Overview
Thirty clubs, an 82-game season, and four rounds of best-of-seven playoffs for the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
The National Basketball Association is the premier professional basketball league in the world. Thirty clubs — 29 in the United States and one in Canada — are divided between the Eastern and Western Conferences, each split into three divisions of five.
The regular season runs 82 games from late October to mid-April, interrupted by the All-Star break and, since 2023, by an in-season tournament now called the NBA Cup. Ten teams per conference enter the postseason: the top six seeds directly, the next four through a play-in. Every playoff round is a best-of-seven series.
Clubs
Every club in the league. Tap a name for its page.
Eastern Conference
Western Conference
Season Format
Recent Champions
Most recent first. Seasons still in progress are marked.
History
The Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 by arena owners in the north-eastern United States and Canada looking for events to fill their buildings between hockey dates. It absorbed the older National Basketball League in 1949 and took the name National Basketball Association.
The 24-second shot clock, introduced in 1954, rescued a game that had been drifting toward stalling tactics and set the pace of modern basketball. The league integrated in 1950, and by the 1960s Bill Russell's Celtics had won eleven titles in thirteen seasons.
A merger with the rival American Basketball Association in 1976 brought four clubs, the three-point line and a more improvisational style. The Magic Johnson–Larry Bird rivalry of the 1980s and Michael Jordan's Bulls in the 1990s turned the NBA into a global property; the three-point shot has since reshaped how the game is played at every level.
Governance
The league is run from New York by Commissioner Adam Silver, in post since 2014, under a board of governors made up of the 30 club owners. Players are represented by the National Basketball Players Association, and the collective bargaining agreement sets a soft salary cap with luxury-tax penalties and the two spending aprons introduced in 2023.
Internationally the governing body is FIBA; the NBA is not a FIBA member itself but works with it on the Olympic and World Cup calendars and on the Basketball Africa League.