How many teams make the NBA play-in tournament?

With each passing day, it becomes more and more likely that the New Orleans Pelicans will be participating in the NBA Play-In Tournament for the second straight season. With this in mind, we figured it wise to take some time to explain just how exactly the play-in festivities work.

For starters, eight teams (four from each conference) make the play-in tournament. The tournament itself is played in a four-day window from April 11th to April 14th. Two games will be played each day for the first two days (April 11th and April 12th), and then, one game will be played each day for the remaining two days (April 13th and April 14th).

How it will work is the teams that finish in the seventh and eighth seed in their respective conference will play each other (with the seventh seed getting to host the winner-take-all exhibition). The winner will get the seventh seed in the playoffs, while the loser will have another chance to clinch the eighth seed.

Subsequently, the nine and ten seeds will also be squaring off (with the nine seed having the home-field advantage). The winner of that game will get a chance to compete for the eighth seed against the loser of the seven/eight matchup. Meanwhile, the loser is eliminated from the tournament altogether.

Finally, the loser of the seven/eight game and the winner of the nine/ten matchup will play each other to decide who gets the final playoff spot in their conference.

That makes sense, right? Well, just in case it doesn’t, let’s go over a hypothetical situation using the teams currently slated to compete in the tournament from the Western Conference.

If the play-in started today, the seventh-seeded Dallas Mavericks would host the eighth-seeded Los Angeles Clippers. For the sake of simplicity, we will say the Mavericks won the game. That means they clinch the seventh spot in the West (meaning they would play the two seed in the first round), and the Clippers must now play another game to get the eighth seed.

As this is going down, the Pelicans (the nine seed) would host the Utah Jazz (the ten seed). If our Pelicans win, they would travel to Los Angeles for one final showdown against the Clippers.

And if they emerged victorious, the Pelicans would have the eighth and final spot in the Western Conference and would play the one seed in the first round (currently the Denver Nuggets).
Cool? Cool.