• The
Minnesota Timberwolves and the
Orlando Magic entered the NBA as the league's 26th and 27th franchises. The Timberwolves played their preseason schedule at the
Met Center in the Minneapolis suburb of
Bloomington home of the
NHL's
Minnesota North Stars. They played their regular season schedule at the
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, former home of the
NFL's
Minnesota Vikings and
MLB's
Minnesota Twins. They would move to smaller-capacity
Target Center for the
1990–91 season. The Magic would play at
Orlando Arena (later known as TD Waterhouse Centre and Amway Arena) for the next 21 years. • The
NBA All-Star Weekend was in
Miami Arena in
Miami. In the
1990 NBA All-Star Game, the East defeated the West 130–113.
Magic Johnson of the
Los Angeles Lakers took home the game's MVP award, becoming the third player in history to win the award in a losing effort. • The
Charlotte Hornets were aligned in the Midwest Division in the Western Conference. Charlotte would be aligned in the Central Division for good starting the next year. The league had placed the four new teams in different divisions to spread them out over their first few seasons. • After seventeen seasons as the
broadcast television home for NBA basketball,
CBS Sports aired its final NBA broadcast in Game 5 of the Finals from Portland.
NBC Sports would begin
a twelve-season run as the league's new broadcast partner beginning the next season. • This was also the first season that
Turner Sports aired games on its, at the time, new cable outlet
Turner Network Television; this began a long relationship between TNT and the NBA that would run until the end of the 2024–25 season. • The NBA adopted the FIBA rule that game clocks register tenths of seconds in the final minute of a quarter. This rule turns controversial during the season because of clock calibration problems in many venues; following a January 15, 1990, game at Madison Square Garden between the New York Knicks and the Chicago Bulls where Trent Tucker sank a three-point basket with the ball put in play with one-tenth of a second remaining, the NBA mandated clock calibration and prohibited any shot made when the ball is put in play with less than three-tenths of a second remaining from counting unless it is a dunk or a tip-in. The
Trent Tucker Rule would be established the following year as a result of this incident. • All three Texas-based teams made the playoffs. This would not happen again until
2004. • This was the last of nine consecutive seasons in which the Lakers finished as the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. They would not return there until 2000. • Long-time
Boston Celtics announcer
Johnny Most retired after 37 years behind the microphone. Most was best known for his call of "
Havlicek stole the ball!!" in the
1965 Eastern Division Finals between the Celtics and the Sixers. • The
Philadelphia 76ers won their first
Atlantic Division title since the
1982–83 championship season, and the first in the post-
Julius Erving era. They lost to the Bulls in the second round of the playoffs. • Several players from
Eastern Bloc countries in Europe made an impact in the NBA.
Yugoslavia's
Vlade Divac and
Dražen Petrović, and the Soviet Union's
Šarūnas Marčiulionis and
Alexander Volkov were among the pioneering players from Eastern Europe who made the jump to the NBA. • On March 28, 1990, near the end of the 1989–90 season, the
Cleveland Cavaliers faced their new nemesis
Michael Jordan. Needing the victory to clinch a playoff berth, Jordan set his career high with 69 points in an overtime win and putting a dent in the Cavaliers' playoff plans. • The Spurs orchestrated the biggest turnaround, with rookie
David Robinson at center. After finishing 21–61 in 1988–89, they improved by 35 games and won the Midwest Division. •
Scottie Pippen becomes the first forward in NBA history to accumulate over 200 steals with over 100 blocks in a season. ==1989–90 NBA changes==