Play‑In Starts April 14

The National Basketball Association regular season ends Sunday, April 12, with the Play-In Tournament opening two days later on Tuesday, April 14. (nba.com) The league’s format puts the teams that finish seventh through 10th in each conference into a four-team mini-bracket for the last two playoff spots. The seventh-place team hosts the eighth-place team for the No. 7 seed, and the ninth-place team hosts the 10th-place team with the winner advancing to one more elimination game. (nba.com) That final game matches the loser of the 7-versus-8 game against the winner of the 9-versus-10 game for the No. 8 seed. The 2026 Play-In runs from April 14 through April 17, and the first round of the playoffs starts Saturday, April 18. (nba.com) In the Western Conference, Phoenix had already locked in the No. 7 spot entering Sunday, while the Los Angeles Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers were still sorting out the No. 8 and No. 9 lines. Golden State sat in 10th in the latest official bracket posted by the league on Sunday morning. (nba.com) In the Eastern Conference, Orlando and Philadelphia were in the two top Play-In positions in the league’s Sunday update, with Charlotte in ninth and Miami in 10th. The same update showed Detroit, Boston, New York and Cleveland already placed in the top four playoff slots in the East. (nba.com) The standings were still moving on the final day because several seeds outside the conference leaders had not been clinched when Sunday began. The National Basketball Association’s playoff picture page said seeding positions would continue to update nightly as the last regular-season games finished. (nba.com) This system has been part of the postseason since the league expanded the Play-In during the coronavirus-shortened 2019-20 season. It turns the gap between the regular season and the playoffs into a set of single-game matchups instead of giving the seventh and eighth teams automatic berths. (nba.com) The 2026 schedule also changes where fans will watch those games. The league’s official postseason schedule says all Play-In games from April 14 through April 17 will air exclusively on Prime Video. (nba.com) By Friday night, April 17, all 16 playoff teams will be set. Twenty-four hours later, the full postseason bracket starts, and the scramble that began on the season’s last day becomes a standard best-of-seven chase for the title. (nba.com)