The seventh-ranked team in the NBA regular season will face the eighth-ranked team at home, and the winner will enter the playoffs directly with the qualification of seventh seed. The losing team will compete with the winners of the ninth and tenth places for the last playoff seat.
The ninth team plays against the tenth team at home. Losers are eliminated directly and enter the NBA draft lottery. The winner will compete with the losers in the seventh and eighth teams for the final place.
This means that the teams with the seventh and eighth winning percentage will have two chances to win a game and get a playoff seat, while the teams with the ninth and tenth winning percentage need two consecutive victories to finally advance.
Reasons for holding NBA play-offs
Because there is no promotion and demotion system in NBA, teams compete for playoff places. The top teams in the regular season usually get playoff tickets early. Therefore, they deliberately lost in the game to control the ranking, and took the opportunity to eliminate the game style to restrain their teams, so as to reduce their playoff pressure, and this behavior of picking opponents hurt the feelings of fans.
The team ranked lower has no hope to participate in the playoffs, and there is no desire to play passively in the game, which makes the audience disappointed with NBA events. At the end of the regular season, because the ranking has been fixed, the game is generally dull, resulting in the loss of audience.
In view of this, in order to increase the antagonistic viewing uncertainty of the game and mobilize the enthusiasm of players, the NBA adopted the European play-off system in the 20-2 1 season, and adopted a new play-off system in which seven or eight teams ranked seventh to tenth in the regular season were decided through play-offs.