Retired jersey numbers are not one rule but three, and what each state means depends entirely on where you are standing. Number 6 is the only number in the NBA that no team can hand to anybody, and after the 2025-26 season it will be a number nobody wears at all. That is the headline, but it is not the useful part for anyone in front of a shelf. The useful part is knowing which state a given number is in, because a number that is gone in Boston can still be perfectly ordinary in Los Angeles, and that difference is what decides whether you are shopping for a current jersey or a piece of history. Almost every question about retired numbers reduces to this one distinction.
A number sits in one of three states
Retirement is a club-by-club decision with exactly one league-wide exception, so the whole topic fits into three buckets. Once you can place a number in one of them you know, before you click anything, whether to look at current stock or at throwbacks and custom work.
The middle row is far bigger than most shoppers expect. As of 2026 the Los Angeles Clippers are the only franchise in the NBA that has not retired a single player number, which is the mirror image of Boston, whose rafters hold more retired numbers than any other team in North American professional sports. Same league, same season, opposite scarcity.
What happened to number 6, step by step
On 12 August 2022 the NBA and the players' association announced that Bill Russell's number 6 would be permanently retired across every franchise. Russell had worn 6 for all thirteen of his seasons, winning eleven championships, five league MVP awards and twelve All-Star selections in that span, and he died on 31 July of the same year at the age of 88. He became the first player in NBA history to have a number retired by the league rather than by a team.
- 1One grandfathered list, twenty-five names. The players already wearing 6 when the announcement landed were allowed to keep it. LeBron James was on that list, having moved to 6 from 23 a year earlier, alongside players including Lou Williams, Quentin Grimes, Alex Caruso, Kristaps Porzingis, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Lance Stephenson.
- 2One season of commemoration. Through 2022-23 every player in the league wore a patch on the right shoulder, and every court carried a clover-shaped mark with the number 6 near the scorer's table.
- 3One public re-run in Boston. Boston had already retired 6 at the old Garden on 12 March 1972, but the ceremony was closed to the public because of Russell's difficult relationship with the press at the time. The club re-ran it openly at the FleetCenter on 26 May 1999.
- 4One last wearer. With DeAndre Jordan's Denver contract expiring, the 2025-26 season leaves Oklahoma City's Jaylin Williams as the league's only player in 6 and the last one the number will ever have.
Six numbers, and what each one costs you
This is the table to check before you decide what to search for. The last column is the part that matters commercially: a number retired by one club is still an ordinary number everywhere else, so the search term you need is usually the player and the era rather than the number itself.
Two rows in that table are worth pausing on. Kevin Garnett spent twelve seasons in Minnesota wearing 21 and arrived in Boston unable to keep it, because the Celtics had long since retired 21 for Bill Sharman; he switched to 5 and then to 2. And Jalen Williams wore 24 in college as a tribute, only to find it retired in Seattle for Spencer Haywood, so he picked 8 instead. Retired numbers reshape rosters, not just shelves.
Where numbers actually run out
Boston is the extreme case and a useful one to understand, because it shows what a deep retirement tradition does to the number pool. Twenty-three numbers hang at TD Garden, covering Hall of Famers, long-serving coaches and broadcasters alike, plus one banner that carries nothing but a nickname.
That last banner belongs to Jim Loscutoff, a seven-time champion who asked the club not to retire his 18 so that a future player could still wear it. The team honoured the request by hanging a banner reading LOSCY with no number on it, and then retired 18 a few years later for Dave Cowens anyway. Former captain Marcus Smart wanted either 3 or 33, both taken, and settled on 36.
The Bulls ceremony is the recent example and worth dating precisely: Rose's number went up on 24 January 2026 after a game against Boston. Jordan's 23 had been raised on 1 November 1994, which is also the season his famous masked return happened, during which he wore 45 for part of the year because 23 was already unavailable.
Why 0 and 00 are two different numbers
This is the most common misunderstanding in the whole subject, and it is worth settling because it changes what is possible on a team sheet. A single 0 and a double 00 are two distinct identifiers. FIBA rewrote its rules in 2014 to allow both to appear in the same lineup and the NBA adopted the same treatment, and the difference even reaches the officials: a foul by the single 0 is signalled with one circle, a foul by the 00 with two.
Charlotte had both again in 2026, with Naz Reid on 0 and Royce O'Neale on 00. Long before the rule caught up, teams treated it as a collision to be resolved by seniority. In 1996 Robert Parish joined the Bulls for his final season, and the guard already wearing 0, Randy Brown, gave it up and moved to 1 so that Parish could keep his 00.
Parish's 00 has its own origin story, and it is worth knowing because it explains why the number feels distinctive on a shirt. He has told it on a podcast more than once: his junior high team handed out numbers in order of talent, the best players picked first, and because he was the weakest player on the roster, 00 was the last jersey left. He wore it through high school, four years at Centenary College, and a 21-season career. Boston retired it on 19 January 1998.
Two routes when the number is gone
If the number you want is retired, the era route and the custom route are the two ways through. Both are stocked year round.
Collections that answer the question this page raises
Start with the complete basketball jersey index if you want the broad view, or go straight to throwback jerseys if the number belongs to a specific era, because that is where retired digits still exist in quantity. Player-led collections such as the Michael Jordan range and the Boston Celtics range show the contrast clearly: 23 is unremarkable outside Chicago and unavailable on Bulls current stock. For the heavier stitched builds where the number has to be applied rather than printed, our pro edition range goes through the construction detail, and city edition jerseys covers the modern colourways.
Our earlier guide to what every badge on a jersey means covers the other thing printed on the shoulders and chest, which is useful background if you are dating a specific season rather than just picking a team.
The practical summary is short. Check which of the three states the number is in before you start, and if it has gone league-wide, stop looking at current stock and start looking at history. Everything else on a basketball jersey is negotiable: the size, the cut, the fabric, the colourway. The number is the one field that somebody else decided for you, and sometimes that somebody is thirty-one other franchises.
- One number is retired league-wide; everything else is a team decision.
- Retirement recognises a career, not a single season.
- Retired numbers stay in production because demand tracks the era they belong to.
- A retired number on a jersey is a shorthand for a specific period of a franchise.
Retired NBA Jersey Numbers: Frequently Asked Questions
Five questions that come up the moment someone asks why a number is missing from the shelf.
Q1Why can no NBA team issue number 6 any more?
Because the league retired it across all thirty franchises in August 2022 to honour Bill Russell, who wore 6 through his entire thirteen-season career. He is the first player in NBA history to have a number retired league-wide rather than by a single club, so the restriction applies everywhere instead of only in Boston.
Q2Did anyone keep wearing number 6 after it was retired?
Yes, twenty-five players were grandfathered in when the announcement was made, which meant the players already wearing 6 at that moment were allowed to keep going. LeBron James was one of them, having switched to 6 a year earlier. As of the 2025-26 season only Oklahoma City's Jaylin Williams still has it, making him the last player in league history to wear the number.
Q3If a number is retired, can a team still hand it to a new player?
A club may not issue a retired number to anyone else, but the practice is not always absolute in the moment. Chicago retired number 1 in January 1994 while B.J. Armstrong was wearing it and allowed him to keep it until he left in 1995, which is the clearest recorded case of a grandfather clause inside a single franchise.
Q4Is 00 the same number as 0?
No, they are two separate numbers and the league now treats them that way. FIBA changed its rules in 2014 to allow a team to field both at once, and the NBA adopted the same treatment; Denver had players wearing 0 and 00 in the same lineup in 2015-16, and Charlotte did it again in 2026. Referees signal them differently, one circle for 0 and two circles for 00.
Q5How do I get a retired number on a jersey?
Through a custom or throwback route rather than a current-issue one. A retired number only exists on a shirt made for the era when the player wore it, or on a custom piece where the number is not bound by any club's retired list. Both are covered in the custom and throwback sections of the store.