How Do NBA Playoffs Work?

The NBA playoffs is an elimination tournament held annually to determine the league champion. After the regular season, the best 16 teams from both conferences (Eastern and Western conferences, eight teams each) participate in the playoffs, which consist of three phases: quarter-final, semifinal, and final.

The two winning Eastern and Western conference teams progress to a seven-game NBA finals.

The regular season serves before the preliminaries for teams to strive and secure their spot in the playoffs. Prior to the playoffs, the main preliminary competition of the postseason is held – the NBA play-in tournament, to determine two playoff seeds. 

In the NBA play-in tournament, teams ranked 7 through 10, based on their winning percentage in the regular season, compete to establish the 7th and 8th participants in the playoff tournament. In the meantime, based on their accomplishments during the regular season, six teams of each conference advance to a four-round competition—the playoffs.

The NBA play-in tournament uses an adjusted Page playoff format. The 7th and 8th-ranked teams play each other to qualify for the first seed. Then, the 9th and 10th-ranked teams play each other to compete with the 8th-ranked team for the second playoff seed.

Since 2014, the playoffs tournament’s series (best-of-seven) format has been 2-2-1-1-1. The team with home-court advantage hosts games 1, 2, 5, and 7, and the away team hosts games 3, 4, and 6. Games 5, 6, and 7 are played only if needed.

If two teams within the same conference are tied in winning percentage during the regular season, final rankings are established after the tiebreaker criteria are applied.

The tiebreaker criteria:

• Head-to-head record
• Division record
• Conference record
• Winning percentage against playoff teams in its own conference
• Winning percentage against playoff teams in the opposing conference
• Point differential in all games.

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Featured image taken from YouTube.