The 2016 NBA regular season comes to an end on Wednesday, April 13th, but when do the playoffs start?
The 2016 NBA playoffs start on Saturday, April 16th. The first round of the playoffs will be on ESPN, TNT, ABC, and NBA TV. In the second round, NBA TV will dip out and ESPN, TNT, and ABC will take on all of those games. The Western Conference Finals will air on TNT, the Eastern Conference Finals will air on ESPN, and the NBA Finals will air on ABC. While the matchups, and what seeds will play on that day are yet to be determined, there are a few notable changes to the NBA playoff format this year.
The biggest change is that the seeding will be based solely on record. Last year, if you won the division you were guaranteed a top four seed. This accounted for the Portland Trail Blazers winning a division with no playoff teams, and having a worse record than the San Antonio Spurs, as well as having a higher seed than the Spurs, who came in third in a division that featured five playoff teams. It sent a strong Spurs team home a bit too early and the NBA said no more of that. It is now solely based on what your actual record is.
The NBA Finals schedule did a bit of adjusting as well, in the second year of switching back to the 2-2-1-1-1 format. The players will now get three days between games in every travel situation. There used to be times in which a team would play a late west coast game, fly to the east coast that morning, and have a game the next day. Now, players will get the extra day to rest and it should result in better overall play as the fatigue of playing over 100 NBA games wears teams down.
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