The
Eastern Conference of the
National Basketball
Association is made up of fifteen teams, organized in three
divisions of five teams each.
The three division winners and the non-division winner with the
best record are seeded 1 through 4 for the playoffs in order of
their records, with all remaining non-division winners seeded 5
through 8. This leaves open the possibility that a #2 seed could be
a non-division winner.
Home-court
advantage in a playoff series is decided by record, not by
seeding, so if the #4 and #5 teams meet in a playoff series in
which the #5 team has the better record, the #5 team would have
home-court advantage.
The reasoning behind this seeding arrangement is because a
non-division winner could have a better record than the winners of
the two divisions other than the non-division winning team in
question. If the three division winners were seeded 1 through 3 for
the playoffs in order of their records, and all non-division
winners seeded 4 through 8, it would be possible for the two best
teams of the conference to meet in the Conference Semifinals. This
actually happened in the
2006 NBA
Playoffs when the two best teams in the
Western Conference, the
San Antonio Spurs and the
Dallas Mavericks, both from the
Southwest Division, faced one another
in the Western Conference Semifinals while the 3rd seed, the
Northwest Division-leading
Denver Nuggets, had fewer wins than
the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th seeds.The NBA proposed and approved of
the current format to ensure that the best two teams of a
conference can meet no earlier than the Conference Finals.
The Eastern Conference playoffs are divided into two preliminary
rounds followed by the Eastern Conference Finals, with the winner
of the Conference Championship facing the Western Conference
champion in the
NBA Finals to determine
the champion. All playoff series are
best-of-seven.
The current divisional alignment was adopted at the start of the
2004–05 season, when the
Charlotte Bobcats began play as the NBA's
30th franchise. This necessitated the move of the
New Orleans Hornets from the Eastern
Conference's
Central Division
to the newly-created Southwest Division of the Western
Conference.
Current organization
The Eastern Conference teams are organized as follows:
Atlantic
Division
Southeast
Division
Central
Division
Former teams
Defunct
Relocated to Western Conference
Eastern Conference champions
- Eastern Conference was named Eastern Division until
1970
- NBA Champions in bold
List of Eastern Conference teams with the most conference
championships
and became "Clippers", now the Los Angeles Clippers)
Kings, the
Kansas City Kings, now the Sacramento
Kings)
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