Imagine how good it would feel to pluck the regulation-size basketball off the top of the Larry O'Brien trophy and get some shots up. Sure, you'd need to adjust your jump shot to account for its construction—sterling silver with a 24-karat gold vermeil—and you'd need a brave rebounder. I suppose you wouldn't be doing much "off the dribble." But when presented with such an exquisite basketball, one simply has to line up the seams and let it fly. That temptation was top of mind Monday as I examined the NBA championship trophy at the American Museum of Natural History, where it was unveiled as part of the ongoing exhibit "For the Win: Objects of Sports Excellence."
The trophy was actually bound for the Manhattan museum no matter who won it in June. As museum president Sean Decatur said at its unveiling, they had already been in talks with the NBA for months, and it was agreed that it'd be loaned out after the season. Only by happy coincidence was it won by a team that plays about 50 city blocks away, minimizing any carbon footprint. Essentially, its journey has been a little longer than that of a David Roth cardboard cutout, I thought. Unlike the Stanley Cup, the NBA commissions a new trophy each year so the winning franchise can keep theirs forever. Decatur told me that the trophy was a less demanding houseguest than the World Cup trophy, which the museum held for only six hours just before the start of the tournament, and had more extensive security and logistical needs.
As a Knicks fan, I haven't had many previous occasions to think that hard about this trophy or study its appearance. Listed at 25.5 inches and approximately 30 pounds, it is typically held by enormous people who make it look comparatively small, so I hadn't realized that the basketball was regulation size. It was only when I came within arm's length of it that I noticed, for the first time, the column supporting the ball is not just a column but is actually patterned on one side like a net. In the old version of the trophy, that pattern was more abstract, but after a 2022 redesign it has rendered the net cord much more faithfully. At the base of the trophy are two discs, with engraved names of every past champion since 1947. The top disc has 75 team names, and the bottom disc was designed to accommodate 25 more, so the NBA can make it to its centennial before refreshing the discs. From what I could tell, "SEA SUPERSONICS" eats up the most real estate of any champion, so a revival of that franchise followed by a dynasty could potentially force a trophy refresh even sooner. I'm pulling for them.
The Larry O'Brien is a handsome object. It catches crisp reflections. It has decent "aura." I see why Jalen Brunson refused to step foot near the trophy to shoot any promotional material ahead of the Finals: If I wanted to win it, I wouldn't get anywhere in its vicinity. There is at least one thin, fingernail-sized scratch on the column of this version, but at the time I thought it was overall in great shape for a piece of metal which had been drunkenly caroused with and held aloft at great heights. It was only after I left the exhibit that I realized I had seen a replica belonging to the NBA, not the actual trophy presented to the New York Knicks. A spokesperson for the museum confirmed this to me in a follow-up. It turns out that the New York Post had already covered this point, and even provided a team statement which read as if it were dictated by James Dolan:
“The trophy on display at the Museum of Natural History is not the trophy that was presented to the Knicks after winning the championship, but it is one of several replicas that are being paraded around by the NBA,” the Knicks told The Post in a statement. “The actual Larry O’Brien trophy that the Knicks received after winning the Finals will be made available for fans at The Garden at the start of the season. If you want to take a look at replica trophies, Jim Gray’s museum in Vegas has a great collection."
So the Larry O'Brien I admired at the museum wasn't the actual trophy at the Knicks' championship parade, getting hoisted up by a jubilant Karl-Anthony Towns and smooched by Jalen Brunson. Now that I think about it, was the parade Larry O'Brien even the real one? Presumably the team would not want to physically endanger their original Larry O'Brien (hereafter OLOB)? The team statement to the Post somewhat derisively refers to "several replicas"—was the team reveling with one of those at the parade? How many clones of the OLOB are out there? I doubt they let Jose Alvarado bring the OLOB to his celebration in Puerto Rico, so there's that one, too—the Alvarado LOB. Or is it the ALOB that is now held at the museum? Is the scratch Alvarado's doing? If not, why does it have a scratch at all?
At least now I understand why the trophy's security was minimal compared to the World Cup trophy, of which there is only one, with a replica awarded to the winning team. I asked an NBA spokesperson on the post-championship whereabouts of the OLOB, and will update this post if I hear back. A museum spokesperson told me that their trophy, known to me as the MLOB, will be returned to the NBA after it has finished its museum stint, which ends on Jan. 3, 2027. Per the Knicks' statement, the OLOB will be on display at the Garden by then. For a couple of months, two separate Larry O'Briens will be available for viewing in Manhattan.
After the MLOB's unveiling, TV cameras parked a few feet away and zoomed in. Still photographers got up in its grill. A content creator named Larry created content about meeting another Larry. About 30 fans were already lined up outside the exhibit before it had opened to the public. They were in for a treat: The sports exhibit is part of the Hall of Gems and Minerals, which has long been my favorite room in the museum. It should be mandatory viewing for any poet, couture designer, or architect. A replica NBA trophy's pretty cool, but the Earth has produced some stone-cold classics: the columns of tourmaline in watermelon hues, gypsum shaped like a messy pile of Pringles, and a rare chunk of Wakabayashilite that calls to mind the lustrous fur of a golden langur. True aura, eons in the making. The NBA could learn from this example. Imagine the Knicks' starters teaming up to overhead press the 1,000-pound championship stibnite, as its "hundreds of sword-like, metallic blue-gray crystals" dance terrifyingly in the light. That's a parade I would have lined up to attend.
