A twelve-team league and a new rival
The 1967-68 NBA season began with twelve teams, up from ten, after the league added the Seattle SuperSonics and the San Diego Rockets. The expansion was part of a general move by the major American sports leagues in the late 1960s to cover more cities, and it came at a time when a rival league was also forming. The season ended in the spring of 1968, which is why it is written as two years.
The Rockets did not stay in San Diego; they moved to Houston in 1971. Both new teams struggled in their early seasons, as most expansion clubs do, and neither was close to a contender in 1968.
The reigning champions
The previous season, 1966-67, had belonged to the Philadelphia 76ers, who won the title with one of the best records in the league’s history, led by Wilt Chamberlain. That had ended Boston’s run of eight consecutive championships. In 1967-68 the 76ers again finished first in the Eastern Division, with 62 wins against 20 losses, while Boston finished second with 54 wins and 28 losses. Chamberlain was named the league’s most valuable player for the third season in a row and led the league in assists as well, which was unusual for a center.
In the West, the Los Angeles Lakers, with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, were the strongest team, and the Lakers opened their new home, the Forum in Inglewood, at the end of December 1967.
The Eastern finals
The East decided the season. Philadelphia met Boston in the Eastern Division finals and, after winning three of the first four games, led the series 3 to 1. The Celtics then won three games in a row, including the deciding Game 7 in Philadelphia, to win the series four games to three. A comeback from 3-1 was unusual in the NBA at the time and the series is still remembered in Philadelphia as a collapse. The explanations offered then and since vary, and it is hard to point to a single cause. Boston’s veterans had won many close series, and Philadelphia’s team had its own injuries and fatigue.
Russell as player-coach
Bill Russell had become head coach in 1966, when Red Auerbach stepped aside, and he continued to play center. He was the first Black head coach in the league, and the first to lead a team to the title. For the Celtics he balanced two roles at once, deciding rotations and strategy while still anchoring the defence. The 1967-68 team was older than the champions of the early 1960s, and many observers had assumed that the era was ending when Philadelphia won in 1967. Russell’s coaching was often described as unfussy, and he relied on trusted veterans such as John Havlicek, Sam Jones and Bailey Howell.
It was also a notable moment beyond sport. A Black man was now responsible for the strategy, personnel and discipline of a professional team with a largely white fan base, in the same year that Carl Stokes was elected mayor of Cleveland and the civil rights movement was entering a more turbulent phase.
The Finals
Boston met the Lakers in the Finals, a pairing that had occurred several times in the 1960s, with the Celtics winning most of them. In 1968 Boston won again, four games to two, for its 10th title with Russell as a player. The Lakers’ stars could not break through, and Boston’s balance and defence again proved decisive.
The result also marked the end of an era in another sense. Several of the Celtics’ key players were ageing, and the team would win once more with Russell, in 1969, before he retired.
The ABA
The NBA was no longer the only major professional basketball league after 1967. The American Basketball Association was formed that year and played its first season in 1967-68 with eleven teams, using a red, white and blue ball and a three-point shot. It signed some players away from the NBA and competed for college stars, driving up salaries. The ABA’s first champions were the Pittsburgh Pipers, led by Connie Hawkins, who had been kept out of the NBA for years after being linked to a 1961 gambling scandal. The ABA remained a rival for nine seasons, until a 1976 merger absorbed four of its teams into the NBA.
Other notes from the season
Earl Monroe of the Baltimore Bullets was Rookie of the Year, and his flashy style was an early sign of the more individual, playground-influenced game that followed. The league was also adjusting to wider television coverage, though regular-season national broadcasts were limited. Taken as a whole, the 1967-68 season combined the end of one dynasty’s run with the start of a league war that would reshape the sport.