1962-63 NBA season
| 1962–63 NBA season | |
|---|---|
| League | National Basketball Association |
| Sport | Basketball |
| Number of teams | 9 |
| TV partner(s) | SNI |
| Regular season | |
| Season MVP | Bill Russell (Boston) |
| Top scorer | Wilt Chamberlain (San Francisco) |
| Playoffs | |
| Eastern champions | Boston Celtics |
| Eastern runners-up | Cincinnati Royals |
| Western champions | Los Angeles Lakers |
| Western runners-up | St. Louis Hawks |
| Finals | |
| Champions | Boston Celtics |
| Runners-up | Los Angeles Lakers |
The 1962–63 NBA season was the 17th season of the National Basketball Association. The season ended with the Boston Celtics winning their 5th straight NBA Championship, beating the Los Angeles Lakers 4 games to 2 in the NBA Finals.
In the spring of 1962, Cleveland Pipers owner George Steinbrenner signed Jerry Lucas to a player-management contract worth forty thousand dollars. With the Lucas signing, Steinbrenner had a secret deal with NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff. The Pipers would merge with the Kansas City Steers and join the NBA. A schedule was printed for the 1963–64 NBA season with the Pipers playing the New York Knicks in the first game. Steinbrenner and partner George McKean fell behind in payments to the NBA and the deal was cancelled.
The season began with a shock, as the Philadelphia Warriors had left for San Francisco. The Warriors, whose lineage in basketball dates back to the Philadelphia Sphas of the 1920s, had been a fixture for decades in Philadelphia, one of pro basketball's essential cities. It would be a weird year in Philadelphia, where no team would play until the Syracuse Nationals moved there the following season. (Philadelphia did have a team in the American Basketball League, and, oddly enough, the Syracuse Nationals and San Francisco Warriors played a regular season game in Philadelphia between Christmas and New Years --- a meeting between the past and the future, as it were). The Cincinnati Royals were promptly shifted to the NBA's East Division to replace the Warriors, a fact the Royals would soon come to regret.
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