The 1990 NBA Playoffs was the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association's 1989-90 season. The tournament concluded with the Eastern Conference champion Detroit Pistons deafeating the Western Conference champion Portland Trail Blazers 4 games to 1 in the NBA Finals. Isiah Thomas was named NBA Finals MVP.

It was the Blazers' first trip to the NBA Finals since their stunning victory in the 1977 NBA Finals.

The New York Knicks fell behind 2-0 to the Boston Celtics in their first round matchup, but took the series 3–2 by winning Game 5 124-117 in Boston Garden.

The Phoenix Suns defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in a playoff series for the first time ever, which was the first time since 1981 that the Lakers failed to reach the Western Conference Finals.

The Chicago Bulls lost Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals 93–74 in Detroit, making it the 3rd straight year the Bulls were ousted in the playoffs by the Pistons. However Michael Jordan showed the Pistons and the world that no defensive strategy could stop him for long.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) Playoffs is a best-of-seven elimination tournament among sixteen teams in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference (called Divisions, pre-1970), ultimately deciding the final four teams who will play in the NBA Conference Finals.

The NBA announced the current revised playoff seeding system on August 3, 2006. Following the NBA regular season, eight teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs and are seeded one to eight.

The team that has the best record in each of the three divisions in each conference is declared division champion. The three champions, and another team in the conference with the best record, are seeded one through four by their records. This guarantees that the division champions will be no lower than fourth seed, and also ensures that a conference's two best teams (by record) are ranked as the top two. However, because the NBA does not re-seed its teams and because home court advantage goes to the team with the better record, not the better seeding, division winners are guaranteed no better than a de-facto five seed, as their 4th seeding does not guarantee home court advantage in the first round, and after the first round the 4 vs 5 winner will play the same teams as the loser would have played had they won the first round. This will continue throughout the remainder of the playoffs and to the finals until the 4 vs 5 winner loses a playoff round or wins the championship. Of the remaining eleven conference teams, the four with the best records are seeded fifth through eighth based on their record.

Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon (/ɵˈlaɪdʒəwɒn/; [olaɟuwɔ̃]; born January 21, 1963) is a retired Nigerian-American professional basketball player. From 1984 to 2002, he played the center position in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors. He led the Rockets to back-to-back NBA championships in 1994 and 1995. In 2008, he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Listed at 7 ft 0 in (2.13 m) (but closer to 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m) by his own admission), Olajuwon is considered one of the greatest centers ever to play the game.

Patrick Aloysius Ewing, Sr. (born August 5, 1962) is a Jamaican-American retired Hall of Fame basketball player and current assistant coach for the National Basketball Association's Orlando Magic. He played most of his career with the NBA's New York Knicks as their starting center and played briefly with the Seattle SuperSonics and Orlando Magic. Ewing was named as the 16th greatest college player of all time by ESPN. He won Olympic Gold Medals as a member of the 1984 and 1992 US Men's National Basketball teams. In a 1996 poll celebrating the 50th anniversary of the NBA, Ewing was selected as one of the 50 Greatest Basketball Players of All Time. On April 7, 2008 he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame on September 5, 2008 along with former NBA coach Pat Riley and former Houston Rockets center, Hakeem Olajuwon. His number 33 was retired by the Knicks in 2003.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Ewing excelled at cricket and soccer. He was 11 years old when he arrived in the United States with his family, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He learned to play basketball at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. In order to prepare for college, Ewing joined the MIT-Wellesley Upward Bound Program. Upward Bound is a federally-funded TRIO college-prep program for disadvantaged high school students. He went to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C..