2020 NBA playoffs

2020 NBA playoffs

The 2020 NBA playoffs were the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association’s 2019–20 season. The Toronto Raptors were defending champions, but lost in the Eastern Conference Semifinals round to the Boston Celtics. The playoffs were originally scheduled to begin on April 18, but were suspended on March 11, 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The NBA Board of Governors approved a plan to restart the season on July 31 in the NBA Bubble.

About 2020 NBA playoffs in brief

Summary 2020 NBA playoffsThe 2020 NBA playoffs were the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association’s 2019–20 season. The playoffs were originally scheduled to begin on April 18, but were suspended on March 11, 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. On June 4, the NBA Board of Governors approved a plan to restart the season on July 31 in the NBA Bubble. Under this plan, the 22 top teams in the league at the time of the suspension played eight additional regular season games to determine playoff seeding, with 16 of those teams playing in a conventional postseason tournament. If the ninth seed within a conference would have finished the regular season within four games of the eighth seed, they would have then competed in a play-in series. All games were played behind closed doors at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex inside Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. The Toronto Raptors were defending champions, but lost in the Eastern Conference Semifinals round to the Boston Celtics. None of the teams that made it to the Conference Finals in the 2019 NBA playoffs made the Conference finals in 2020.

All rounds were best-of-seven series; the series ended when one team won four games, and that team advanced to the next round. In the conference playoffs, home court advantage went to the higher-seeded team, although since all games were Played in the same location, this was merely a designated home court. Seeding was based on each team’s regular season record within a Conference; if two teams had the same record, standard tiebreaker rules were used. Conference seedings were ignored for the NBA Finals: Home court advantage was given to the team with the better regular season Record, and, if needed, ties were broken based on head to head record, followed by intra-conference record. The division champions are marked by an asterisk. The division winnerB is the team that won the Western Conference, and the division winnerA is the division champion in that team’s division. The number of games won in that division is the number of the team’s seeding in its conference, and the numbers to the left of each team indicate the number the team won in its division.