NBA Play-In Tournament Dates, TV Schedule Announced for 2025 Playoff Bracket

The NBA has confirmed the dates and television schedule for the 2025 Play-In Tournament.

April 15 will feature the games between the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds in the Eastern and Western Conference on TNT, followed by the No. 9 and No. 10 seeds playing the next day on ESPN.

The losers of the 7-8 games will play the winners of the 9-10 games on April 18. The Eastern Conference game will air on TNT, with the Western Conference game being broadcast on ESPN.

Start times for all six games will be announced at a later date.

The Chicago Bulls are the only team locked into a play-in spot right now. They're currently 10th in the Eastern Conference with a 34-42 record, but they could climb as high as seventh.

There are only 2.5 games separating the Orlando Magic (37-40) in the seventh spot from the Bulls.

Chicago has been playing arguably its best basketball of the season recently. Head coach Billy Donovan's team is 10-4 in its last 14 games with wins over the Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers (twice) and Denver Nuggets during this stretch.

The East's top four teams right now—the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and Pacers—have already locked up a spot in the playoffs. The Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks are likely to finish in the top six of the East as well.

Over in the Western Conference, the Oklahoma City Thunder have locked up the No. 1 seed, but everything else is still up for grabs. The next seven teams in the standings are separated by a total of five games in the loss column.

As things stand right now, the West play-in teams are the Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Clippers, Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings. The race for seeds five through eight is chaotic.

The Golden State Warriors (44-31) and Memphis Grizzlies (44-32) own the fifth and sixth spots to avoid the play-in tournament, but the Timberwolves and Clippers are right on their heels with 32 losses.

Minnesota has the same record as Memphis, but the Grizzlies already own the head-to-head tiebreaker (2-0) with one game remaining between the two teams on April 10.

The Grizzlies are in their own state of chaos right now after firing head coach Taylor Jenkins on March 28. They are trending in the wrong direction with eight losses in their last 10 games.

Since the NBA adopted the current play-in format in the 2020-21 season, only two play-in teams have won at least one playoff series. In 2023, the Miami Heat advanced to the NBA Finals as the No. 8 seed, while the Los Angeles Lakers reached the Western Conference Finals as the No. 7 seed.