Only three of the original 11 teams are still in existence today. The 1946-1947 had many teams fans are familiar today, they include: The Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, and Philadelphia Warriors. Those are the 3 oldest purely NBA teams, but what often gets left out of NBA history is the history of other leagues besides the NBA, most notable the NBL.

The National Basketball League or NBL was a league born out of other Midwest leagues in the mid 1930s. The League was able to survive the Great Depression and World War II before it finally merged with the BAA to form the NBA. The NBA pretty much washed away the NBL's history and the history of the teams who joined.

Still, most NBL and BAA teams from before 1960 did not make it. Of the 18 teams who were in the NBA during the 1949-50 season, only the Celtics, Knicks, Warriors, Minneapolis Lakers, Syracuse Nationals, Rochester Royals, Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and Fort Wayne Pistons are still around today. And there you have it, the oldest 8 teams in NBA history. But the age of a team does not tell its history, and in some cases a teams history goes way-way back.

So here we go, the 10 oldest teams in the NBA.

10. The Chicago Bulls

The Bulls may not be the first team you think of when you think of old NBA teams, after all they were the first expansion team in NBA history. But the that is exactly why they make the list, they were the first expansion team.

The Bulls were founded in 1966 as Chicago was the largest city in the region without an NBA team and the league and sport were growing rapidly. Chicago was notoriously a difficult place to have a basketball team as their failings were well documented. The NBA has failed there just years prior and the Bulls would become the third NBA team in the Windy City. But the Bulls have seen success and are now a mainstay in the NBA.

9 Washington Wizards

Founded in 1961 as the Chicago Packers, the team was the NBA's first attempt at adding teams since the 1949 merger and it got off to a rocky start. Fans hated the name for starters, Chicago is Bears territory and having a team named after their NFL rival the Green Bay Packers turned fans off. The following season the name was changed to the Chicago Zephyrs, but fans support and the product were terrible. The team relocated to Baltimore the following season and became the Bullets.

The Bullets of the 1970s were one of the NBA's most successful teams making 5 NBA finals and winning the 1978 NBA title, but its been pretty rough since, as the franchise has become one of the worst in the NBA. The team changed named from Bullets to Wizards in 1997 due to the gun violence in DC.

8. New York Knicks
7. Golden State Warriors
6. Boston Celtics

Teams 6-8 are all the same age and are all founding members of the NBA. The Celtics are the leagues most successful franchise winning 18 NBA titles, and the Warriors have been able to win titles in multiple eras, and in both Philadelphia and the Bay area. The Knicks have two titles and have the reputation for being one of the NBA's greats but in reality have never lived up to that billing.

5. Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers like the above mentioned teams began play in 1946, but the Lakers are technically older because the NBL awarded the franchise to Detroit months before the creation of the BAA.

The Lakers began life as the Detroit Gems, one of the most miserable NBL teams to ever play. The Gems won just 4 of 44 games and were a poor product even by the times. The franchise was sold the following year and relocated to Minneapolis, and because of their ineptness in Detroit where awarded the first pick when the PBLA disbanded and they took George Mikan and the rest is history.

4. Atlanta Hawks

Another team who began play in 1946, but their franchise charter predates that of the Lakers by a whopping 3 hours, mostly that is because at the time the franchise was in Buffalo and manager Leo Ferris was good friends with the commissioner of the NBL.

The Buffalo Bisons lasted all of a month in Buffalo before they moved to the Tri-Cities area. They did not see much on court success in Tri-cities but they were at least not a financial failure and when an opening in Milwaukee opened up the team relocated and took the defunct Waterloo Hawks name with them to become the Milwaukee Hawks. After a stop over in St Louis for a few years the franchise relocated for good in the 1970s

3. Philadelphia 76ers

The Sixers franchise began in 1945 as the Syracuse Nationals of the NBL. There is some confusion here as the charter that became the Nationals may have originally belonged to the Cleveland White Horses, which would push the franchises origins all the way back to 1926. But the Cleveland franchise in all purposes ceased to exist and the Nationals began as a new franchise to replace them. In modern terms this is similar to the Arizona Coyotes ceasing operations and the Utah Hockey Club starting a new, which just happened in the NHL in 2024.

Another confusing aspect is that the Nationals franchise was dormant for a few months after being awarded a team. This may have something to do with the ownership trying to acquire the White Horses, but the official NBL charter giving Syracuse a team was issued in December 1945 and they began play in 1946.

2. Detroit Pistons

The Pistons began as a corporate team in 1941 for the Zollner Piston manufacturing plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The team was part of the NBL and all its early players also worked at the plant. The Pistons moved to Detroit in 1957 after Fort Wayne became too small to host an NBA team.

1. Sacramento Kings

The oldest NBA team is well over 100 years old. The Sacramento Kings began life was the Rochester Seagrams in 1923. The Seagrams where a barnstorming corporate team who played other such teams in upstate New York, New England and the Midwest. The team was highly successful and occasionally did play in local leagues, but because of its alcoholic sponsor it had a hard time finding a league to join - especially during the 1920s and prohibition; though it should be noted that Seagrams made other products as well.

The Seagrams name was dropped in the 1940s when Rochester wanted to become a dry county and eventually the name Royals was taken. Royals harkened back to the teams heritage as Seagrams was known as Royal Canadian Whiskey.

The Royals joined to NBL and were successful and eventually the NBA. They changed their name to Kings when the team moved part-time to Kansas City because of the MLB's Kansas City Royals. The team kept the Kings name when it moved to Sacramento in 1985.