What is the NBA in Basketball?
What is the NBA in Basketball?
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the top professional basketball league in the United States. It has also become very popular internationally with many players from several countries becoming major stars in the league such as Yao Ming from China, Pau Gasol from Spain, Tony Parker from France, Manu Ginobili from Argentina, and Dirk Nowitski from Germany.
How Many Teams Are in the NBA?
There are a total of 30 basketball teams in the NBA. These teams are then divided into two conferences, the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference. Teams will compete within their own conferences for the entirety of the regular season but then will play against teams outside of their conference during the postseason if they get that far.
NBA Season and Playoffs
Each team in the NBA plays 82 regular season games. They play 41 games at home and 41 away. Every team in the NBA plays every other team at least once during the season.
The top eight teams in each conference go to the playoffs. Teams are seeded according to their records and whether they won their division. The best team plays the worst team (1 vs. 8) and so on. The teams play a best of seven series where the first team with four wins takes the series and moves on in the playoffs. The team with the best record gets the home court advantage where they play one more game at home.
WNBA
The Woman's National Basketball Association is a professional basketball league for women players. It was started in 1997. It was originally owned and funded by the NBA, but now several teams have independent owners. There are currently (2021) 12 teams in the WNBA. Some of the WNBA star players over the years include Lisa Leslie, Sheryl Swoopes, and Lauren Jackson. 토토사이트
History of the NBA
In 1946 the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was formed and the first game was played in Toronto, Canada between the Toronto Huskies and the New York Knickerbockers. In 1949 the BAA merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) and became the National Basketball Association.
The original NBA had 17 teams, but this was thought to be too many. So they merged teams over the next few years until they were down to as few as eight teams in 1953-1954. In 1954 they also introduced the shot clock of 24 seconds to speed up the game and to get teams to shoot more. Another major change came in the 1979-80 season when the three point shot was introduced.
Since then the league has grown to thirty teams throughout the United States with one team in Canada. Many superstar players have gained international stardom such as Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James.
