How Does the NBA Work? The League Format, Season and Playoffs Explained
The NBA is a 30-team league split into an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference of 15 teams each, and each conference is divided into three divisions of five. Every team plays an 82-game regular season from October to April, and teams are ranked one through 15 within their own conference. The top six in each conference go straight to the playoffs, seeds seven through ten fight through a play-in tournament for the last two spots, and the resulting 16 teams meet in a bracket of best-of-seven series that ends with the NBA Finals in June.
| Conference | Division | Teams |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern | Atlantic | Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, Toronto Raptors |
| Eastern | Central | Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks |
| Eastern | Southeast | Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, Washington Wizards |
| Western | Northwest | Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz |
| Western | Pacific | Golden State Warriors, LA Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings |
| Western | Southwest | Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, New Orleans Pelicans, San Antonio Spurs |
Twenty-nine of those teams are based in the United States and one, the Toronto Raptors, is in Canada. The league has had 30 franchises since the Charlotte Bobcats arrived in 2004. Owners voted in March 2026 to formally explore expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas, with 2028-29 floated as a target, but nothing has been approved and the map above is the one that matters today.
The season calendar
The NBA year runs on a predictable loop, and knowing the checkpoints makes the league far easier to follow.
- July - free agency opens, and the Summer League in Las Vegas gives rookies their first games.
- Late September and October - training camp and a short preseason.
- Mid-to-late October - opening night. The 2025-26 season tipped off on October 21, 2025.
- November and December - group play and the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup are folded into the schedule.
- February - All-Star weekend, and the trade deadline shortly before it.
- Mid-April - the regular season ends. The 2025-26 regular season finished on April 12, 2026.
- Mid-April - the play-in tournament, held over four days.
- Late April to June - four playoff rounds, finishing with the NBA Finals.
- May and June - the draft lottery, then the draft itself.
The 82-game schedule is not random. Each team plays its four division rivals four times each for 16 games, the other ten teams in its conference either four or three times for 36 games, and every team in the opposite conference twice for 30 games. That adds up to 82, split evenly into 41 home games and 41 away.
How standings and seeding work
NBA standings are kept by conference, not by division, and that is the single most misunderstood part of the league. A team is seeded one through 15 in the East or the West purely on winning percentage. Winning your division earns a banner and a line in the record book, but since 2016 it does not guarantee a top-four seed or any seed at all; a division winner with the tenth-best record in its conference is a tenth seed.
Standings pages show a games-back column, which measures the distance to first place: a team three games back would need to make up three combined wins and losses. Because the conferences are separated, a 46-36 record can be a playoff seed in one conference and a play-in seed in the other in the same year.
When two teams finish level, the NBA applies tiebreakers in a fixed order:
- Head-to-head record between the tied teams.
- Division leader status, which beats a non-division leader.
- Division record, if the tied teams are in the same division.
- Winning percentage against the rest of the conference.
- Record against playoff-eligible teams in the same conference, then in the other conference.
- Point differential, and finally a random drawing.
Ties among three or more teams reorder those steps, putting division leader status first before head-to-head is applied. If one team is eliminated from a multi-team tie, the process restarts with the remaining teams.
The play-in tournament
The play-in exists to keep mid-table teams competing into April rather than losing on purpose to improve their lottery odds. It involves the teams seeded seventh through tenth in each conference and runs over four days between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs. The 2026 edition ran from April 14 to April 17.
It works like this. The 7 seed hosts the 8 seed, and the winner is the seventh playoff seed straight away. The 9 seed hosts the 10 seed, and the loser is out. The loser of the 7 versus 8 game then hosts the winner of the 9 versus 10 game, and that final winner becomes the eighth playoff seed. The practical result is that the 7 seed gets two chances to advance while the 10 seed must win two road games in three days.
The playoffs and the Finals
Once the 16-team field is set, the bracket is fixed: 1 versus 8, 2 versus 7, 3 versus 6 and 4 versus 5 in each conference. The NBA does not reseed between rounds, so the winner of the 1 versus 8 series always meets the winner of 4 versus 5 in the conference semifinals, however the upsets fall.
Every round is a best-of-seven series, and there are four of them: the first round, the conference semifinals, the conference finals and the NBA Finals. Home court follows a 2-2-1-1-1 pattern, with the higher seed hosting games 1, 2, 5 and 7. In the Finals, home court goes to whichever conference champion had the better regular season record.
The champion receives the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy, and a Finals MVP is chosen separately. In 2026 the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs four games to one for their third title and their first since 1973, with Jalen Brunson named Finals MVP after a 45-point Game 5. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of Oklahoma City had won his second straight regular season MVP award that May. Our guide to the NBA Finals and the league's great dynasties covers the longer history of the championship round.
The draft and the lottery
The NBA restocks itself through a two-round draft each June. Order is decided in reverse standings order, but the top of the board is settled by a lottery designed to blunt the incentive to lose games.
The 14 teams that miss the playoffs enter the lottery, and ping-pong ball combinations decide only the first four picks. Since 2019 the three worst records each carry an identical 14 percent chance at the number one pick, with odds sliding down to 0.5 percent for the team with the best record among the 14. After the top four are drawn, picks 5 through 14 fall in reverse order of record, which means the worst team in the league can finish no lower than fifth.
In 2026 the Washington Wizards, who had the worst record at 17-65, won the lottery outright and took AJ Dybantsa of BYU with the first pick, the first time since 2019 that the worst team actually won the draw.
The salary cap, the tax and the aprons
The NBA uses a soft salary cap, meaning teams can exceed the cap figure through a set of exceptions rather than being hard-capped at a single number. For the 2026-27 season the cap is set at roughly 165 million dollars per team, with a minimum team salary near 148 million.
Above the cap sit three escalating lines. The luxury tax, about 200 million for 2026-27, triggers financial penalties that grow steeply the further a team goes past it. The first apron, about 209 million, and the second apron, about 222 million, add roster-building restrictions on top of the money: teams above them lose access to certain exceptions, face limits on aggregating salary in trades, and can have future draft picks frozen.
The effect on the league is visible. Contending teams increasingly have to choose between paying a third star and keeping the flexibility to fill out a roster, which is why star trade requests and sudden teardowns have become a regular feature of the calendar.
The in-season NBA Cup
The NBA Cup, launched in 2023 as the In-Season Tournament, is a competition inside the regular season. All 30 teams are drawn into six groups of five, three per conference, and each team plays the other four in its group once on designated Cup nights in November. Those group games count in the regular season standings like any other.
The six group winners plus one wild card from each conference, the best second-placed team, advance to a single-elimination bracket of quarterfinals, semifinals and a final, with the last two rounds played in Las Vegas in December. The scheduling wrinkle is that the league initially announces only 80 games per team; the Cup quarterfinals and semifinals become games 81 and 82 for the teams that reach them. The championship game is an extra 83rd game that does not count toward the regular season record, so the two finalists are the only teams whose record is drawn from a different set of games.
The New York Knicks won the 2025 NBA Cup, beating the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 in Las Vegas in December with Jalen Brunson named tournament MVP. The same two teams met in the Finals six months later.
Putting it together
Once the structure is clear, the season reads as a sequence: a long autumn and winter of 82 games that only decides seeding, a short April scramble through the play-in, then two months of best-of-seven series where coaching adjustments and depth matter far more than they do in any single regular season game. If you want to go further, read up on the arenas the league plays in, track the buildings you have visited in Stadium Chaser, browse player profiles in our athletes archive, test yourself with the basketball questions in the Q and A archive, or just play Sportz Trivia.
Frequently asked questions
How does the NBA work?
The NBA is a 30-team league split into an Eastern and a Western Conference of 15 teams each, with three divisions of five teams per conference. Every team plays 82 regular season games from October to April. The top 10 in each conference reach the postseason, where a play-in tournament sets the last two of 16 playoff seeds.
How many games are in an NBA season?
Each NBA team plays 82 regular season games, 41 at home and 41 on the road. The schedule breaks down as four games against each of the four division rivals, four or three against the other conference opponents, and two against each of the 15 teams in the opposite conference.
How does the NBA play-in tournament work?
The seventh through tenth seeds in each conference play a short bracket. The 7 seed hosts the 8 seed and the winner takes the seventh playoff spot. The 9 seed hosts the 10 seed and the loser is eliminated. The two remaining teams then meet, with the 7-8 loser hosting, for the eighth seed.
How do NBA standings work?
Teams are ranked one through 15 within their own conference by winning percentage, not by division, and seeds one through six go straight to the playoffs. Division titles are recorded but no longer guarantee a seed. Ties are broken by head-to-head record first, then division leader status, division record and conference record.
How many teams make the NBA playoffs?
Sixteen teams reach the playoff bracket, eight from each conference. Twelve of them qualify outright as the top six seeds in each conference, and the other four come out of the play-in tournament. Twenty teams in all take part in the postseason once the four play-in entrants are counted.
How does the NBA draft lottery work?
The 14 teams that miss the playoffs enter a lottery that decides only the first four picks. The three worst records each get a 14 percent chance at the top pick, with odds sliding down to 0.5 percent for the 14th team. Picks 5 through 14 then follow reverse order of regular season record.
