NBA Playoff Tracker: Cavs, Rockets Clinch Their Spots

The 2025–26 NBA season is coming to a close, with the final day of the regular season set for April 12.

It’s been a fun season filled with plenty of great (even historic) performances and enjoyable highlights aplenty. But this is the time of year where fans, teams and players all look forward to the intensity getting kicked up a notch in the playoffs. The NBA postseason begins April 14 with the play-in tournament. Then the playoffs tip off April 18 as every contending team fights for the right to raise the Larry O’Brien Trophy in June.

However, there are a few steps to take before we reach those exciting dates. The playoff picture is not yet fully formed. These last few weeks of the season will consist of every postseason hopeful fighting hard to clinch their playoff spot and avoid elimination. With how narrow the margins are in the standings, we should be in for some incredible basketball as the season winds down.

Here we’ll keep track of every NBA team’s playoff status, from the teams that are officially eliminated with eyes on the loaded 2026 draft to the championship contenders who get to punch their playoff tickets early thanks to a season full of winning.

NBA Playoff Tracker

Which NBA teams have clinched a playoff spot?
Which team could be next to clinch a spot?
Which NBA teams have been eliminated from the playoffs?
How many teams make the NBA playoffs?
How NBA playoff tiebreakers work

Which NBA teams have clinched a playoff spot?

Cleveland Cavaliers guard James Harden waits for the play against the Utah Jazz. | Rob Gray-Imagn Images

Two of last year’s top teams in the regular season—the Rockets and Cavaliers—became the latest to punch their tickets to the 2026 postseason on Thursday night.

The Cavaliers took down the Warriors 118–111 to move to lock in a spot in the top six of the East. Houston had the night off, but the Suns’ loss to the Hornets was enough to secure the Rockets a playoff spot.

The Rockets joined the Lakers and Nuggets, as they both also clinched playoff spots by virtue of another team’s loss just a few days earlier.

On March 31, the Suns lost to the Magic. Their defeat meant Los Angeles and Denver will officially finish with top-six seeds and thus quality for the postseason. Both squads figure to be serious threats to the Thunder’s spot atop the West, too. The Lakers enjoyed a torrid March powered by Luka Dončić’s greatness. The Nuggets, meanwhile, are finally at full health and Nikola Jokić’s statlines are as eye-popping as ever. But while their playoff chances are at 100% both teams will still fight fiercely down the stretch of the season with Los Angeles holding a narrow lead over Denver for the third seed in the Western Conference.

Around the league otherwise, the Pistons, Celtics and Knicks have all clinched. The Spurs clinched their berth on a Victor Wembanyama game-winner, and the Thunder were the first team in the NBA to clinch a playoff berth this season on March 17.

TEAM	DATE CLINCHED	LAST YEAR’S FINISH
Oklahoma City Thunder	March 17	1st in West
San Antonio Spurs	March 19	13th in West
Detroit Pistons	March 20	6th in East
Boston Celtics	March 29	2nd in East
New York Knicks	March 30	3rd in East
Los Angeles Lakers	March 31	3rd in West
Denver Nuggets	March 31	4th in West
Cleveland Cavaliers	April 2	1st in East
Houston Rockets	April 2	2nd in West

Which team could be next to clinch a spot?

The top seeds in both conferences have officially clinched their playoff spots, and there are just three automatic playoff spots left to fill—two in the East and one in the West—before teams will have to settle for a play-in berth.

The race for the final two spots in the East is extremely tight, with just four games separating the No. 5 and No. 10 seed in the conference, so it could take a while for the dust to settle there. In the West, it’s the Timberwolves who are next up to punch their ticket.

Which NBA teams have been eliminated from the playoffs?

Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo warms up before a game against the Dallas Mavericks. — The 2025–26 season proved to be a lost year for Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, who have been eliminated from postseason contention. | Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

As of March 30, all possible teams have been eliminated outright from playoff contention. Four more teams will join them after the play-in tournament takes place.

In the East, the Pacers, Nets and Wizards are all eliminated. None of those teams come as a surprise. Indiana knew it was entering a gap year after Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in last year’s NBA Finals. Brooklyn and Washington are in the midst of multiyear rebuilding efforts that have featured plenty of losing. The Nets last appeared in the playoffs in 2023, while the Wizards haven’t been back since 2021.

On March 27 the Bulls joined them. Chicago was eliminated from postseason contention by losing to the Thunder, 131-113. It marks the fourth consecutive season the Bulls have missed the playoffs, and they haven’t won a postseason series since 2015.

One day later it was the Bucks’ turn. The first genuine championship hopeful to suffer playoff elimination, Milwaukee was officially out after losing to the Spurs. The franchise has stumbled through a difficult season while superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo has battled injury after injury—all while trade rumors swirled that the Bucks might seriously consider trading the Greek superstar. Their playoff elimination sets the stage for the possibility of a landscape-shifting trade featuring Giannis; whether he returns this season or sits out the last nine games (as the team reportedly wants him to do) remains to be seen.

It marks the first time in nine years Milwaukee will not appear in the playoffs.

Out West, the quartet of the Kings, Jazz, Mavericks and Pelicans are all eliminated. It’s a hodgepodge of teams who entered the year with drastically different expectations. But the end result is the same—losses piling up and a playoff elimination with weeks remaining in the season.

Dallas is in rebuilding mode around 2025 No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg and hope to earn a quality draft pick this June because they do not control their draft picks over the coming years. New Orleans bizarrely went all-in on a draft night trade for Derik Queen and traded their unprotected 2026 first-rounder in the process. That move looked like a complete catastrophe to start the year but New Orleans rounded into a competitive team down the stretch and should now finish the season with a fairly respectable record—and an enticing prospect in Queen to boot.

The latest West team to be wiped off the playoff map was the Grizzlies. Memphis started off the season as a possible playoff contender but the wheels came off almost immediately, leading to the franchise’s pivot to rebuilding; Jaren Jackson Jr. was traded to Utah and Ja Morant spent much of the year in trade talks before an elbow injury sidelined him for the duration.

TEAM	DATE ELIMINATED	LAST SEASON’S FINISH
Indiana Pacers	March 10	4th in East
Sacramento Kings	March 11	9th in West
Washington Wizards	March 12	15th in East
Brooklyn Nets	March 12	12th in East
Utah Jazz	March 18	15th in the West
Dallas Mavericks	March 23	10th in West
New Orleans Pelicans	March 24	14th in West
Memphis Grizzlies	March 25	8th in West
Chicago Bulls	March 27	10th in East
Milwaukee Bucks	March 28	5th in East

How many teams make the NBA playoffs?

In total, 16 teams will be left standing when the playoffs tip off on April 18. Eight teams from the West will battle through a bracket of best-of-seven series to reach the NBA Finals, while eight teams from the East will do the same.

But thanks to the play-in tournament, a total of 20 teams will play past the end of the regular season. Six teams from each conference will clinch a playoff berth over the next few weeks, and the remaining four from each conference must win in the play-in tournament to qualify for the official postseason bracket.

How NBA playoff tiebreakers work

The NBA has several tiebreaking rules to be used if two teams finish the regular season with the same record. These tiebreakers are most often used to determine seeding among playoff teams but, in rare instances, can be used to decide if a team will clinch a playoff spot or suffer elimination.

Those tiebreakers, in order of priority, are:

Division leader wins tie over team not leading a division
Head-to-head won-lost percentage
Division won-lost percentage for teams in the same division
Conference won-lost percentage
Won-lost percentage vs. playoff-eligible teams, own conference
Won-lost percentage vs. playoff-eligible teams, other conference
Net points, all games

There are even more detailed scenarios that the NBA is prepared for but those are the basic and most oft-used tiebreakers for the playoffs.

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