1961-62 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

The Finals MVP award was not introduced until 1969; no Finals MVP was named for this series.

Series context

The 1961-62 Finals introduced a new opponent for the Celtics: the Los Angeles Lakers, who had relocated from Minneapolis before the 1960-61 season and were now built around the electrifying scoring of Elgin Baylor and a rising young star in Jerry West. Boston finished 60-20 in the regular season, its best mark yet, while Los Angeles went 54-26 to win the Western Division. The series was an instant classic. Boston won Game 1, 122-108, but the Lakers answered in Game 2, 129-122, and took Game 3 as well, 117-115, to grab a 2-1 edge. The Celtics evened it in Game 4, 115-103, only for Baylor to explode for a Finals-record 61 points in a 126-121 Lakers win in Game 5. Boston forced a Game 7 by winning Game 6, 119-105. Game 7 in Boston went to overtime after Lakers guard Frank Selvy missed a wide-open baseline jumper in the closing seconds of regulation that would have won the championship outright, one of the most famous near-misses in Finals history. The Celtics prevailed in overtime, 110-107, for their fourth consecutive title. Bill Russell was extraordinary throughout, totaling 189 rebounds in the series and tying his own single-game Finals record with 40 boards in the decisive Game 7, while also chipping in key scoring down the stretch. Baylor's series was one of the greatest individual playoff scoring performances of the era, and his 61-point Game 5 stood as a Finals scoring record for decades. This was Boston's sixth consecutive Finals appearance and its fifth championship overall, the fourth of the eventual eight-year title streak. It was also just the second time in league history a Finals had been decided by overtime in a Game 7 (the first being 1957, also a Celtics series). For the Lakers, it was a heartbreaking near-miss that began a painful pattern; the franchise would not win a championship until 1972, losing multiple Finals to Boston throughout the 1960s. Notably, Wilt Chamberlain, then with the Philadelphia Warriors, was not part of this series; the fabled Russell-Chamberlain Finals rivalry had not yet arrived, and this matchup instead established the Celtics-Lakers rivalry as the league's new marquee Finals pairing. Game 3, which the Lakers won 117-115 to seize their first lead in the series, ended on a signature Jerry West moment: West stole an inbound pass intended for Boston's Sam Jones and drove in for the game-winning basket at the buzzer, an early sign of the clutch reputation that would eventually earn him the nickname 'Mr. Clutch' and, decades later, make his silhouette the model for the NBA's logo. Boston's path to the Finals had not been easy either; the Celtics needed seven games to get past the Philadelphia Warriors and Chamberlain in the Eastern Division finals before facing Los Angeles, meaning Russell's team played the maximum number of postseason games in both rounds that spring. The championship also came during a period of rapid change for the Lakers' new home city, as the franchise was still building its West Coast fan base only a couple of years removed from relocating from Minneapolis, and a Finals appearance this dramatic, capped by Selvy's missed potential series-winner, helped cement Los Angeles as a genuine national basketball market rather than a curiosity.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 1962 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 1962 NBA Finals