Aside from the cash prizes and championship rings that its players and coaching staff will be collecting, the NBA title-winning squad will also be keeping the Larry o’Brien trophy on a permanent basis.

The hardware is named in honor of the NBA’s third commissioner after Maurice Podoloff and J. Walter Kennedy.

(The current commissioner, David J. Stern, is the fourth.)

O’Brien gained instant world recognition in the early seventies because of the infamous Watergate scandal that resulted in the downfall of an American president.

The Watergate headquarters of O’Brien, the U.S. Democratic Party chairperson at the time, was burglarized in 1972 at the height of the American presidential elections.

Although the disgraced Richard Nixon was re-elected as U.S. president, he was forced to resign from his post in August 1974 for his role in the subsequent Watergate cover-up.

After quitting politics, O’Brien joined the NBA in June 1975 as its commissioner upon the retirement of Kennedy. He served as the league’s top official until February 1984. Stern was O’Brien’s successor.

When O’Brien announced his retirement, the NBA Board of Governors voted to name the championship trophy in his honor.

The handcrafted trophy was initially called the World Championship Trophy and was launched in time for the NBA Finals between the Portland Trail Blazers and Philadelphia 76ers in 1977.

The NBA decided to create a new trophy following the absorption of the four American Basketball Association (ABA) franchises – the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs and New York (now New Jersey) Nets – into the NBA in 1976-77.

The two-foot, 20-pound trophy is finished with 22-carat gold over sterling silver and depicts a basketball in motion over a stylized segment of a hoop and a basket.

Kept by the title-winning team on a permanent basis, the O’Brien trophy is actually the second symbol of NBA supremacy.

The first was a huge punch bowl named after Walter Brown, the first owner of the Boston Celtics and one of the NBA’s founders.

It was awarded from 1964 through 1976, with every champion getting custody of the trophy for just one year.

The Walter Brown trophy is now on display at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the name of each NBA titlist is inscribed annually.

Starting this year, the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy will be known as the Bill Russell Trophy, which is named in honor of the all-time Boston Celtics great.

The 75-year-old Russell reached the NBA Finals an unprecedented 12 times during his distinguished 13-year pro career with the Celtics from 1956-57 through 1968-69.

Russell won 11 championships, the most by any player in NBA history.