The National Basketball Association Conference Finals are the Eastern and Western championship series of the National Basketball Association (NBA), a major professional basketball league in North America. The NBA was founded in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The NBA adopted its current name at the start of the 1949–50 season when the BAA merged with the National Basketball League (NBL). The league currently consists of 30 teams, of which 29 are located in the United States and 1 in Canada. Each team plays 82 games in the regular season. After the regular season, eight teams from each of the league's two conferences qualify for the playoffs. At the end of the playoffs, the top two teams play each other in the Conference Finals, to determine the Conference Champions from each side, who then proceed to play in the NBA Finals. Trophies were given to each conference winner starting in 2001. In 2022, they named them the Bob Cousy Trophy for the Eastern Conference and the Oscar Robertson Trophy for the Western Conference. Also that year, the league started naming an NBA Conference Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) for each conference. Overview Initially, the BAA teams were aligned into two divisions, the Eastern Division and the Western Division. The Divisional Finals were first played in , the league's third season. The first two seasons used a playoffs format where Eastern and Western Division teams would face each other before the BAA Finals, hence there were no divisional finals. In the , the league realigned itself to three divisions, with the addition of the Central Division. However, the arrangement was only used for one season and the league went back into two divisions format in . The two divisions format remained until , when the NBA realigned itself into two conferences with two divisions each, which led to the renaming to Conference Finals. The finals was a best-of-3 series from 1949 to 1950, a best-of-5 series from 1951 to 1956, and a best-of-7 series since 1957. Currently, the Conference Finals are played in a best-of-7 series like the NBA playoffs and Finals. The two series are played in late May each year after the first and second rounds of the Playoffs and before the Finals. At the conclusion of the Conference Finals, winners are presented with a silver trophy, caps, and T-shirts, and advance to the NBA Finals. The