Play‑In schedule set
The NBA Play‑In Tournament is scheduled to start Tuesday with the 7‑vs‑8 games on April 14, the 9‑vs‑10 elimination matches on April 15, and the final win‑and‑in contests on April 17 (si.com).
The National Basketball Association’s Play-In Tournament opens Tuesday, April 14, with four teams in each conference still chasing the last two playoff spots. (nba.com) The format is unchanged: teams that finish seventh through 10th in the Eastern and Western conferences enter a three-day mini-bracket after the regular season ends Sunday, April 12. The seventh-place team hosts the eighth-place team for the No. 7 seed, while the ninth-place team hosts the 10th-place team in an elimination game. (nba.com) The losers of the April 14 games get one more chance on Friday, April 17, against the winners of the April 15 elimination games, with the winners taking the No. 8 seeds. The first round of the National Basketball Association playoffs starts Saturday, April 18. (nba.com) As of Sunday morning, the Western Conference had one matchup set: Phoenix held the No. 7 spot and was scheduled to host either the Los Angeles Clippers or Portland on Tuesday night, depending on the final day results. Golden State was listed in the No. 10 position entering Sunday. (nba.com) In the Eastern Conference, Orlando and Philadelphia occupied the No. 7 and No. 8 spots entering Sunday, while Charlotte and Miami had clinched play-in berths and were still sorting out No. 9 and No. 10. Detroit, Boston and New York had already locked in the top three seeds in the East. (nba.com) The Play-In Tournament was created to keep more teams in the postseason race late in the season and to decide the seventh and eighth seeds without expanding the main playoff field beyond 16 teams. The National Basketball Association first used the format in 2021 after testing a version in the 2020 restart at Walt Disney World. (nba.com) This year’s play-in games will be carried exclusively on Prime Video, a distribution shift the league highlighted in its official postseason schedule. ESPN’s schedule page also lists Prime Video for the April 14, April 15 and April 17 games. (nba.com) (espn.com) The bracket will not be fully locked until Sunday’s regular-season finale ends, but the dates are now fixed: April 14 for the seventh-versus-eighth games, April 15 for the ninth-versus-10th games, and April 17 for the final win-and-in contests. (nba.com)
