View From the Top: How NBA Championship Banners Are Made

Put it up in the rafters! While NBA champions can only reign supreme for one season at a time, fans can enjoy the view from the top forever thanks to NBA championship banners. An NBA ritual for nearly 70 years, banner-raising has only grown in prestige as more teams battle to build the biggest display.

Banner-raising can be traced all the way back to a group’s coat of arms in the Medieval Ages, but the tradition first reached North American professional sports with baseball pennants in the late 19th century. Despite their early popularity in “pennant races” for the pre-MLB National League and American League, the ritual of raising a championship banner didn’t immediately catch on to other major sports.

After its founding in 1946, the NBA had begun to slowly adopt its own traditions, and by the time the Boston Celtics won their first championship in 1957, then-head coach Red Auerbach wanted to commemorate the achievement permanently at home in the Boston Garden. After the urging of Red’s brother Zang Aueberbach, who designed the team’s iconic Lucky the Leprechaun logo, the Celtics commissioned the local, Woburn, Massachusetts-based textile company New England Flag & Banner for “The First Banner.”

Since opening in 1892, New England Flag & Banner had already produced similar displays for the Boston Red Sox’s 1903 pennant and the Boston Bruins’ 1939 Stanley Cup banner. But with 11 Celtics championships to come within 13 seasons, the partnership between the Celtics and New England Flag & Banner would prove to be lucrative for both parties and downright transformative for the NBA and arenas across the league. As the company’s current owner Ned Flynn tells Ticketmaster, “The banners belong to the fans.”

“I think the fans feel like the franchise belongs to them, and when they look up at the rafters they think those championships belong to them,” he says. “It’s a very strong symbol.”

The first NBA championship banners manufactured by New England Flag & Banner were made of cotton and measured 8 by 12 feet. In the ’80s, the company switched to nylon and expanded the banner size to its current standard of 10 by 15 feet. Upon the Boston Celtics’ and Boston Bruins’ move to TD Garden in 1995, all previous championship banners for both teams were replaced to fit the new, larger scale. In 2008, the Celtics’ “Banner 17” became the first new NBA championship banner to be raised in TD Garden.

According to Flynn, each of their modern championship banners are made through an appliqué process rather than the standard printing method. When he bought the family-owned company in 2006, Flynn recognized the opportunity in maintaining the company’s “old school” technique, admitting he “was hoping the rest of the country would be excited that we were offering something that they could no longer get.” Although appliqué is generally more time and labor-intensive than printing, New England Flag & Banner’s unique handiwork has expanded widely over time, earning order requests from roughly half of the NBA, a majority of NHL teams and over 2,000 intercollegiate athletics programs across North America.

For a double-sided banner made through appliqué, layers of dyed DuPont Solarmax 200 Denier nylon fabric representing different design elements like letters and logo are hand-sewn together into two separate, identical banners, which are then hand-sewn to each other. As a personal touch to his hometown team, Flynn adds a lucky penny inside all of the Celtics’ championship banners; when Boston claimed its 18th NBA title in 2024, the included lucky penny was selected by being minted the same year. Overall, the process of producing a two-sided championship banner requires a 125-yard roll of nylon fabric.

Despite the more modest size of the NBA’s original championship banners, many fans still cherish their unique and influential significance. Look no further than director and New York Knicks superfan Spike Lee, who shared via Instagram in 2024 that he had acquired his home team’s original 1970 championship banner, calling it the “Holy Grail Of Da NEW YAWK KNICKERBOCKERS.”

 

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In 2024, the long-running Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry intensified as the former team claimed the top spot for most championships in the NBA. Previously tied at 17 titles each, the Celtics’ victory over the Dallas Mavericks in the 2024 NBA Finals put Boston over the Los Angeles Lakers with “Banner 18.”

However, the title for most championship banners is up for debate as many indoor arena rafters display banners for other teams sharing the venue, including several NHL franchises. With all indoor leagues included, the total banner count at TD Garden, between the Boston Celtics’ 18 and the Boston Bruins’ six, would be tied for first against Montreal’s Centre Bell, which solely hosts the 24-time Stanley Cup champions the Montreal Canadiens. Meanwhile, Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles boasts 22 championship banners between the Lakers’ 17 titles, the Los Angeles Sparks’ three and the Los Angeles Kings’ two, followed by Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena with 14 championship banners from the Detroit Pistons’ three and Detroit Red Wings’ 11.

Teams who have recently taken a championship title to the rafters include 2024 NBA champions the Boston Celtics, 2024 NHL champions the Florida Panthers and 2023 WNBA champions the Las Vegas Aces. Although the Celtics’ 18th banner marked a new championship peak for the NBA, the Aces and Panthers made history themselves; Las Vegas raised their second consecutive WNBA championship at Michelob ULTRA Arena, while the Panthers delivered their first NHL championship banner to their home Sunrise, Florida’s Amerant Bank Arena. In the WNBA, the honor of raising the 2024 championship banner will go to first-time winners the New York Liberty at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

In 2023, the NBA introduced a new banner tradition following the Los Angeles Lakers’ victory in the inaugural Emirates NBA Cup. The in-season tournament, which held its final two rounds at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, provided the Lakers with two celebrations; first on the court, and again two weeks later for an official ceremony to raise the custom banner at Crypto.com Arena. “That’s the inauguration of [the Emirates NBA Cup],” Emirates NBA Cup MVP LeBron James shared after the game. “So for our fans that didn’t get an opportunity to be in Vegas, they got an opportunity to kind of share that celebration with us tonight, share that moment. Something that will live on forever, for sure, here.”

While banner-raising ceremonies mainly honor the teams’ history and recent accomplishments, it also kicks the next season off on a high note as players and fans alike shift focus on adding the next banner ahead. After Banner 18 went up at the Celtics’ 2024 home opener, All-Star forward Jayson Tatum told the crowd at TD Garden, “I can honestly say, to the best fans in the world, let’s do it again.”

When it comes to a new title banner, each team should expect championship-caliber craftsmanship. Due to the unpredictable demand for a championship banner each season, teams will often commission a banner from a specialized textile manufacturer. In the case of New England Flag & Banner, requests don’t come in until after the postseason is over, not as official policy but because as Flynn says, “it’s bad luck. I’m not going to jinx that.” However, due to the relatively short turnaround time, construction doesn’t start until much closer to the banner-raising ceremony. For the 2024 Celtics banner, Flynn recalls starting work about a week before the team’s home season opener.

Among his 23-member staff, Flynn assigns a five-person team to each project with two sewists, two layout designers and one specialist to hand-cut letters and details into the different-colored layers of fabric. For a single-sided banner, Flynn estimates about 10 hours of non-consecutive labor, while double-sided banners require between 20 and 22 hours depending on the design complexity. Generally, the most time-consuming projects for Flynn have proven to be text-heavy banners. Regardless, he describes the feeling of watching a new banner go up as “humbling” for helping teams “memorialize their accomplishment permanently.”

Without standard design requirements from the league, NBA Championship banners are left to the discretion of the venue and teams. In lieu of formal rules, teams are able to put their own meaningful spin on the banners in their home arena. A typical championship banner design in the NBA features the simple combination of team name and championship year, though teams commonly add flourishes like the team logo or the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy.

Additionally, teams will often honor the era in which a championship was won by displaying the team’s logo at the time. In an even more rare decision, former NBA champions the Dallas Mavericks, Toronto Raptors and the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces have used their title banners to recognize players by name; the outer border of each features the name of each member of the championship squad.

Banner arrangement also invites creative designs. While the Celtics’ vertical banners are draped individually along the rafters, the Lakers’ horizontal design allows the team to stack championship banners on top of each other in rows of three. First-time champions like the Raptors and Denver Nuggets were also able to eschew the standard rectangle shape with unique, five-pointed banners.

In Flynn’s experience, designing a banner is a collaborative process with each team’s art department. Usually beginning with a sketch or idea from the team, New England Flag & Banner will often exchange artwork and advice before a final design is approved, but “ultimately [the teams] have 100% say,” Flynn says. “The customer is always right.”

Beyond championships, teams also use banners to honor former players, notable playoff performances, regular season achievements and more. Jersey retirement ceremonies have become another staple for fans in the regular season, when a team invites a former player back to send their jersey into rafters and bars any future player from using their number. Only one team has hung a jersey for a player not part of their team: the Miami Heat, who raised a jersey banner at the now-Kaseya Center for the Chicago Bulls’ Michael Jordan in 2003.

Outside of sports, many arenas that double as a concert venue use banners to commemorate memorable shows and residencies. At New York City’s Madison Square Garden, banners hang for the jam band Phish, who sold out 13 shows and played no repeat songs during their 2017 Baker’s Dozen series, and British pop singer Harry Styles, who played 15 consecutive sold-out shows for 2022’s Love on Tour. In 2024, MSG raised its latest edition of the Billy Joel banner, which had to be updated several times throughout his 10-year residency and marks the “Most Lifetime Performances by Any Artist” at the venue with 150.

 

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Not to be outdone in nearby Brooklyn, Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, features banners to recognize rapper JAY-Z for eight sold-out shows during the venue’s 2012 grand opening, late Brooklyn rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (along with the lyrics “Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn Way” from his hit single “Juicy”) and Essential Workers following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Billy Joel received another upper-level accolade at Wells Fargo Center, home of the Philadelphia 76ers, for 48 sellout shows in Philadelphia. The venue also sports banners for 56 sellout shows in the city for Bruce Springsteen and 10 sellouts by Pearl Jam. Meanwhile, Flynn’s company once crafted a special banner for Macklemore celebrating five consecutive hometown sellouts at Seattle’s now-Climate Pledge Arena, home of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm.

In the end, the arena banners you see hanging from the rafters highlight a venue’s unique history, while serving as a reminder of the collective pride amongst fans. How’s that for a win?