The NBA Finals since 2011, in five strips.

Every strip on this page is a real NBA Playoffs strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about NBA Playoffs.

How to read the strips

Each strip is one game, tip-off on the left and the final buzzer on the right, one band per minute. A band is purple when the away team led at the end of that minute, gold when the home team led, and pale when it was close or tied. The deeper the colour, the bigger the lead, up to full colour at 18 points; an overtime adds five bands.

A halftime lead usually holds

Finals games are less random than they feel. The team ahead after three quarters won 70 of the 88 games that were not level at that point. Home court helps less than people expect: the home team won 51 of the 91, a little over half. And nine winners led at every single minute mark, start to finish.

So the strips worth remembering are the ones that break the pattern. Here are five, one or two from each era.

2011–2014: the Heat years

Miami reached four straight Finals. The third, against San Antonio in 2013, was the closest of them: the Spurs outscored the Heat over the seven games, 684 to 679, and still lost. Game 6 is why. San Antonio led by 10 after three quarters and was still ahead in the final minute of regulation.

Tip-offFinal Buzzer

• Away Leading
• Tied
• Home Leading

2015–2019: Warriors and Cavaliers

Golden State and Cleveland met four years running. The second meeting produced the most back-and-forth strip in the data, and the third and fourth were mostly Golden State. The 2016 Game 7 had at least 12 lead changes at minute marks, more than any other Finals game since 2011, and the score was within 3 points at 38 of its 48 minute marks.

• 2016 G7 · CLE 93–89
• 2018 G4 · GSW 108–85

Tip-offFinal Buzzer

• Away Leading
• Tied
• Home Leading

The run ended with Toronto, which won its first title in 2019 by taking Game 6 in Oakland. The game-by-game story of the most famous of these series is in the 2016 Finals game by game.

2020–2026: a new champion every year

Seven Finals, seven different champions. The strips of this era hold the extremes. In Game 4 of 2024, Dallas led Boston by 45 at one minute mark and won by 38, the biggest final margin of any Finals game since 2011; Boston still won the series 4–1. Two years later the Knicks came back from 29 down in Game 4, the largest deficit any Finals winner overcame in this data, 13 points more than the next.

• 2024 G4 · DAL 122–84
• 2026 G4 · NYK 107–106

Tip-offFinal Buzzer

• Away Leading
• Tied
• Home Leading

Between them sits the 2025 Finals, which went to seven; every Finals Game 7 puts it beside 2013 and 2016, and LeBron James in the Finals follows the player who appears in nine of these sixteen.

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