This list ranks all 30 current NBA home arenas by the year the building opened, from the league’s oldest surviving venue down to its newest. The number is simple: it’s the year construction finished on the arena a team plays in today, not the year the franchise itself was founded or the year a naming-rights sponsor signed on.
The headline is the gap at the top. Madison Square Garden opened in 1968 and still hosts the Knicks today, putting it 22 years ahead of the next-oldest building on the list, Minnesota’s Target Center (1990). No other arena in the four major U.S. pro leagues has stayed in continuous use across that many decades of renovations, rule changes, and ownership eras.
Madison Square Garden’s Two-Decade Head Start
Madison Square Garden sits alone at the top of this list, and not by a small margin. It opened in 1968 above Penn Station in Manhattan, making it the current-generation Garden — the fourth building in the city to carry that name. It has been renovated repeatedly over the decades, most extensively in a multi-year transformation completed earlier this decade, but the arena itself was never torn down and rebuilt, which is why 1968 still counts as its opening year.
That kind of longevity is rare in modern pro sports, where arenas are typically replaced after 20 to 30 years to keep up with premium seating, concourse space, and technology demands. MSG has absorbed those upgrades inside its original bones instead, which is part of why it’s still routinely called the world’s most famous arena rather than a dated one.
| # | Venue | Team | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madison Square Garden | New York Knicks | 1968 |
| 2 | Target Center | Minnesota Timberwolves | 1990 |
| 3 | Delta Center | Utah Jazz | 1991 |
| 4 | Mortgage Matchup Center | Phoenix Suns | 1992 |
| 5 | Rocket Arena | Cleveland Cavaliers | 1994 |
| 6 | United Center | Chicago Bulls | 1994 |
| 7 | Moda Center | Portland Trail Blazers | 1995 |
| 8 | TD Garden | Boston Celtics | 1995 |
| 9 | Xfinity Mobile Arena* | Philadelphia 76ers | 1996 |
| 10 | Capital One Arena | Washington Wizards | 1997 |
| 11 | Ball Arena | Denver Nuggets | 1999 |
| 12 | Crypto.com Arena | Los Angeles Lakers | 1999 |
| 13 | Gainbridge Fieldhouse | Indiana Pacers | 1999 |
| 14 | Kaseya Center | Miami Heat | 1999 |
| 15 | Scotiabank Arena | Toronto Raptors | 1999 |
| 16 | Smoothie King Center | New Orleans Pelicans | 1999 |
| 17 | State Farm Arena | Atlanta Hawks | 1999 |
| 18 | American Airlines Center | Dallas Mavericks | 2001 |
| 19 | Frost Bank Center* | San Antonio Spurs | 2002 |
| 20 | Paycom Center | Oklahoma City Thunder | 2002 |
| 21 | Toyota Center | Houston Rockets | 2003 |
| 22 | FedExForum | Memphis Grizzlies | 2004 |
| 23 | Spectrum Center | Charlotte Hornets | 2005 |
| 24 | Kia Center | Orlando Magic | 2010 |
| 25 | Barclays Center | Brooklyn Nets | 2012 |
| 26 | Golden 1 Center | Sacramento Kings | 2016 |
| 27 | Little Caesars Arena | Detroit Pistons | 2017 |
| 28 | Fiserv Forum | Milwaukee Bucks | 2018 |
| 29 | Chase Center | Golden State Warriors | 2019 |
| 30 | Intuit Dome | LA Clippers | 2024 |
* An announced or under-construction replacement is on the way — see Replacement Watch below.
Replacement Watch: What’s Next
Xfinity Mobile Arena*: The 76ers and Comcast Spectacor plan a new arena in the South Philadelphia sports complex, targeted for the early 2030s.
Frost Bank Center*: The Spurs are pursuing a new downtown San Antonio arena as part of the Project Marvel district plan.
How ‘Oldest’ Is Measured Here
The year attached to each arena on this list is the year the physical building opened its doors, regardless of how many times it’s been renamed by a new sponsor or how many locker rooms and suites have been added since. A building’s age is separate from its team’s history — a franchise can be decades older than the arena it currently calls home if it has moved venues along the way.
For fans deciding where to catch a game, the age of the building shapes the experience more than people expect. Older arenas tend to have steeper, tighter seating bowls built closer to the floor, which can make for a louder, more compressed atmosphere. Newer arenas trade some of that intimacy for wider concourses, more premium clubs, and modern sightlines — neither is objectively better, but they feel different in person.
The 1999 Cluster and What It Tells You
Look at the middle of the list and one thing jumps out: seven of the 30 arenas opened in the single year 1999, part of a wave of arena construction that swept the NBA through the mid-to-late 1990s as teams left older multipurpose buildings for basketball-first venues with more revenue-generating suites and clubs. That cluster is why the list bunches up in the late ’90s after Madison Square Garden’s long solo run at the top. At the other end, Intuit Dome (2024) is the newest arena in the league by several years, giving the full list a span of more than half a century between its oldest and newest buildings.
Explore more: See more record-setting venue rankings on ThrillZing.
Oldest NBA Arenas FAQs
What is the oldest arena in the NBA?
Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knicks, is the oldest active NBA arena. The current building opened in 1968 and remains in continuous use today.
How old is Madison Square Garden?
Madison Square Garden opened in 1968, making it more than 55 years old as of the current NBA season — over two decades older than any other arena still hosting a team.
Which NBA arenas opened in 1999?
Seven arenas on this list opened in 1999: the homes of the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, New Orleans Pelicans, and Atlanta Hawks, part of a league-wide arena-building wave in the late 1990s.
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Photo: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.