NBA, or the National Basketball Association, is the world’s premier professional basketball league. The NBA has 30 teams across the United States and Canada, with fifteen in each of the Eastern Conference and Western Conference. Each team plays each other twice during the regular season, and they also play each other in the playoffs. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers have won the most championships in the history of the league, with 17 each. The NBA was founded in 1946 as the Basketball Association of America, and it merged with the NBL in 1949. The NBA is headquartered in New York City.
The league has a number of rules that are designed to protect its players and ensure fair competition for fans. For example, it has a salary cap that limits the amount that each team can pay its players during a single season. This helps to prevent teams from overpaying their stars and making the league uncompetitive. The NBA also has a draft system that allows teams to select the best available player each year. The top pick is usually the most talented player, but sometimes there are trades that shift the order of the draft.
In addition to its rules, the NBA also has a number of awards and traditions that are part of the culture of the league. These include the Most Valuable Player award, which is given to the player who is deemed to be the most valuable to their team during the regular season. The NBA also has a Coach of the Year award, which is given to the coach who has made the most positive impact on his or her team during the season.
The NBA has been trying to find ways to make the marathon 82-game regular season more interesting, particularly during a time when fan attention can easily get siphoned off by NFL and college football. It went some way in this direction during the Covid-19 ’bubble’ at Disney World in 2020 by creating a ‘Play-In’ tournament that saw teams finishing 7th-10th in each of the conferences face off to decide the final two playoff spots.
This is a similar structure to the group stages of the Champions League in soccer, with each team playing three games against their opponents in their group before advancing to the knockout round. This has been a successful experiment that will be retained for the 2023 season, although some of the details will change. For example, the groups will now be larger, with 14 group games and all seven knockout-round games counting towards the regular season standings. The games will also be broadcast live on US television (ESPN and TNT) and streaming via NBA League Pass in other markets.