NBA regular season finale
The NBA regular season ended Sunday, April 12, with every team active and a host of games still deciding playoff seeds and play‑in berths. (northjersey.com) NBC Sports flagged that nine of the 15 final‑day games carried playoff‑seeding implications, and the league’s calendar now has the play‑in tournament set for April 14–17 with the playoffs beginning April 18. (nbcsports.com) One settled fact entering the postseason: Houston is locked into the No. 5 seed, though the No. 4 slot and many matchups remained unsettled on Sunday. (si.com)
The National Basketball Association regular season ends Sunday, April 12, with all 30 teams playing and multiple playoff seeds still unsettled. (nba.com) The league entered the day with the SoFi National Basketball Association Play-In Tournament scheduled for April 14 through April 17 and the full playoffs set to open April 18. National Basketball Association.com said its playoff tracker was updated Sunday morning with clinching, seeding and elimination scenarios still in play. (nba.com) National Broadcasting Company Sports identified nine of the 15 games on Sunday’s slate as carrying playoff-seeding implications. The league has all teams finish on the same day, with conference games grouped into afternoon and evening windows, to limit scoreboard watching. (nbcsports.com) In the Western Conference, Houston is the one top-six team that already knew its spot. The Rockets were locked into the No. 5 seed before Sunday and could only wait to see whether their first-round opponent would be the Los Angeles Lakers or the Denver Nuggets. (si.com) The bracket was unusually fluid entering the finale. Yahoo Sports reported that not a single first-round series was set at the start of Sunday, with the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and the top-seeded Detroit Pistons both still waiting on opponents. (sports.yahoo.com) The play-in format is the reason seeds 7 through 10 still matter after Game 82. The No. 7 and No. 8 teams in each conference get two chances to win one spot, while the No. 9 and No. 10 teams must win twice to reach the first round. (nba.com) The final standings also shape home-court advantage for teams that avoid the play-in. On the National Basketball Association playoff page Sunday, the West showed Oklahoma City at No. 1, San Antonio at No. 2, Denver at No. 3, the Lakers at No. 4 and Houston at No. 5, with lower seeds still subject to the day’s results. (nba.com) Sunday closes the 82-game schedule, but it does not lock the full bracket until the play-in ends on April 17. The postseason field then turns into a standard 16-team bracket when the first round starts April 18. (nba.com)
