LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fl. — And then there were 16.

After 66 scrimmages, over 80 seeding games, crowds full of virtual fans and snippets of life inside "The Bubble," the NBA Restart is heading into the Playoffs.

This has been an NBA season unlike any other: On March 11, a game between the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder was stopped only moments before tip-off when an OKC medical staffer sprinted onto the court to talk to referees, and the game was canceled. Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19; over the next few days, a handful of other players would also test positive.

Within hours of that news, the NBA announced the season would be suspended indefinitely. The league remained suspended until late June, when the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association agreed to restart and finish out the season at a single-site campus, in games played with no fans, and only with teams with a shot at playoff contention.

Since July, about 350 players and hundreds of coaches and staff members from 22 teams have lived at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, playing and living inside "The Bubble," a strict "closed network" campus just for NBA players, team officials and league staffers.

The next two months inside the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex at Walt Disney World Resort will be a fight to the finish, with 16 teams vying for the coveted Larry O'Brien Trophy.

 

 

The least team into the playoffs, the Portland Trail Blazers, took down the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA's first "play-in" game — a single-elimination game between the Western Conference's #8 and #9 seed for the last slot in the NBA playoffs.

Here are the matchups for the 2020 NBA Playoffs:

Eastern Conference

  • Milwaukee Bucks (#1) vs. Orlando Magic (#8)
  • Toronto Raptors (#2) vs. Brooklyn Nets (#7)
  • Boston Celtics (#3) vs. Philadelphia 76ers (#6)
  • Indiana Pacers (#4) vs. Miami Heat (#5)

Western Conference

  • Los Angeles Lakers (#1) vs. Portland Trail Blazers (#8)
  • Los Angeles Clippers (#2) vs. Dallas Mavericks (#7)
  • Denver Nuggets (#3) vs. Utah Jazz (#6)
  • Houston Rockets (#4) vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (#5)

The playoffs begin Monday, August 17.