The 1973–74 NBA season was the 28th season of the National Basketball Association. The season ended with the Boston Celtics winning the NBA Championship, beating the Milwaukee Bucks 4 games to 3 in the NBA Finals. Notable occurrences The 1974 NBA All-Star Game was played at the Coliseum at Seattle Center in Seattle, with the West beating the East 134–123. Bob Lanier of the Detroit Pistons wins the game's MVP award. The Baltimore Bullets relocated to the Washington, D.C. suburb of Landover, Maryland and became the Capital Bullets. The NBA on CBS began. CBS' partnership with the NBA lasted 17 consecutive years, and ended in 1990, when NBC took over as the NBA's broadcast partner. Blocks and steals became officially recorded statistics for the first time. Elmore Smith of the Los Angeles Lakers led the league in blocks with 4.85 per game, which remains the third-highest average in league history. Bob McAdoo of the Buffalo Braves led the league in both points per game and field goal percentage, with averages of 30.6 and .547, respectively. He was the first player to do so since Wilt Chamberlain in 1965–66, and to date only one player has replicated the achievement: Shaquille O'Neal in 1999–2000. Earl Strom returns to officiating in the NBA following a four-year absence. Strom left the NBA for the American Basketball Association in 1969 over a salary dispute and officiated there for three seasons, then did not officiate at all in 1972–73. Strom will continue with the NBA through the 1989–90 season and earn enshrinement in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995. Season recap The NBA opened the year still very impressed with the New York Knicks' second-ever NBA title from a year ago. Much publicized, the team largely played this year as a victory lap, particularly after cornerstone Dave DeBusschere announced his pending retirement halfway through the season. Their opponent in three of the last four NBA Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers, also went through some key changes. Wilt Chamberlain had accepted an offer to be playing coach of the San Diego Conquistadors of the ABA. The Lakers, however, sued Chamberlain to prevent his playing in the ABA while still owing Los Angeles the option year of his contract. Chamberlain never played professional basketball again, and left most of his coaching duties in the ABA to assistant Stan Albeck, who went on to be a head