{"id":1969945,"date":"2026-06-03T11:30:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T08:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1969945"},"modified":"2026-06-03T11:30:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T08:30:49","slug":"nbas-script-f-finals-logo-40-years-after-its-debut-still-means-a-team-has-made-it-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1969945","title":{"rendered":"NBA\u2019s \u2018Script F\u2019 Finals logo, 40 years after its debut, still means a team has made it big"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is a story about the NBA and the Logo.<\/p>\n

Not that Logo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone who follows the NBA knows its iconic league logo \u2013 Dribbling Man, the silhouette of Hall of Famer Jerry West, though no one likes to admit that the late Los Angeles Lakers\u2019 legend was the model.<\/p>\n

This<\/em> Logo is the one the NBA uses to announce that the league\u2019s championship series has arrived.<\/p>\n

The NBA Finals logo,<\/a> with the Script F, and the shooting star over the \u201cI\u201d in Finals.<\/p>\n

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The NBA debuted the Script F in 1986, when the Boston Celtics met the Houston Rockets for the title. Forty years later, a slightly different version of the script logo will adorn the court at Frost Bank Center on Wednesday, when the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks tip off the 2026 finals. The Script F has become as known for the championship series as the Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy \u2014 which will return in logo form to center court<\/a> Wednesday for the first time since 2009, and also be center court at Madison Square Garden when the series moves to New York for Games 3 and 4.<\/p>\n

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Rather than put a finals decal on the floor, which some players complained about as being slippery \u2014 or, good lord, superimposing one on the court for the TV audience, as the NBA did in recent years \u2014 the league will paint the Script F logo and the Larry into the wood at Frost Bank and MSG.<\/p>\n

Like the Larry, the Script F logo means one thing: They\u2019re playing for the ring. What other reason is there to do this every year? It means you\u2019ve arrived as a team, or as a star player. You can put up all the numbers you want during the regular season, but if you don\u2019t walk out onto a Script F\/Larry court, you\u2019re not in the rarest air \u2014 where the best of the best played.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means a lot, because for my career, I\u2019ve only been able to see that finals logo on TV,\u201d the Knicks\u2019 six-time All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns said Wednesday. \u201cSo it means a lot to be the person that sees the logo on their jersey and has this opportunity. The word \u2018grateful\u2019 is all I can say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the early 1980s, when the NBA was still trying to regain its footing after falling out of favor with large swaths of the American sporting public during the \u201970s, the league didn\u2019t have much on which to hang its hat. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were just at the beginning of their pro careers. Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing were in college. The NBA\u2019s championship series was still being shown on tape delay \u2014 11:30 p.m. ET, then-Johnny Carson time \u2014 to the East Coast of the United States.<\/p>\n

And no one knew what to call the series.<\/p>\n

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CBS, which had the league\u2019s broadcast rights in the early \u201980s, called it the \u201cNBA World Championship Series<\/a>.\u201d That didn\u2019t exactly roll off the tongue like the Super Bowl, the World Series or the Stanley Cup. Even the NCAA had started using a catchy nickname for its championship weekend: the Final Four, in 1978. Each evocative. Each harkening back to memorable plays and moments. And, at any rate, the NBA\u2019s version wasn\u2019t the world championship series, as advocates of FIBA and other international governing bodies for the sport made clear to NBA leadership.<\/p>\n

Desperate to create some buzz, someone at NBA HQ in Olympic Tower \u2014 mercifully, no one can now remember exactly who, though the late commissioner David Stern\u2019s name came up \u2014 pushed the idea to call the 1982 series between the Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers \u201cShowdown \u201982.\u201d It had a logo and everything. And it made the NBA\u2019s championship look like a cheesy, made-up event that would run on ESPN The Ocho. (\u201cComing up after the Great Eastern Skeet Shooting Championships \u2026 it\u2019s Showdown \u201982!\u201d)<\/p>\n

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\n The Showdown \u201982 logo. (Image courtesy of Brian McIntyre)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cRemember how small we were,\u201d said Russ Granik, the NBA\u2019s deputy commissioner at the time. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have marketing people, creative people, and if Rick (Welts, the 2018 Naismith Hall of Fame inductee who is now CEO of the Dallas Mavericks) was there, he was selling sponsorships.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t know where it came from, except maybe David said something. We realized we had a real shortcoming in selling our championship series. People didn\u2019t know what to call it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Showtime \u201982 had a sequel \u2014 Showtime \u201983, when the Lakers and Sixers met again in the championship series. It didn\u2019t take, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually think it was too closely aligned to the Showtime Lakers, and they were in those finals,\u201d said Brian McIntyre, who was the league\u2019s longtime senior vice president of communications.<\/p>\n

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Re-enter Granik. At the time, he lived in Westchester County and took the train to work. One of his neighbors worked in advertising.<\/p>\n

\u201cRuss and I were friends,\u201d said Phil Brandon, the man who designed the Script F while in the midst of a decades-long career working with companies from Kenner Toys to Mitsubishi cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur careers kind of intermingled and intermixed, and we spoke about stuff. I was in the advertising world, and Russ was in his world. I like to joke about how I remember when I had a better car than he did. It was just purely, truly, a friendship thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1985, after the Lakers and Celtics had played in back-to-back championship series, with Bird and Johnson rekindling the league\u2019s greatest rivalry, the NBA was back on the upswing. It had begun to figure out its economics with its 1983 collective bargaining agreement with its players. At the same time, an incredible amount of Hall of Fame talent was coming into the league to join them, all between 1984 and 1989: Jordan, Olajuwon, Ewing, Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller and David Robinson.<\/p>\n

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But the NBA was still searching for what to call the series in which the two best teams played at the end of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need to have your ultimate event be identifiable, promotable, and therefore, ownable,\u201d Brandon said. \u201cRuss and I, on the train, would talk about stuff. Or when we were at the playground, pushing swings, we\u2019d talk about stuff. And it just occurred to me as being a marketing problem like any other, really.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mean to trivialize it, it\u2019s just that it had the basic needs of a marketing problem \u2014 where, in effect, it was like a major new product introduction, at the same time that it was a brand extension \u2026 that created, for me, something that was a leap. I thought, they never are going to buy this, but they did. A mark that, literally, spelled it all out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did Granik ask Brandon? Did Brandon volunteer his services to Granik? Neither really remembers.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI must\u2019ve just said, \u2018I\u2019ve got a friend. He does this for a living,’\u201d Granik said. \u201cI think he said \u2018Give me a weekend.\u2019<\/p>\n

Basically, it happened that fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe year, here \u2014 1986,\u201d Brandon said. \u201cNBA \u2014 who is this? And, \u2018Finals.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n Then-NBA commissioner David Stern and CBS\u2019 Brent Musburger stand in front of Phil Brandon\u2019s logo, which debuted in 1986. (Dick Raphael \/ NBAE via Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Who is it? What is it? When is it? It was that simple. Like Apple<\/a>. Like 20th Century Fox.<\/a> Something compact enough to fit on a hat or a T-shirt or, in what was important at the time, newspaper column spreadsheets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grail for any advertiser is recall,\u201d Brandon said.<\/p>\n

And the Script F made it pop. Brandon likened it to what you\u2019d see on a wedding invitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, in the life of this thing, you needed just absolute clarity,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething that\u2019s going to be totally dumb simple, but something that has some style, some emotion to it \u2014 in this case, two emotions: the strength and importance of the NBA Finals, expressed separately, differently, but together. How do you do that?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how this evolved to be what it is, what it was, initially. The only thing that was really a kind of a flourish, if you will, was the crossbar of the \u2018F\u201d of \u2018Finals,\u2019 and the shooting star.\u201d<\/p>\n

For 10 years, other than changing the year, the league used Brandon\u2019s simple logo. The name took, becoming synonymous with Bird and Magic and Isiah Thomas and Michael each winning multiple titles, displaying the best the sport had to offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t happen right away,\u201d Granik said. \u201cBut people reacted positively to it. Back then, it was the (written) press that was really important in these things, and they seemed perfectly happy to use the logo as a visual. We said, \u2018This seems to be doing pretty well.\u2019 And over time, it\u2019s not like somebody said this is good for marketing. Eventually, you want people to just say that\u2019s what that is. We\u2019re going to \u2018The Finals.’\u201d<\/p>\n

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And then, because someone always thinks they have a better idea, the league, starting in 1996, shelved the Script F in favor of a new one. No Script F. And, now, the O\u2019Brien Trophy on the side. A version of that ran through 2002. In 2003, the O\u2019Brien Trophy was replaced by the Dribbling Man\/West logo.<\/p>\n

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\n The NBA replaced the Script F logo for the 1996 NBA Finals. (John W. McDonough \/ Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In 2004, returning to its senses, the NBA went back to Brandon\u2019s Script F. They soon put both the Larry and Dribbling Man back into the design (Do people need to be reminded it\u2019s the NBA Finals they\u2019re watching? Do they think they\u2019ve stumbled onto the Continental Basketball Association Finals?), but the Script F stayed. Until 2018, when YouTubeTV became the \u201cpresenting sponsor\u201d of the finals. Out when Script F, back came Dribbling Man, for four years.<\/p>\n

Finally \u2014 well, for now, anyway \u2014 the league brought the Script F back in 2022<\/a>. At least, this time, the Script F is back in front of Larry and Dribbling Man, in what the league called at the time a \u201cmodernized\u201d logo for the finals. And Brandon is pleased to see his creation back on center stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least \u2018The Finals\u2019 part found its way back (in 2022),\u201d Brandon said. \u201cI\u2019m not the vengeful sort. Nor do I gloat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a story about the NBA and the Logo. Not that Logo. Almost everyone who follows the NBA knows its iconic league logo \u2013 Dribbling Man, the silhouette of Hall of Famer Jerry West, though no one likes to admit that the late Los Angeles Lakers\u2019 legend was the model. This Logo is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1969945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1969945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1969945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1969945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1969945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}