Conferences, the play-in, the playoffs and the in-season Cup: everything you need to know before the NBA's 2026-27 campaign starts on Tuesday.
The NBA is back on Tuesday, and whether you're a lifelong die-hard or just jumping on the bandwagon, here's how the 2026-27 season works from opening night to the trophy lift.
Thirty teams make up the league, split into two conferences, East and West, with 15 clubs each. Every team plays 82 regular-season games, a mix of conference rivals and cross-conference opponents, home and away. It's a long grind that stretches from the autumn through the spring, with the All-Star break in February giving the league's biggest names a midseason showcase.
The regular season doesn't just decide who's in. It decides how they get in. The top six teams in each conference lock up playoff spots outright. Teams finishing seventh to tenth go into the play-in tournament, where the seventh and eighth seeds meet and the winner takes the No. 7 seed. The loser gets a second chance against the winner of the ninth-versus-tenth game, with the last playoff berth on the line. Lose twice and you're out.
Once the field of 16 is set, it's all best-of-seven series across four rounds. The East and West champions meet in the NBA Finals, with the winner lifting the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Along the way there's also the NBA Cup, the in-season tournament that adds a knockout-style race in the winter on top of the usual 82-game slog. Teams that miss the playoffs shift focus to the draft lottery, where the worst records get the best odds at landing the next generation of stars.
