NBA playoffs kick off
The NBA playoffs begin Saturday, April 18, and the league released a full first‑round schedule as the traditional 16‑team bracket tips off. (CBS Sports: first‑round dates through May 3; Yahoo flagged a marquee LeBron James vs. Kevin Durant first‑round meeting for the first time since 2018.) ( )
The National Basketball Association playoffs open Saturday, April 18, with eight best-of-seven first-round series and a schedule that can run through May 3. (nba.com, cbssports.com) The league’s official calendar lists four Game 1s on Saturday: Cavaliers vs. Raptors at 1 p.m. Eastern, Nuggets vs. Timberwolves at 3:30 p.m., Knicks vs. Hawks at 6 p.m., and Lakers vs. Rockets at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. (nba.com, nba.com) Four more Game 1s are set for Sunday, April 19, including the Celtics, Pistons, Thunder and Spurs opening their series against play-in winners or Friday’s final No. 8 seeds. The SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament ran April 14-17 to fill the last two spots in each conference bracket. (nba.com, nba.com, nba.com) The format is the league’s standard 16-team bracket: eight teams from the Eastern Conference and eight from the Western Conference, with first-round pairings set by seeding. Higher seeds host Games 1, 2, 5 and 7. (nba.com, sports.yahoo.com) This year’s opening weekend starts with defending champion Oklahoma City holding the West’s No. 1 seed, while Boston enters as the East’s No. 2 seed and Detroit sits atop the East bracket. The bracket on NBA.com showed Detroit, Boston, New York and Cleveland as the top four East seeds, and Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Denver and Los Angeles as the top four in the West on Friday. (nba.com, nba.com) One first-round matchup carries extra star power: the No. 4 Lakers against the No. 5 Rockets, a series that puts LeBron James and Kevin Durant on opposite sides of a playoff matchup for the first time since the 2018 Finals. Yahoo Sports highlighted that pairing in its first-round preview, and NBA.com lists Game 1 for Saturday night in Los Angeles. (sports.yahoo.com, nba.com) The first round stretches over at least two weeks because every series is scheduled as if it could go the distance. CBS Sports reported the round could extend to Sunday, May 3, before the conference semifinals begin. (cbssports.com) After that, the calendar narrows quickly: the conference finals are scheduled to start in mid-May, and Game 1 of the NBA Finals is set for June 3. Saturday is the point when the bracket stops shifting and every series starts counting. (nba.com, sportingnews.com)
