Regular Season to Championship, How the NBA Playoffs Work

by Jacob Dunn, age 15

The biggest annual tournament in basketball is the NBA playoffs, where the best teams in the league battle it out in a quest for the title of the nation's best team. Each year, before the playoffs begin, the regular season determines the seeding for each team.

Based on their win-loss record, the top eight teams from both conferences, Eastern and Western, qualify for the playoffs. The team with the best record in each conference earns the top seed, the second-best team earns the second seed, and so on. The NBA playoffs consist of four rounds with each matchup being a best-of-seven series. The higher seeds host games one, two, five, and seven, while the lower-seeded teams host games three, four, and six. Out of the 16 teams that play each other, the team that wins four out of seven games first advances to the next round.

The first round is often referred to as the conference quarterfinals, putting the top seed versus the eighth seed, the second seed versus the seventh seed, and so forth. The first round is very suspenseful and many upsets happen in this round as lower-ranked teams can beat higher-ranked teams. After teams make it past the first round, they advance to the conference semifinals. Here, the remaining eight matchups play to make it to the conference final. The conference finals take two teams from each conference who have made it through the tournament. The winners from the two games are named their conference champions. The champions of each conference face each other in a seven-game series to see who will be declared the best team in the nation.

The playoffs are one of the most exciting sports events to watch, and now you can understand and enjoy them too.

[Sources: Stateside Sports, NBA; Fox Sports]