Play‑In starts Tuesday

The National Basketball Association regular season ends Sunday, April 12, and two days later the league starts a four-day mini-tournament that can erase six months of work for four teams in each conference. The Play-In Tournament runs April 14 through April 17, and the actual playoffs do not start until April 18. (nba.com) The setup is simple but brutal: teams that finish seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference do not get a playoff spot yet. They have to win their way in after the regular season is already over. (nba.com) The seventh-place team hosts the eighth-place team, and the winner gets the seventh seed in the playoff bracket. The ninth-place team hosts the tenth-place team, and the loser of that game is done for the year that night. (nba.com) Then the loser of the seven-versus-eight game gets one more chance at home against the winner of the nine-versus-ten game. That final game decides the eighth seed, so the seventh- and eighth-place teams get two chances while the ninth- and tenth-place teams get none. (nba.com) That is why the race is not just about getting in. Finishing seventh instead of eighth gives you home court in the first play-in game, and finishing eighth instead of ninth gives you an extra life. (nba.com) The league first used this format in the 2020-21 season after testing a version of it in the 2020 restart at Walt Disney World. In July 2022, the National Basketball Association Board of Governors voted to make the Play-In Tournament a permanent part of the postseason. (nba.com) That one change stretched the standings chart from six meaningful spots to ten. On April 9, the league was still publishing daily clinching and elimination scenarios because seeds seven through ten were still unsettled in both conferences. (nba.com) It also changed how teams treat the last week of the season. A team sitting sixth is fighting to avoid the play-in entirely, a team sitting seventh is fighting for a safety net, and a team sitting tenth is fighting to keep its season alive for at least one more game. (espn.com, nba.com) The result is that the postseason now starts in stages instead of all at once. First come four sudden-death style nights from April 14 to April 17, and only after those last four spots are decided does the 16-team playoff bracket finally lock into place on April 18. (nba.com, nba.com)