NBA is the world’s premier basketball league, and it contains 30 teams, fifteen in each of the Eastern and Western conferences. All teams play each other twice during the regular season, and every team makes the playoffs at least once. The NBA Finals, a best-of-seven series between the champions of each conference, are held annually in June. The victor in the NBA Finals wins the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, and each player and major contributor on the winning team, including coaches and the general manager, receives a championship ring. The league also awards the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player award, which nearly always goes to a member of the winning team, though there have been exceptions.
The regular season runs from October through April. Each team plays 82 games, split evenly between home and away games. During the regular season, each team’s schedule is different, so that it will play some teams in its own division four times a year, and other teams in its conference either three or four times a year. In addition, each team will face some teams outside its own conference twice a year.
Each spring, a Draft Lottery is held to determine the order in which the 14 teams that did not make the playoffs will choose their picks for the NBA draft. The first three lottery balls decide the top three picks, and the remaining balls are ranked according to the teams’ finish in the regular season standings. After the top picks are selected, the teams can move up and down in the rankings with trades.
Once the playoffs begin, the top eight teams in each conference are seeded based on their records. The winners of each conference’s first round then advance to the second round, where they will meet a team from the other conference. The first team to win four games in the second round wins the series and advances to the conference finals.
The last game of each series is usually a game 7. This is the 184th time a game 7 has been played in the NBA playoffs, and it was the third straight year that both the East and West conference finals ended with a game 7, after 2015 and 2023. In the 2015 Finals, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh won the series over the Oklahoma City Thunder, averaging more than 100 points per game. The 2024 Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Clippers featured a similar scoring explosion, but the Celtics won the series in seven games. These are just two examples of the high level of play and drama that NBA fans can expect in the playoffs.