2022-23 NBA G League Finals

Result

Finals MVP: Jaden Springer

Delaware's first championship in franchise history, sweeping Rio Grande Valley (134-120, then 114-110); Philadelphia 76ers two-way player Springer scored 43 points with 4 blocks in Game 1.

Games

Finals context

The 2022-23 Finals delivered the Delaware Blue Coats their first championship in franchise history, and they did it in emphatic fashion: a two-game sweep of the very same Rio Grande Valley Vipers team that had blown Delaware out in the 2021-22 championship series the season before. The rematch went entirely the other way this time. Delaware won Game 1 134-120, a high-scoring affair in which guard Jaden Springer, a Philadelphia 76ers two-way player, exploded for 43 points and 4 blocks, and then closed out the title two nights later with a tighter 114-110 win in Game 2, where Springer added 21 points and 9 rebounds to earn Finals MVP honors across the series. Springer was not the only Philadelphia-connected player central to Delaware's title. Mac McClung, another 76ers two-way player who would go on to win an NBA Slam Dunk Contest title, contributed 30 points and 8 assists in the clinching Game 2, and forward Braxton Key added 22 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists in that same finale. The presence of three significant Philadelphia 76ers-connected contributors on one championship roster reflected just how directly the modern G League's single-affiliate model had come to function as a genuine extension of NBA franchises' own player-development pipelines by this point in the league's history, a structural reality worlds apart from the standalone, unaffiliated franchises that had made up the entire league in its earliest 2000s seasons. Springer's individual development was itself a notable storyline that season: after a slower-than-hoped Year 2 in the NBA with Philadelphia, 76ers coaching consultant Phil Beckner had been working directly with Springer on refining fundamentals -- footwork, posture, the kind of granular skill work the G League exists specifically to facilitate -- and this Finals MVP run served as visible, on-court validation of that development work, even as Springer's path back to a larger NBA role remained a work in progress at that point in his career. For Rio Grande Valley, the sweep loss represented a rare reversal for the league's most decorated modern franchise, denying the Vipers a fifth title and snapping what had been an otherwise dominant run of Finals appearances across the previous decade-plus. Delaware's breakthrough, by contrast, gave the Blue Coats organization its first championship since the franchise's founding, a validation of the 76ers' own substantial investment in their G League operation and a signal that Philadelphia's player-development infrastructure, still relatively young compared to programs like Houston's Rio Grande Valley pipeline, had matured into a genuine contender in its own right.

Sources

• ESPN — Blue Coats 114-110 Vipers, Apr 6, 2023, Final Score
• 975 The Fanatic — Delaware Blue Coats win G League championship; Jaden Springer named Finals MVP