seeing those images on social media, it’s nice when you’re looking back on highlights and they stand out because you see that trophy logo or some other indication that it’s a special event. So, we’ll look at it.”
The absence of a distinct court for the Finals comes in contrast with the loud custom courts for the NBA Cup.
“In the case of the Cup, of course, we have the opportunity to plan well in advance and to design a specific neutral court for a Cup championship game,” he said. “And the teams design their own Cup courts. It actually takes a significant amount of time to create new courts in terms of how they’re painted, et cetera.
“One of the reasons we moved away from the logos on the courts is — whether it was perception or reality — there was a sense that maybe the logos added some slipperiness to the court, and it was a change sort of on the court that was coming just at the time of the finals. … Maybe it’s for superstitious reasons or just a sense from teams that we shouldn’t be changing things around such important competition. That’s largely why we stopped putting the logos on the court.”