National Basketball Association Awards
The National Basketball Association (NBA) presents 12 annual awards to recognize its teams and players for their accomplishments. The NBA championship trophy is called the Larry O'Brien Trophy. First introduced in the 1978 NBA Finals, it is awarded annually to the winner of the NBA Finals.
The NBA's championship trophy was first awarded after the inaugural NBA Finals in 1947. In 1964, it was named after Walter A. Brown, in honor of the original owner of the Boston Celtics who was instrumental in merging the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League into the NBA in 1949. The Brown Trophy remained in use until 1978, when a new trophy design was introduced and first presented, though it retained the Walter A. Brown title. In 1984, the new trophy was renamed to honor former NBA commissioner Larry O'Brien, who served from 1975 to 1984.
The NBA's first individual awards were the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player and the Rookie of the Year awards, both of which made their first appearance in 1953. First awarded in 1956, the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award is presented to the best performing player of the regular NBA season. The only individual award awarded in the NBA Finals is the Bill Russell Finals Most Valuable Player award, which was first presented in 1969. The Executive of the Year award is the only award not presented by the NBA. Though it is presented annually by Sporting News, it is officially recognized by the NBA.
Aside from annual awards, the league also awards players and coaches weekly and monthly awards.
Read more about National Basketball Association Awards: Team Trophies, Individual Awards, Honors
Famous quotes containing the words national, basketball and/or association:
“[Wellesley College] is about as meaningful to the educational process in America as a perfume factory is to the national economy.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)
“In this great association we know no North, no South, no East, no West. This has been our pride for all these years. We have no political party. We never have inquired what anybody’s religion is. All we ever have asked is simply, “Do you believe in perfect equality for women?” This is the one article in our creed.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)