The NBA Play-In Tournament, Explained

The NBA Play-In Tournament is a short set of single-elimination games, held each spring between the end of the regular season and the start of the first round, that decides the final two playoff seeds in each conference. It is contested by the four teams that finish seventh through tenth in each conference’s standings, and it has been part of the NBA calendar in its current form since the 2020-21 season. In plain terms: the top six seeds in each conference clinch playoff spots outright, while seeds 7 through 10 must play their way in.

How it works

The format is a two-round bracket run separately in the Eastern and Western Conferences. It follows a Page–McIntyre structure, which gives the higher seeds a second chance and forces the lower seeds to win immediately.

The seventh and eighth seeds meet first. The winner claims the No. 7 seed and is done. The loser is not eliminated — it drops into a second game with one more life. Simultaneously, the ninth and tenth seeds play a true elimination game: the loser’s season ends, and the winner advances. In the final step, the loser of the 7-vs-8 game hosts the winner of the 9-vs-10 game for the No. 8 seed. The winner of that game becomes the last team into the playoff bracket; the loser is eliminated.

Matchup	What is at stake
No. 7 vs. No. 8	Winner takes the No. 7 seed; loser drops to the final game
No. 9 vs. No. 10	Loser is eliminated; winner advances to the final game
Loser of 7/8 vs. winner of 9/10	Winner takes the No. 8 seed; loser is eliminated

The practical effect is asymmetric. The 7 and 8 seeds get two chances to secure a playoff berth, while the 9 and 10 seeds must win two games in a row to reach the postseason. Home court in every game goes to the higher seed.

Per the NBA Play-In Tournament history and Wikipedia.

Where it came from

The concept arrived as a one-off. On June 4, 2020, the NBA Board of Governors approved a single play-in game to close out the pandemic-interrupted 2019-20 season inside the Orlando “bubble.” The rule applied only if the ninth seed finished within four games of the eighth. The Memphis Grizzlies qualified, and on August 15, 2020 the Portland Trail Blazers beat Memphis 126-122 to claim the West’s No. 8 seed.

The league then expanded the idea. On November 19, 2020, the Board of Governors approved the seeds 7-10 format for the 2020-21 season, initially as a one-year experiment. It was made a permanent part of the postseason structure on July 22, 2022. The stated rationale was to raise the stakes of the late regular season — giving teams near the middle of the standings a reason to keep competing rather than resting starters or angling for draft position, and creating a firmer incentive to finish in the top six and skip the play-in entirely.

Why it matters

The play-in changed the math of the regular season’s final weeks and opened a genuine path from the margins to the championship round. The clearest example is the 2023 Miami Heat. Miami entered as the East’s No. 7 seed, lost the 7-vs-8 game to the Atlanta Hawks 116-105 on April 11, 2023, then beat the Chicago Bulls 102-91 on April 14, 2023 to grab the No. 8 seed. From there the Heat upset the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks and advanced all the way to the 2023 NBA Finals, losing to the Denver Nuggets in five games. They became only the second No. 8 seed to reach the Finals, after the 1999 New York Knicks — and the first to do it by way of the play-in.

The format has also produced signature single games. On May 19, 2021, LeBron James hit a go-ahead 34-foot three-pointer in the final minute as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Golden State Warriors 103-100 to lock up the West’s No. 7 seed. The next night’s slate a year earlier had already shown the scoring ceiling: on May 18, 2021, Jayson Tatum dropped 50 points as the Boston Celtics beat the Washington Wizards 118-100, the single-game scoring record for a play-in contest. Because home court favors the higher seed in every round, the format also rewards teams that avoid the No. 9 and No. 10 slots, where two straight road-or-home elimination wins are required.

The arguments

The debate over the play-in has been sharp since its first full season. LeBron James, whose Lakers had to play their way in as a No. 7 seed in 2021, argued to reporters that the format was a mistake and said its creator should be fired (Sports Illustrated). Mavericks governor Mark Cuban called his own vote in favor of it an “enormous mistake,” telling ESPN that it added stress to a compressed schedule and forced teams near the top to treat every game as a must-win to avoid slipping into the play-in field (Sports Illustrated). Critics on this side argue it is unfair for a team that finished, for example, 12 games ahead of a No. 10 seed over 82 games to risk its season on one or two games.

Supporters, led by commissioner Adam Silver, counter that the tournament restored meaning to the end of the regular season. Silver has said the format gave teams a reason to keep competing for playoff position and helped address load-management and resting concerns, and he indicated the league intended it to become a fixture (Bleacher Report). Defenders also note that ratings and attention for the late-April window rose, and that no top-six seed is exposed to the format at all — the risk falls only on teams that failed to secure a top-six finish.

Per Sports Illustrated (James), Sports Illustrated (Cuban) and Bleacher Report (Silver).

The bottom line

The NBA Play-In Tournament is the bridge between the regular season and the playoffs for seeds 7 through 10, decided in a two-round format where the 7 and 8 seeds get two chances and the 9 and 10 seeds get none to spare. Introduced as a bubble experiment in 2020, expanded for 2020-21 and made permanent in 2022, it has already delivered a Finals run from a play-in team and remains one of the league’s most debated structural changes — celebrated for keeping the late season alive and criticized for putting long seasons at the mercy of a single night.