NBA play-in tournament

• 1. Introduction

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  Jayson Tatum scored 50 points in an NBA play-in tournament game against Washington on the 18th of May, 2021. That performance remains the highest individual scoring total in a single play-in game. The tournament is a preliminary postseason event that sits just before the NBA playoffs. It decides which teams from the bottom of each conference's standings fill the final spots in the main bracket. The league treats the two competitions as formally distinct. The play-in was not conceived as a permanent institution. Its origins lie in an emergency. Understanding what it has become requires tracing how the format and its broadcast have both changed.

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• 2. Born in the Bubble

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  On the 4th of June 2020, the NBA Board of Governors approved the first play-in game in league history. The context was unlike anything the sport had faced before. COVID-19 had suspended the regular season, and basketball was resuming within a controlled environment known as the bubble. The play-in was one piece of that return plan. The original design had a trigger condition. A game would only occur if the eighth and ninth seeds in a conference finished within four games of each other. When that condition was met, the two teams played. If the eighth seed won, it advanced to the playoffs immediately. If the ninth seed won, a second game followed, and the winner of that second game earned the playoff spot.

  The only game held that year was in the Western Conference. Memphis had finished 34-39; Portland stood at 35-39, exactly half a game ahead in the standings. In the Eastern Conference, ninth-place Washington finished 25-47, while eighth-place Orlando stood at 33-40. That gap exceeded the four-game threshold, and no Eastern game was played. What began as a one-game experiment in 2020 would, by the following season, look nothing like its original design.

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• 3. The Modern Format

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  On the 19th of November 2020, the NBA Board of Governors voted to expand the play-in. The new format would include all teams finishing seventh through tenth in each conference, not just a conditional pair. On the 22nd of July 2022, that design became a permanent feature of the league calendar.

  The expanded format draws on a structure called the Page-McIntyre system, used in four-team playoffs. In each conference, the ninth-place team hosts the tenth-place team, and whoever loses is immediately eliminated. The seventh-place team hosts the eighth-place team in a separate game. The winner of that 7-8 game advances to the playoffs as the seventh seed. The two teams that lost those opening games then meet. The winner earns the eighth playoff seed. To allow that team at least one day of rest, the league schedules its first playoff game for day two of the main bracket.

  Two division champions have entered the play-in since the current format began. Both came from the Southeast Division: the 2022-23 Miami Heat and the 2024-25 Orlando Magic. Both teams survived the play-in and advanced to the main playoff field. The format gives seventh seeds two chances to advance and tenth seeds just one. How that asymmetry has played out in actual results is a question the numbers answer directly.

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• 4. Records and Patterns

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  The Miami Heat have appeared in seven play-in games, more than any other franchise in the tournament's history. Their four wins are also the most of any team. Among those appearances, the 2022-23 edition of the team stands apart. After qualifying for the playoffs through the play-in, the 2022-23 Heat advanced to the 2023 NBA Finals. No other play-in qualifier has matched that postseason run.

  Since 2021, the seventh seed has never been eliminated from the play-in. The lowest seed, the tenth, has had a much harder road. Only one tenth-seed has reached the playoffs since 2021: the 2024-25 Miami Heat. They made it through despite entering the bracket at the very bottom of the field. The tournament's broadcast home will shift fundamentally starting in 2026, moving from a split among several networks to a single streaming platform.

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• 5. On the Air

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  In 2020, ABC carried the sole play-in game. From 2021 through 2025, broadcast rights were divided between TNT and ESPN. In 2021 and 2024, which games each network aired was determined by which conference finals they were already broadcasting. In 2022, 2023, and 2025, TNT broadcast both games between the seventh and eighth seeds. ESPN covered the ninth-versus-tenth matchups those same years. The final game in each conference, the one awarding the eighth seed, was still assigned based on conference finals rights.

  Amazon Prime Video will broadcast all play-in tournament games starting in 2026. The arrangement is part of an eleven-year media agreement that began with the 2025-26 season. In Canada, the Toronto Raptors' home market, Sportsnet and TSN divide play-in coverage roughly equally. Each network can produce its own feed for Raptors games; for all other matchups, they simulcast the American broadcast. The eleven-year arrangement will run through the mid-2030s. When that deal took effect with the 2025-26 season, the play-in tournament itself was only five seasons old.

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