1965-66 NBA Season Standings

The Philadelphia 76ers, powered by Wilt Chamberlain, unseated Boston atop the Eastern Division with a 55-25 record, but the Celtics still edged out the 76ers in the Division Finals and went on to beat the Los Angeles Lakers 4-3 in a hard-fought NBA Finals for an eighth consecutive championship, extending a title streak that remains unmatched in the history of major North American professional sports. This was Red Auerbach's final season as Celtics head coach; he retired from the bench after the Finals win and named Bill Russell as his successor as player-coach, making Russell the first Black head coach of a major U.S. professional sports team, a milestone that came amid the broader civil rights struggles of the era. The Western Division remained a tight five-team race, with the Lakers finishing atop it despite a modest 45-35 record, as no Western team managed to separate itself the way Boston and Philadelphia did in the East. The league still comprised nine teams split 4 East / 5 West, on the cusp of the expansion era that would soon reshape the NBA's footprint across the country. Jerry West and Elgin Baylor once again carried Los Angeles to the championship round, only to fall just short against a Celtics team in transition.