NBA playoff slate tonight
- Three NBA playoff games are scheduled for Thursday, April 23: Magic at Pistons, Suns at Thunder, Lakers at Rockets. (nbcsports.com) - Tipoff times listed are 7:00 p.m. ET, 8:00 p.m. ET, and 9:30 p.m. ET respectively. (nbcsports.com) - The playoffs are fully underway with all eight first‑round matchups active and broad national coverage. ( )
Three National Basketball Association playoff games are on Thursday, April 23, with first-round series shifting deeper into the opening weekend. (nba.com) The official league schedule lists New York Knicks at Atlanta Hawks at 7 p.m. Eastern, Cleveland Cavaliers at Toronto Raptors at 8 p.m. Eastern, and Denver Nuggets at Minnesota Timberwolves at 9:30 p.m. Eastern. (nba.com) Those are all Game 3s. Knicks-Hawks is tied 1-1, Cavaliers-Raptors has Cleveland up 2-0, and Nuggets-Timberwolves is tied 1-1 entering Thursday night. (nba.com) The first round began on April 18 after the SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament ran from April 14 through April 17, cutting the field from 20 teams to the final 16. (nba.com) By Thursday, all eight first-round matchups are active across the bracket, with games spread across ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock and Prime Video depending on the date and window. (sportingnews.com) Thursday’s slate follows Wednesday results that reshaped three other series: Detroit beat Orlando 98-83 to even that matchup 1-1, Oklahoma City beat Phoenix 120-107 to take a 2-0 lead, and the Los Angeles Lakers beat Houston 101-94 to go up 2-0. (nbcsports.com) That means the Magic-Pistons, Suns-Thunder and Lakers-Rockets games mentioned in some roundup listings are not on Thursday’s official NBA schedule. The league schedule places Lakers-Rockets on Friday, April 24, and Pistons-Magic plus Thunder-Suns on Saturday, April 25. (nba.com) The bracket now runs on staggered nights as the league rotates all eight series through national windows, with the NBA Finals scheduled to open on June 3. (espn.com) So the playoff watchlist for Thursday is Hawks-Knicks, Raptors-Cavaliers and Timberwolves-Nuggets — three Game 3s that will either break two 1-1 deadlocks or push Cleveland to the edge of a sweep. (nba.com)
