The Boston Celtics will enter the postseason for the tenth consecutive season, currently the longest such streak in the NBA. They also won the Maurice Podoloff Trophy for clinching the best record in the NBA for the first time since 2008.
The Oklahoma City Thunder will enter the postseason for the first time since 2020. They also clinched the best record in the Western Conference for the first time since 2013.
The Milwaukee Bucks will enter the postseason for the eighth consecutive season.
The Philadelphia 76ers will enter the postseason for the seventh consecutive season.
The Denver Nuggets will enter the postseason for the sixth consecutive season.
The Phoenix Suns will enter the postseason for the fourth consecutive season.
Eight teams from each conference participate in the playoffs. The top six teams in each conference, based on winning percentage, directly qualify for the playoffs; the seeding order of those teams is also based on winning percentage. If two or more teams had the same record, standard NBA tiebreaker rules are used.
The NBA Board of Governors adopted a format starting in 2021 to have a play-in tournament involving the teams ranked 7th through 10th in each conference. The 7th place team and 8th place team participate in a "double-chance" game, with the winner advancing to the playoffs as the 7-seed. The loser then plays the winner of the elimination game between the 9th place and 10th place teams to determine the playoff's 8-seed. The NBA's regular playoff format then proceeds as normal.[2]
Each conference's bracket is fixed with no reseeding. All rounds are a best-of-seven series; a series ends when one team wins four games, and that team advances to the next round. All rounds, including the NBA Finals, are in a 2–2–1–1–1 format with regards to hosting. In the conference playoffs, home-court advantage goes to the higher-seeded team (number one being the highest). For the NBA Finals, home-court advantage goes to the team with the better regular season record, and, if needed, ties are broken based on head-to-head record, followed by intra-conference record.
On March 14, 2024, the Boston Celtics became the first team to clinch a playoff spot.[3] While noted in the below tables, division titles have no bearing on seeding.[4]
Seed 8 in each conference are not finalized until the play-in tournament is completed (April 19).
† Teams ranked 8 and 9 will participate in the play-in tournament to determine seed 8.
Golden State (46–36) also secured a play-in berth but did not advance to the playoffs.[24]
Bracket
Teams in bold advanced to the next round. The numbers to the left of each team indicate the team's seeding in its conference, and the numbers to the right indicate the number of games the team won in that round. The division champions are marked by an asterisk. Teams with home court advantage, the higher seeded team, are shown in italics.
This will be the tenth playoff meeting between these two teams, and the fifth since the Syracuse Nationals relocated to Philadelphia in 1963, with the 76ers winning six of the first nine meetings.[25]
ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV will broadcast the playoffs nationally in the United States. Each team's regional broadcaster will also televise local coverage of first-round games, with the exception of most games on ABC. In general during the first two rounds, ABC will air Sunday afternoon games, TNT will broadcast Sunday through Wednesday night games, and ESPN will televise Friday night games (including a rare Friday Tripleheader on April 26)[31]. For Thursday night games, TNT has them in the first round and ESPN in the second round. NBA TV will also televise selected Monday through Thursday night first-round games. Saturday first- and second-round games will be split by ABC, ESPN, and TNT. As per the alternating rotation, ESPN/ABC has exclusive coverage of the Eastern Conference finals while TNT has exclusive coverage of the Western Conference finals. ABC has exclusive coverage of the NBA Finals for the 22nd straight year.
Streaming
This will be the first playoffs that the streaming service Max will have live access to TNT's games on its Bleacher Report Sports Add-on tier.[32] NBA TV games will be available on NBA League Pass as part of its normal streaming service for that channel. Only selected ESPN/ABC games may stream live on ESPN+.
Sponsorship
For the third straight year, the playoffs will be officially known as the "2024 NBA Playoffs presented by Google Pixel". During the multiyear agreement with Google Pixel, this sponsorship provides the logo branding inside the venues and in official digital properties on-court, as well as commercial inventory during ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV's telecasts of the playoff games.[33]
Notes
^The final game of the playoffs could be as early as June 14 or as late as June 23, depending on the length of the NBA Finals.[1]
