NBA Season

The regular season consists of 82 games, 41 home games and 41 away games. See Sports-at-a-Glance for the season timeline.

NBA Post-Season (Playoffs and Championship)

When the regular season ends in April, eight teams in the Eastern Conference and eight teams in the Western Conference qualify for the playoffs and are seeded one to eight. The team that has the best record in each of the three divisions in the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference is declared division champion. The three champions, and the one other team in the conference with the best record, are seeded 1 through 4 based on their win/loss records during the regular season. This guarantees that the division champions will be no lower than fourth seed, and also ensures that the two teams with the best record in each Conference are ranked as the top two. Of the remaining eleven teams, the four with the best records are seeded fifth through eighth based on their records. In the event two or more have tied records, a series of tiebreakers are applied to determine which team receives the higher seeding. The seedings are used to create a bracket that determines the team match-ups throughout the playoffs.

- The first round of the playoffs, or Conference Quarterfinals, consists of four match-ups in each Conference based on the seedings (1-8, 2-7, 3-6, and 4-5).

- The four winners advance to the second round, or Conference Semifinals, with match-ups between the winners.

- The two winners in the Eastern Conference and the West Conference advance to the third round, or Conference Finals.

- The NBA Finals between the final two teams is played in a 2-3-2 format, meaning the team with home-court advantage hosts games 1, 2, 6 and 7, and their opponent hosts games 3, 4 and 5. The home-court advantage is determined in both rounds by win/loss record during the regular season regardless of seeding.

NBA All-Star Game

The NBA All-Star Game is played at midseason in February. The game matches the best players in the Eastern Conference with the best players in the Western Conference. The All-Star Game players are currently chosen in two ways. The first is via fan ballot, with the leading vote recipients at each position starting the game. The second is a vote among the head coaches from each team’s Conference for the reserves. Coaches are not allowed to vote for their own players. If a player is injured and cannot participate, the NBA Commissioner will select a replacement.

NBA Draft

The NBA Draft is an annual event held in New York City in June in which the thirty teams from the National Basketball Association (NBA) can select players who wish to join the league. The 14 teams that did not quality for the playoffs in the previous season participate in a lottery process to determine the draft order, and the lottery winner wins the first selection in the draft. The lottery is weighted so that the team with the worst record has the best chance of obtaining higher draft picks in the first round; the lottery does not determine the draft order in subsequent rounds of the draft. The drafted players are primarily amateur college basketball players. In recent drafts a higher number of international and high school players have been drafted, and special rules apply to these two categories of players.

NBA Hall of Fame

The NBA Hall of Fame is located in Springfield, Massachusetts. It honors exceptional basketball players, coaches, referees, executives, and other major contributors to the game. Named after basketball’s inventor James Naismith, its mission is to preserve and promote basketball at all levels and serve as the ultimate library of the sport’s history. The NBA Hall of Fame employs four screening committees to identify prospective nominees: one each for American candidates, female candidates, international candidates, and veterans’ candidates. To be considered for induction by a screening committee, nominees must be fully retired for at least five years. There is no years of service requirement applied to those who have made a “significant contribution to the game of basketball.” Sportswriters and commentators are elected as full-fledged members, in contrast to other sports that place them in a separate wing.

NBA Major Annual Awards

Currently awarded by the NBA and by designated media organizations:

NBA Players Association

The National Basketball Players Association, or NBPA, is the labor union of players in the National Basketball Association. The Executive Director is Billy Hunter, and his office is in New York City.

NBA Commissioner

The current NBA Commissioner is David Stern, and his office is in New York City.

NBA Development League

The NBA Development League is the National Basketball Association’s official minor league basketball organization. For the 2010–11 season, the league consists of 16 teams. Approximately one-quarter of NBA players spend time in the Development League.

Other Basketball Leagues

The Federation Internationale de Basketball (FIBA) is an international basketball league. The Federation holds the FIBA World Basketball Tournament for men’s national teams every four years. Twenty-four national teams compete in the tournament. The World Championship gold medal is considered by many to be just as prestigious as the Olympic Basketball Tournament gold medal. The champion team wins the Naismith Trophy, which was first awarded in the 1967 tournament. The FIBA tournament structure is similar, but not identical, to that of the FIFA World Cup (soccer); both of these international competitions have been played in the same year since 1970. The abbreviation “FIBA” derives from the French “Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur.” The word ‘Amateur’ was dropped in 1986 after the distinction between Amateurs and Professionals was eliminated. For reasons of tradition, the ‘A’ in FIBA was left in place.

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