On April 16th, the heavily anticipated NBA Playoffs began after a long 82 game season. The conference champions of the East ended up being the Miami Heat finishing 53-29 and the Phoenix Suns finishing 64-18 which makes them the Western Conference champions. 

Some shocking upsets was that the Los Angeles Lakers, which includes Lebron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, and Carmelo Anthony (all NBA stars) did not make the Playoffs finishing 11th in the West with a record of 33-49, making this Lebron’s first losing season since his rookie year with the Cavaliers. 

Also, the Brooklyn Nets finished 7th in the East clinched a Play-in position where they play a single game against the number 8 seed to determine who makes it to the playoffs. The Nets were one of the top teams expected to win the championship but they had some regular season struggles due to their starting point guard not playing for more than half of the season due to refusing to get the vaccine when it was mandatory to have the vaccine to play in the Barclays Arena. 

The match-ups for the 2021-2022 playoffs are the Dallas Mavericks (4) vs. Utah Jazz (5), Golden State Warriors (3) vs. Denver Nuggets (6), Philadelphia 76ers (4) vs, Toronto Raptors (5), Milwalkee Bucks (3) vs. the Chicago Bulls (6), Memphis Grizzlies (2) vs Minnesota Timberwolves (7), and Phoenix Suns (1) vs. New Orleans Pelicans (8) Miami Heat (1) vs. Atlanta Hawks (8).  

 Each and every of the playoff rounds will be the first team to win 4 games and will advance to the next round. There are 4 rounds, First round, Conference semi finals, conference finals and the Finals where the final West team will face off against the final East team. 

So far, there has been one game played for each of the teams. The Timberwolves, Jazz, Warriors, Heat, Bucks, 76ers, and Suns are all leading their first round series 1-0 and will continue their playoff runs in the next few weeks as each team battles to become the NBA Champions.