PRESENTATION OUTLINE
The NBA announced the current revised playoff seeding system on August 3, 2006. Following the NBA regular season, eight teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs and are seeded one to eight.
The team that has the best record in each of the three divisions in each conference is declared division champion. The three division champions, and another team in the conference with the best record, are seeded one through four by their records. This guarantees the division champions no worse than the fourth seed, and also guarantees the team with the second-best record in the conference will be the second seed even if it happens to finish second in its division. Of the remaining eleven conference teams, the four with the best records are seeded fifth through eighth based on their record.
In the event two or more teams are tied in the standings, a series of tiebreakers are applied to determine which team receives the higher seeding.
These seedings are used to create a bracket that determines the match-ups throughout the playoffs. Once the playoffs start, the bracket is fixed; teams are never "reseeded", unlike in the NFL and MLS where the strongest remaining teams face the weakest teams in subsequent rounds. The first round of the NBA playoffs, or conference quarterfinals, consists of four match-ups in each conference based on the seedings (1–8, 2–7, 3–6, and 4–5). The four winners advance to the second round, or conference semifinals, with a match-up between the 1–8 and 4–5 winners and a match-up between the 2–7 and 3–6 winners. The two winners advance to the third round, or conference finals. The winner from each conference will advance to the final round, or the NBA finals.
Each round is a best-of-seven series. Series are played in a 2–2–1–1–1 format, meaning the team with home-court advantage hosts games 1, 2, 5, and 7, while their opponent hosts games 3, 4, and 6, with games 5–7 being played if needed. Beginning in 2014, the NBA finals will also now be played in a 2–2–1–1–1 format, after NBA team owners unanimously voted to the change away from a 2-3-2 format on October 23, 2013.
The most common criticism of the current structure is related to parity of conferences. On numerous occasions, Eastern Conference teams with losing records qualified for the playoffs, while Western Conference teams with winning records ended up missing them, including the 2011, 2013 and the 2015 NBA Playoffs.
