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This is an interesting topic. You would be surprised of the number of people that did not know how the playoff schedule gets determined.

For the sake of all those viewing, allow me to address this as clearly as I can.

Well, David Stern (Commissioner of the NBA) loves a good tournament, doesn't he? Of course he does. Well, there are 30 teams in the NBA (expansion included) and those teams are divided into conferences. The Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. 15 teams are divided into each of the conferences.

With that said, take those same two conferences and split them into 3 divisions, with five teams apart of each division. Keeping up so far? Good. Every spring, of the available fifteen teams in each conference, only 8 are qualified for the playoffs. You qualify for the playoffs, usually because you have a winning record. Because there is strong belief that the Western Conference is the most competitive of the two conferences, that does not always hold true as it concerns the Easter Conference.

2 or 3 teams in the Eastern Conference with losing records have been known to sneak their way into the playoffs.

82 games are played during the regular season (November-April) which determines the standings and win/loss records of the 30 teams. Each game lasts for at least 48 minutes. There are 4 quarters that last 12 minutes a piece. The goal is to score more points than the other team, throughout the duration of the 48 minutes. If that does not happen the game goes into OT (Overtime), at which point each successive quarter (until the tie is broken) lasts for five minutes. In the NBA, games have been known to go into double and sometimes triple overtime. More recently, the first game between The Suns and The Spurs in their first round series, which went into 2 extra sessions.

Moreover, the top 8 teams from both of the conferences all make the playoffs. With that said, each team gets a seeding. The top 4 seeds are reserved for the teams with the best records in the upper-half of the bloc. Consisting of three division leaders and 2nd place teams with a better record.

The next coupling of seeds 5-8 are no division leaders, but are reserved for the teams that didn't do quite as well as the 1-4 slots. A best of 7 game series (which used to be a best of 5 a few years ago) takes place between the teams in each conference. The East battles the East. The West battles the West.

The home-court edge is given to the team with the better record. However, it does not matter which

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