Oldest NBA Teams: A History of the League's Founding Franchises

The Detroit Pistons existed as an industrial-league team eight years before the NBA was even a name on paper. That’s the kind of detail that gets lost when people assume the league’s history starts in 1949 — several current franchises were already playing games, in different cities and under different names, before that merger ever happened.

The Path to the Modern NBA

The US had multiple competing pro basketball leagues through the 1940s. The BAA, founded in 1946 by arena owners looking to fill empty dates on the calendar, eventually absorbed the National Basketball League, which had more of the actual playing talent. What survived that combination became the NBA. Knowing that backstory matters if you want to know which teams can genuinely claim to be the oldest.

Oldest NBA Franchises by Origin

Franchise	Current Name	Founded	Original City
Atlanta Hawks	Atlanta Hawks	1946	Buffalo (as Bisons / Tri-Cities / Milwaukee / St. Louis)
Boston Celtics	Boston Celtics	1946	Boston
New York Knicks	New York Knicks	1946	New York
Golden State Warriors	Golden State Warriors	1946	Philadelphia (as Warriors)
Sacramento Kings	Sacramento Kings	1945	Rochester (as Royals)
Philadelphia 76ers	Philadelphia 76ers	1946	Syracuse (as Nationals)
Detroit Pistons	Detroit Pistons	1941	Fort Wayne (as Zollner Pistons)

Note: The Detroit Pistons have the deepest roots, originating as an industrial-league team in 1941 before joining professional leagues. The franchise is often cited as one of the oldest continuously operating professional basketball teams.

The Boston Celtics: Oldest BAA Survivor

The Celtics have run continuously since their 1946 founding in the BAA, through every era of the NBA that followed. They’ve collected more championship banners than any other franchise, which is why their longevity is usually the yardstick everyone else gets measured against.

Franchise Relocations and Their Impact on History

Plenty of the oldest franchises didn’t stay put. The Hawks moved from Buffalo through the Midwest before landing in Atlanta. The Warriors went from Philadelphia to San Francisco to Oakland and back to San Francisco. The Kings traveled the furthest: Rochester, then Cincinnati, then Kansas City, then Sacramento.

Those moves complicate what “oldest” even means, since it’s the legal and organizational thread that counts, not the city on the jersey. By that standard, every team listed above has a real claim to being part of the league’s founding generation.

Why Franchise Age Matters

Old franchises carry the retired numbers, the records, and the institutional memory of nearly eighty years of professional basketball. Every player who’s worn a Celtics or Knicks jersey since the 1940s adds to what that uniform means today, and fans who’ve followed the same team across generations feel that continuity directly.