The modern history of the NBA has an easy starting point. In the 1976-77 season, the league absorbed four franchises from the American Basketball Association (ABA). The ABA had emerged as a credible alternative league, and the result was the NBA getting instant contenders in places like Denver and San Antonio and instant stars in Julius “Dr. J” Erving, George Gervin, and David Thompson.
Those additions joined a league that already had established traditions in Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, and across the country. The new stars joined a league that already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
An even bigger leap forward took place in the 1980 season, when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came into the league. That’s the place that most narratives of modern NBA history begin. But 1977 was the threshold were some crucial foundational pieces were put in place. And it’s where our timeline begins.
The timeline goes all the way through 2020, over four decades of NBA history. The linked pages take you into each era:
The Prelude (1977–79): The merger brought established stars and fresh contenders into one league, but national attention did not immediately follow. Bill Walton’s Portland Trail Blazers offered a glimpse of what the new NBA might become, while Seattle and Washington developed a championship rivalry of their own. These seasons had compelling basketball. Turning that basketball into a national attraction was still a work in progress.
Power Trio (1980–88): MagicJohnson’s Lakers and Larry Bird’s Celtics became the defining rivalry of the decade, but Philadelphia belongs at the center of this story too. Julius Erving’s 76ers were an early power, and Moses Malone helped lift them higher. Together, these three franchises controlled the championship landscape as the NBA found a much larger audience. This page also follows Detroit’s “Bad Boy Bridge” of 1989–90, a distinct but short era of its own, when the Pistons displaced the old powers and kept Chicago waiting.
The Reign of Air Jordan (1991–98): Michael Jordan entered the 1990s with scoring titles, an MVP award and worldwide recognition. What he still needed was a championship. Once that breakthrough came, Jordan and the Bulls transformed the league’s competitive and commercial landscape. Two “three-peat”championship runs at the beginning and end of the 1990s, separated by his startling departure and return within, made Chicago the center of basketball and helped carry the NBA to a global audience.
The Quiet Constant (1999–2014): After Jordan, the spotlight moved among Shaq and Kobe’s Lakers, revivals in Detroit and Boston and LeBron James’ pursuit of championships in Cleveland and Miami. Through those changes, Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs kept contending and collecting titles. The Spurs’ sustained excellence provides the thread through these seasons of shifting rivalries, star movement and championship ambitions, culminating in consecutive Finals against LeBron’s Heat and a fifth championship for Duncan.
The Warriors & The King (2015–20): Stephen Curry’s Warriors and LeBron’s Cavaliers turned the Finals into an annual appointment. Their rivalry brought record-setting basketball, an extraordinary reversal and a free-agent move that altered the balance of power. The final two seasons of this era supplied the last echoes: Toronto ended Golden State’s championship run, and LeBron returned to the top with the Lakers. The era’s central figures remained at the heart of its closing acts. But change was coming.
2020 has been our universal end point for timelines across each sports, with the COVID-inspired lockdowns impacting the flow of the season. But 2020 also works out pretty well for the NBA in any case. The era that has followed, beginning with the Milwaukee Bucks’ title run in 2021, has been one of extreme parity, with different teams taking their turn at the top. It’s an era still unfolding, with its end point unknown.
Settling on that end point and defining the current era is something that’s ahead of us. For now, we have 44 years of NBA history to digest and these period pieces are a way to start.