1963-64 NBA season

9 teams · 28 weeks · through 1964-04-26 · Elo from the project workbook

Boston Celtics won the title. They also finished top rated, at 1651.

The race

Elo rating by week. Higher is stronger; 1500 is average.

How this is measured

Elo moves after every game by how surprising the result was and by how big the margin was, damped so a blowout by a heavy favourite counts for less than the same blowout by an underdog. One pool per season, so the ratings are comparable across the whole league but not across eras.

Week 0 is the preseason seed, carried over from the previous season and adjusted by hand for the roster as it stands. It is an input to the season, not a result of it.

CelticsRoyalsWarriorsHawks9 of 9 shown · tap or drag any point for that week · tap a line to lock it

Elo power rankings, 1963-64

Every club's rating after week 28, updated each morning, and what the week did to it.

How this is measured
Elo moves after every game by the margin and by how surprising the result was, so this is a running answer to “how good is this team right now” rather than a table of who has won most. 1500 is the league average by construction. It is the same rating that runs the season pages back to 1946-47, so this season and any other are on one scale. Movement is against the previous rated week; a club that has not played yet carries its seed and shows none.

Full detail, week by week, on the 1963-64 season page · every season since 1946-47 in the season archive.

Final standings, Sun, 26 April 1964

full season

1963-64 standings

Where every team stood on the date set above.

How this is measured

Three records, because they are three different things. Regular season is the 82-game year and is what the seeding comes from. Playoffs is the postseason run, blank for a team that did not make it, which is not the same as 0-0. Total is the two added together. The Elo column keeps moving through the postseason, so a team can climb after its regular season has finished. The NBA Cup final counts toward neither the regular season nor the playoffs officially; from its date it is carried in the Playoffs column here, so the two finalists read one game more than the official postseason record.

GB div is games behind the division leader on the date shown (the conference leader before divisions). GB playoff is games behind the last place that keeps a season going in the conference: from 2021 that is 10th, the last play-in place, and a team in the play-in shows how far it sits off 6th. It follows the seed column, so it starts when the seeds do.

Final standings · Sun, 26 April 1964

1
59-21 +8-2 · Eastern · seed 1 · leads
1651
+18 yr
2
Cincinnati RoyalsConf. Finals
55-25 +4-6 · Eastern · seed 2 · 4 GB
1593
+53 yr
3
48-32 +5-7 · Western · seed 1 · leads
1583
+121 yr
4
St. Louis HawksConf. Finals
46-34 +6-6 · Western · seed 2 · 2 GB
1542
+12 yr
5
42-38 +2-3 · Western · seed 3 · 6 GB
1500
-57 yr
6
34-46 +2-3 · Eastern · seed 3 · 25 GB
1455
-101 yr
7
31-49 · Western · 17 GB · 11 to playoff
1414
+55 yr
8
23-57 · Western · 25 GB · 19 to playoff
1358
-72 yr
9
22-58 · Eastern · 37 GB · 12 to playoff
1357
+13 yr

1963-64 postseason

Every series, round by round, with the seeds that met.

How this is measured

Rounds run left to right in the order they were played. The field, the number of rounds and the series length have all changed repeatedly, so the shape here is whatever that season actually had rather than a modern bracket imposed on it. From 2020 the play-in sits below the bracket: those games decided who entered, so a team beaten there did not have a playoff run.

Celtics won the 1964 title.

The honours

Who won what, and who was picked.

How this is measured

Every other section on this page is a club. These are the people: the individual awards, the All-NBA teams and the All-Star selections, all as the workbook records them. A player’s All-Star entry carries which appearance it was for them, so a seventh selection reads differently from a first.

Awards

All-NBA

1st Team All NBA
2nd Team All NBA

All-Star game

Boston Garden, Boston · MVP Oscar Robertson

Oscar RobertsonMVPRoyals · #4
Bill RussellCeltics · #7
Chet Walker76ers · #1
Hal Greer76ers · #4
Jerry LucasRoyals · #1
Len ChappellKnicks · #1
Sam JonesCeltics · #2
Tom GolaKnicks · #5
Show all 20 selections
Tom HeinsohnCeltics · #5
Wayne EmbryRoyals · #4
Bailey HowellPistons · #4
Bob PettitHawks · #10
Elgin BaylorLakers · #6
Guy RodgersWarriors · #2
Jerry WestLakers · #4
Lenny WilkensHawks · #2
Terry DischingerBullets · #2
Walt BellamyBullets · #3
Wilt ChamberlainWarriors · #5

The best games

The 20 highest-rated games of the season, best first.

How this is measured

Game Score is a composite rating of how good a game was to watch, built from how close it finished, how much the result went against the odds, how far the ratings moved, what was at stake and how highly rated both sides were. It is roughly zero-centred, so an average game sits near zero and anything past two is rare. It is the same metric the all-time and by-decade boards use, so a game keeps the same score wherever it appears.

1
26 Apr 64 · NBA Finals
105-99
1.79
2
24 Apr 64 · NBA Finals
98-95
1.75
3
16 Apr 64 · Conf. Finals
105-95
1.46
4
7 Apr 64 · Conf. Finals
102-93
1.45
5
8 Apr 64 · Conf. Finals
111-109
1.45
6
1 Apr 64 · Conf. Finals
116-111
1.41
7
5 Apr 64 · Conf. Finals
113-109
1.33
8
119-117OT
1.24
9
18 Apr 64 · NBA Finals
108-96
1.18
10
29 Mar 64 · Semifinals
130-124
1.18

Sources

Weekly Elo ratings and records are maintained in the project's NBA workbook and refreshed when it is updated. Season results and honours come from the same workbook. Basketball-Reference, 1963-64.