The Detroit Pistons changed conferences, moving from the Midwest Division of the Western Conference to the Central Division of the Eastern Conference, where they remain today.
The Washington Bullets shifted from the Central Division to the Atlantic Division. The franchise also won its last division title until the 2016–17 season.
The NBA adopted a three-official system similar to the one used in college basketball (but not used in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament until 1979) on a one-year trial basis. The experiment was scrapped for the 1979–80 season, but returned permanently in 1988–89.
For the last time until 2018, both conference finals went to a deciding Game 7.
The Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Nets replayed, on March 23, the last 17 minutes and 50 seconds of a November 8 game that had been protested by the Nets because the referee had allowed three technical fouls (and subsequent free throws) to be called on Nets coach Kevin Loughery and player Bernard King. Before the replay took place, the 76ers and Nets had traded players and Eric Money became the only NBA player to score for both teams in the same game, having 23 points for the Nets in November and 4 for the 76ers in March.[1]
The Seattle SuperSonics won their first NBA championship in a revenge-win over the Washington Bullets. No team from the NBA's Northwest Division, to which the Sonics relocated in 2004, had won the NBA championship since until the Denver Nuggets in 2023. This ended what was the longest divisional championship drought in any of the major American sport leagues, at 44 years.
The 1979 NBA Finals would be the last until 1990 not to feature the Los Angeles Lakers or Boston Celtics. Since 1979, the Washington Bullets franchise, who appeared in four NBA finals between 1971 and 1979, have never again made the NBA Finals, or even Conference Finals. The Sonics would challenge for the NBA title again in 1996, but relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008. Therefore, the 1979 title will remain the city of Seattle's only NBA championship unless they receive another franchise.
Teams in bold advanced to the next round. The numbers to the left of each team indicate the team's seeding in its conference, and the numbers to the right indicate the number of games the team won in that round. The division champions are marked by an asterisk. Home court advantage does not necessarily belong to the higher-seeded team, but instead the team with the better regular season record; teams enjoying the home advantage are shown in italics.
