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NBA tiebreakers, explained: How playoff standings are determined for 2024 Play-In games, seeding – Sporting News
The NBA postseason is only weeks away. While much of the playoff field has already been decided, it hasn’t been fully etched into stone. At least not yet.
We know all the teams slated to take part in postseason basketball — the top-ten sides in the Eastern and Western Conference have already been decided. However, just one division has been officially clinched, that being the Atlantic Division, which fell into the hands of the NBA’s best team, the Celtics.
That leaves five other divisions hanging in the balance. Such unpredictability is part and parcel in a league that has crowned five different champions in as many years.
Nevertheless, it raises an important question — just what are the rules concerning ranking those postseason spots, be it through automatic qualification into the postseason or via Play-In seeding?
Tiebreaks are a real possibility in this ever-shifting carousel of late-year basketball. Here’s what you need to know regarding the rules and regulations for teams seeking out postseason and play-in qualification.
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Much like the NFL, the NBA relies on a fairly intricate system for whittling through tiebreaks. It’s a challenging thing to keep track of, but it ensures that those hoping to secure postseason qualification do so fairly.
If two teams share the same record and winning percentage, here’s a list of tiebreakers used to determine which team earns higher seeding in the postseason, in order from first to last, via the NBA:
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If three or more teams are tied on record — be it in the same division or in the conference standings — the following rules are used. Most of the ones used to determine the “winner” of a two-team tiebreak are applied again in a tiebreak involving three or more sides.
If a tie does involve more than two teams, the tiebreak criteria laid out in the above section is only applicable until one of the following happens, per the NBA:
In both the two-team and three-team (or more) tiebreakers, ties involving division winners must be resolved first before determining the results of other ties. Importantly, the results of tiebreaks used to determine division winners “shall be used to determine only the division winner, and not for any other purpose.”
David Suggs is a content producer at The Sporting News.