1959-60 NBA Finals
March 27, 1960 – April 9, 1960
1959-60 NBA Finals result: BCBoston Celtics def. SLHSt. Louis Hawks, 4-3, March 27, 1960 – April 9, 1960.
Result
| Team | Series | |
|---|---|---|
| Champion | BCBoston Celtics | 4-3 |
| Runner-up | SLHSt. Louis Hawks |
Games
| Game | Date | Result | Venue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Game 1 | March 27, 1960 | BCBoston Celtics 140–122 St. Louis Hawks | Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts |
| Game 2 | March 29, 1960 | SLHSt. Louis Hawks 113–103 Boston Celtics | Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts |
| Game 3 | April 2, 1960 | BCBoston Celtics 102–86 St. Louis Hawks | Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, Missouri |
| Game 4 | April 3, 1960 | SLHSt. Louis Hawks 106–96 Boston Celtics | Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, Missouri |
| Game 5 | April 5, 1960 | BCBoston Celtics 127–102 St. Louis Hawks | Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts |
| Game 6 | April 7, 1960 | SLHSt. Louis Hawks 105–102 Boston Celtics | Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, Missouri |
| Game 7 | April 9, 1960 | BCBoston Celtics 122–103 St. Louis Hawks | Boston Garden, Boston, Massachusetts |
Finals MVP
The Finals MVP award was not introduced until 1969; no Finals MVP was named for this series.
Series context
The 1959-60 NBA Finals pitted the defending-champion Boston Celtics, who ran away with the regular season at 59-16 under Red Auerbach, against Bob Pettit's St. Louis Hawks, who won the Western Division at 46-29. It was the two teams' second straight Finals meeting after Boston beat St. Louis in 1959, and it proved to be a seven-game war. Boston blew the doors off in Game 1, 140-122, but the Hawks answered in Game 2 at home, 113-103. The Celtics reasserted control in Game 3 (102-86), only for St. Louis to even things again in Game 4 (106-96). Boston took a 3-2 lead with a 127-102 rout in Game 5, but St. Louis forced a decisive Game 7 by winning Game 6, 105-102. In the finale at the Boston Garden, the Celtics closed it out comfortably, 122-103, for a second consecutive title. Bill Russell was the dominant force of the series, highlighted by a 40-rebound effort in Game 2 that set a single-game Finals rebounding record, and he anchored a defense that repeatedly smothered St. Louis in the biggest moments. Pettit and Cliff Hagan carried the offensive load for the Hawks, with Pettit scoring 35 and 32 points in Games 2 and 4 respectively and Hagan erupting for 36 in Game 6, but St. Louis simply could not out-rebound or out-execute Boston in a Game 7. Notably, the reigning regular-season MVP and Rookie of the Year, Wilt Chamberlain, played for the Philadelphia Warriors that season and had no involvement in this Finals; his showdowns with Russell were still to come. In fact, Boston had to get past Chamberlain's Warriors just to reach the Finals, beating Philadelphia 4-2 in the Eastern Division Finals after the Warriors had eliminated Syracuse in the semifinals; St. Louis, for its part, needed a full seven games to escape a Western Division Finals against Elgin Baylor's Minneapolis Lakers, so both teams arrived in the championship series after grueling, extended series rather than easy trips. This series marked the last time an NBA Finals would be played partly in March, a scheduling quirk of the compact eight-team era. It came at the front end of what would become the Celtics' historic run of eight consecutive championships (1959 through 1966), representing Boston's third title overall and the second of that unbroken streak. The Minneapolis Lakers had not yet relocated to Los Angeles (that move came before the 1960-61 season), so the league's championship picture at this point was still an Eastern power (Boston) against a Western contender built around Pettit and Hagan in St. Louis, a rivalry that had already produced multiple Finals meetings in the late 1950s and would produce one more in 1961.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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