Find out when and where to watch this year’s NBA playoffs with an interesting overview of the season, playoff bracket information, and this season’s schedule.
The NBA Regular Season
The NBA regular season began on Oct. 18, 2022 and goes through April 9, 2023. The 82-game regular season helps determine playoff seeding for the NBA Playoffs. The top six teams in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference earn automatic spots in the NBA Playoffs, while the teams that sit seventh through 10th in each conference will participate in the NBA Play-In Tournament to determine who the seventh and eighth seeds for the playoffs are.
Teams like the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets have already clinched spots in the NBA Playoffs, while other teams are still fighting for a playoff spot.
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When Do the NBA Playoffs Start?
The NBA Play-In Tournament, which features the seven, eight, nine and 10 seeds in each conference, will take place from April 11-14. The NBA Playoffs begin on April 15, with the NBA Finals set to begin on June 1 and continue through June 18, if a Game 7 is necessary.
The NBA Conference Semifinals are set to begin May 1 and 2, but could be moved up to April 29 and 30, while the NBA Conference Finals are scheduled for May 16 and 17, but with the possibility they could be moved up to May 14 and 15.
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Following the end of the NBA Finals games, the 2023 NBA Draft will take place on June 22, 2023.
NBA Playoff Brackets: Seedings and Matchups
The NBA Playoffs are divided by conference, with an eight-team playoff bracket in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference. The winner of each conference advances to the NBA Finals.
Following the Play-In Tournament, which determines the seventh and eighth seed in both conferences, the teams are seeded based on regular season record (1-6 seeds), with the seventh seed being the winner of the 7 vs. 8 game in the Play-In Tournament. The eighth seed is the winner of the game between the loser of the 7 vs. 8 game and the winner of the 9 vs. 10 game.
- The seeding matchups for the first round are 1/8, 2/7, 3/6 and 4/5.
- The winners of the 1/8 and the 4/5 series face in the second round, as do the winners of the 2/7 and 3/6 series.
- The winners of the second-round series meet in the conference finals.
- The higher seed team has homecourt advantage until the NBA Finals. In the Finals, the team with the better record in the regular season has homecourt, hosting four of the seven games.
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2022-23 NBA Top Players & Standings
The 2023 NBA Playoffs will feature some of the top players in the NBA, including MVP frontrunners Joel Embiid from the Philadelphia 76ers and Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets. Other top players who’ll be in the playoffs are Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum and Dallas Mavericks wing Luka Doncic.
Below are the current NBA standings as of March 20, 2023, with the charts from Basketball Reference.
Past NBA Championships
The Golden State Warriors are the defending NBA champions, taking down the Boston Celtics in six games last year to win the franchise’s fourth title since 2015.
The last NBA Finals to go to seven games was the 2016 Finals, when the Cavaliers took down the Warriors in seven games. Since then, four Finals have gone six games, with one going five games and one series, in 2018, going just four games.
Where to Watch NBA Finals?
The 2023 NBA Finals will be broadcast on ABC, which is available to stream with a subscription to fuboTV.
Watch the 2023 NBA Finals on fuboTV: Start with a free trial!
fuboTV is the leading sports-first live TV streaming platform, offering 100+ live TV channels and regional sports networks. The service includes a DVR as well as on-demand content and focuses on sports programming. Fubo is the only live TV streaming platform with every Nielsen-rated sports channel. Leveraging Fubo’s proprietary data and technology platform optimized for live TV and sports viewership, subscribers can engage with the content they are watching through interactive product features like FanView, an in-video experience showcasing live game, team and player stats and scores in real-time. Fubo was also the first virtual MVPD to enable simultaneous viewing on up to four screens (Multiview on Apple TV) and the first to stream in 4K HDR. The service was ranked #1 in Customer Satisfaction among Live TV Streaming Providers by J.D. Power (2022).
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