The 2026 NBA Playoffs start on April 18, 2026 and will conclude between June 11 and 20 with the highly anticipated NBA Finals. To open the first round we immediately find challenges such as Cleveland Cavaliers-Toronto Raptors, Denver Nuggets-Minnesota Timberwolves and LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers who will challenge Kevin Durant’s Houston Rockets. The path consists of four rounds – quarter-finals, semifinals and conference final – between sixteen teams, 8 from the Eastern Conference and 8 from the Western Conference. The winners of each conference final compete against the other winner in the NBA Finals to win the Larry O’brien Trophy and the ring.
A team can win more games than anyone else in an entire season, have the best offense, the best defense, the MVP (best player in the league), and not win anything. The NBA playoffs are a system designed to find the champion, but not necessarily the strongest team. It’s a structural paradox intertwined with history and a good dose of evolution of the game and the three-point shot.
The structure of the NBA playoffs: dates and scoreboard
During the regular season (the regular season), each team plays 82 games. Unlike many European championships of other sports, where points are awarded for victories or draws (which do not exist in basketball), in the NBA the ranking of each Conference (Eastern and Western) is based solely on the balance between victories and defeats. This budget is called “record”. To quickly understand the progress of a team just look at these two numbers: a legendary record like that of the Golden State Warriors of 2015-2016 can be read 73-9 (73 wins and only 9 losses in 82 games). On the contrary, a team in deep crisis will end the year with a negative record, for example 21-61 (21 victories and 61 defeats).
At the end of the regular season, 16 teams qualify for the final stage (8 for the East and 8 for the West). The top six teams in each conference – i.e. those with the best record – enter directly into the playoffs, while the teams placed in seventh to tenth place must first survive the playoffs. Play-In Tournamentintroduced on an experimental basis in 2020 and become permanent in 2022.
The Play-In is structured as an asymmetric elimination mini-tournament. The seventh and eighth ranked teams compete in a one-off race, and whoever wins gets 7th place in the rankings (seed in English). However, whoever loses has a second chance and faces the winner of the challenge between 9th and 10th place. Whoever passes this second match becomes the 8th seed. Whoever loses is eliminated permanently. Since its introduction in the current format in 2021, the seventh seed has always qualified for the playoffs by exiting the Play-In, while the tenth seed has only done so once – the Miami Heat in 2025.
Once the scoreboard is complete, the actual playoffs begin, divided into four consecutive rounds. First Round, Conference Semifinals, Conference Finals and the final stage, the highly anticipated NBA Finals (which will kick off on June 4, 2026, with a possible Game 7 scheduled for June 20), where the champion of the East and West will clash for the ring. Each round is played with the best of 7 matches. It means that to eliminate their opponents a team must win 4 matches (a series, so to speak, can end 4-0, 4-1, 4-2 or 4-3). Doing the math, you need to lift the NBA champion trophy 16 total victories. In this long journey, the record of regular season becomes fundamental again: the team with the highest seed has the home advantage, meaning that out of a maximum of 7 games, it will play 4 at home and 3 away.
Only one team triumphs
The best-of-7 format is designed to reduce the influence of chance compared to a single match: with more matches between the same teams, the more structured formation should theoretically prevail, giving due credit to those who have played a high-level season.
Among basketball fans we often hear a cliché: “the regular season counts for nothing, the real NBA begins in the playoffs“. From the point of view of play, intensity and competitive spirit it is difficult to argue but in reality, the data shows that finishing among the first places in the standings and playing an excellent regular season is statistically important to guarantee the final victory and the field factor. In the entire history of the league, in fact, the two best teams of the season (the number 1 seed in the Eastern and Western Conferences) have taken home the title in 67.1% of cases53 wins out of 79 finishes. If we widen the circle to include the top three seeds, we arrive at a 97.5% of all NBA champions. In practice, a team with a finish equal to or lower than fourth has won the ring only twice in all of history: the Boston Celtics in 1969 and the Houston Rockets in 1995.
However, if the top teams won every single year (East 1st seed and West 1st seed), the playoffs would just be a boring formality. The reality of the field is decidedly more complicated, and this is precisely what makes it post-season NBA one of the most followed and exciting competitions in the world. The twists (called upset in jargon) exist and occur every year. In 2023, for example, the Miami Heat reached the Finals starting from 8th position, beating battleships like Milwaukee and Boston along the way. In 2024, the Indiana Pacers (number 6 seed) eliminated the Milwaukee Bucks (1) and the New York Knicks (2) to reach the Eastern Conference Finals. Without forgetting 2007, when the eighth seed Golden State Warriors took out the Dallas Mavericks, first in the standings and absolute favorites for the title, in one of the most iconic upsets of the modern era.
Because upsets are more frequent than they should be
If the strongest teams almost always win on a statistical level but occasionally lose unexpectedly, there is a structural reason that can be identified in three main points.
The first is the three-point shot. The exponential increase in long-range attempts – one of the most radical transformations of the last twenty years of basketball – has increased the score-by-score variance. As several analytical studies report, as teams increase their reliance on three-point shots, scoring volatility and the unpredictability of game outcomes have increased. An underdog team that warms up from three on a good evening can beat anyone. A quarter unfavorable to the shot can instead undermine the stronger team.
The second is the injury factor. In the playoffs the pace of play intensifies, the games follow each other 48 hours apart, and the teams that played more minutes in the regular season often arrive at the decisive rounds with tired or bruised players. Losing just one All-Star in a short series can completely upend the odds – something that rarely happens in 82 games. The textbook example dates back to the 2019 Finals when the Golden State Warriors of Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson were decimated by a series of injuries (above all, Durant’s ruptured achilles tendon). A true team collapse that paved the way for Kawhi Leonard and his Toronto Raptors, protagonists of one of the most unexpected triumphs in the history of basketball.
The third is matchup specificity. In the playoffs, each team studies their opponent for weeks, and certain teams built in a complementary way can beat stronger teams on paper simply thanks to a favorable tactical structure. It’s basketball played as if it were a game of chess. The result is a fascinating and imperfect system, one that rewards systematic superiority but leaves enough room for chaos to make each year unpredictable.
