National Basketball Association · 2004-052024-25 · 30-Team Era
Near Dacoma, Oklahoma
Epicenter map
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Selected-range context
What shaped this epicenter
Established range
Detailed historical data
Epicenter trail detailsHow the point moved as each season joined the selected range
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Champions in this rangeSeason, program, historical home location, and recognition basis
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Transparent by design
How Champography calculates the point
Published dataset 2.0 · wgs84-frechet-v1
Every coordinate shown above is calculated offline, validated, and published in a content-hashed static artifact. The browser reads stored results; it does not approximate historical epicenters while you move the slider.
The epicenter
The equal-season-weight geodesic Frechet mean of the selected champion season points, computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid. Each point is the champion's verified home arena for the season they won, not a later arena the franchise moved into.
Season weighting
Every championship season contributes a total weight of exactly 1.0. The NBA has one champion per season, so no season splits its vote.
The BAA seasons
Not applicable: every season from 1946-47 onward produced a single champion. The three BAA championships (1947, 1948, 1949) are counted because the NBA recognizes them as its own.
Historical arenas
The champion's regular-season home arena is used, never a neutral Finals site. Season-specific arena chronology is applied throughout: the 1978-79 SuperSonics point is the Kingdome rather than the Seattle Center Coliseum, the 1977-78 Bullets point is the Capital Centre in Landover rather than Washington itself, and the Pistons' three titles resolve to Auburn Hills rather than Detroit. Where a franchise's Finals home games were displaced (the 1975 Warriors to the Cow Palace, the 2020 Lakers to the Florida bubble), the season's actual home arena is still the point and the displacement is recorded in claim notes.
The champion policy
The single Finals-winning franchise counts for every season. No selector reconciliation is required because the NBA has one official champion per season.
Place labels
A point inside a municipality is labelled with that municipality, decided by point-in-polygon against Census place boundaries rather than by proximity. GNIS stores a city as a single downtown point, so nearest-point resolution inside a large city found whichever neighbourhood, park or subdivision happened to sit closest, and a point in Lexington resolved to Hollywood, Kentucky. Where boundaries overlap the smallest containing place wins, as the most specific true answer. Outside every boundary the label names the nearest populated place in the official USGS GNIS extract, which includes small and unincorporated communities. GNIS also classes apartment blocks, public-housing projects and neighbourhood tracts as populated places, so where the nearest name is one the Census Bureau does not list, a Census-recognized place in the same state is preferred when it lies within twice the distance or three kilometres further; rural communities the Census Bureau also omits keep their own name rather than being replaced by a larger town miles away. Places GNIS marks as no longer existing are not published while any extant place lies within fifteen miles. GNIS covers the United States only, so a source-controlled Canadian table of 418 populated places supplies Canadian labels, compiled rather than read from an authoritative extract and accurate to about a kilometre. A county is stated only when the nearest place is within 15 km, since the county belongs to the place rather than to the point, and beyond 25 miles a label gives distance and bearing instead of saying 'near'. Boundary geometry is simplified to roughly 220 m, far below the size of any municipality.
Current verified coverage: Champion coverage spans the BAA's founding 1946-47 season through the latest completed season. Franchise relocations are modeled by season: the 1948 Baltimore Bullets are recorded as a defunct franchise unrelated to the modern Washington club, and the 1979 SuperSonics title is credited to the franchise that became the Oklahoma City Thunder while the claim notes record Seattle's retained heritage.
Complete methodologyWeighting, venue policy, locality resolution, precomputation, QA, and limitations.How the math worksWGS84 geodesic mean, range lookup, and trails.Championship erasWhy each preset begins and ends where it does.Search the champions recordInspect every claim, arena, franchise relocation, and source.