Indiana

Indiana ⁱ/ɪndiˈænə/ is a U.S. state located in the midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Indiana is the 38th largest by area and the 16th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th U.S. state on December 11, 1816.

Before becoming a territory, varying cultures of indigenous peoples and historic Native Americans inhabited Indiana for thousands of years. Since its founding as a territory, settlement patterns in Indiana have reflected regional cultural segmentation present in the Eastern United States; the state's northernmost tier was settled primarily by people from New England and New York, Central Indiana by migrants from the Mid-Atlantic states and from adjacent Ohio, and Southern Indiana by settlers from the Southern states, particularly Kentucky and Tennessee.

Indiana has a diverse economy with a gross state product of $298 billion in 2012. Indiana has several metropolitan areas with populations greater than 100,000 and a number of smaller industrial cities and towns. Indiana is home to several major sports teams and athletic events including the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, the NASL's Indy Eleven, the NBA's Indiana Pacers, the WNBA's Indiana Fever, the Indianapolis 500, and Brickyard 400 motorsports races.

Indiana Pacers

The Indiana Pacers are a professional basketball team based in Indianapolis, Indiana. They are members of the Central Division in the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Pacers were first established in 1967 as members of the American Basketball Association (ABA) and became members of the NBA in 1976 as a result of the ABA-NBA merger. They play their home games at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. The team is named after Indiana's history with the Indianapolis 500's pace cars and with the harness racing industry.

The Pacers have won three championships, all in the ABA. The Pacers were Eastern Conference champions in 2000. The team has won eight division titles. Five Hall of Fame players – Reggie Miller, Chris Mullin, Alex English, Mel Daniels, and Roger Brown – played with the Pacers for multiple seasons.

Franchise history

1967–76: ABA dynasty

In early 1967, a group of six investors (among them attorney Richard Tinkham, John DeVoe, Chuck DeVoe, entrepreneur Lyn Treece, sports agent Chuck Barnes and Indianapolis Star sports writer Bob Collins) pooled their resources to purchase a franchise in the proposed American Basketball Association.

Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cleveland Cavaliers, also known as the Cavs, are an American professional basketball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cavaliers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA), as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The Cavaliers are the only remaining charter member of the division (all the other Central Division teams joined later from the now-defunct Midwest Division).

The team began play in the league in 1970 as an expansion team. Home games are played at Quicken Loans Arena, which the team shares with the Cleveland Gladiators of the Arena Football League, and the Lake Erie Monsters of the American Hockey League. The Cavaliers have featured many NBA stars during their history, including All-Stars Austin Carr, Brad Daugherty, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Mark Price, LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Mo Williams and Kevin Love. Past NBA greats such as Nate Thurmond, Lenny Wilkens, Walt "Clyde" Frazier, and Shaquille O'Neal have also played in Cleveland (albeit near the end of their careers).

NBA playoffs

The National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs are a best-of-seven elimination tournament among 16 teams in the Eastern Conference and Western Conference (called divisions, pre-1970), ultimately deciding the winner of the NBA Finals.

Format

The NBA announced the current revised playoff seeding system on September 8, 2015. Following the NBA regular season, eight teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs and are seeded one to eight.

The new format stipulates that the top eight teams in each conference, ranked in order by win-loss records, qualify for the playoffs. The NBA Board of Governors also announced the new tie-break criteria for playoff seeding and home-court advantage: head-to-head results between the tied teams is the first tie-breaker, and whether a team won its division championship is the second tie-breaker.

These seedings are used to create a bracket that determines the match-ups throughout the playoffs. Once the playoffs start, the bracket is fixed; teams are never "reseeded", unlike in the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Soccer (MLS) where the strongest remaining teams face the weakest teams in subsequent rounds. The first round of the NBA playoffs, or conference quarterfinals, consists of four match-ups in each conference based on the seedings (1–8, 2–7, 3–6, and 4–5). The four winners advance to the second round, or conference semifinals, with a match-up between the 1–8 and 4–5 winners and a match-up between the 2–7 and 3–6 winners. The two winners advance to the third round, or conference finals. The winner from each conference will advance to the final round, or the NBA finals.

National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America, and is widely considered to be the premier men's professional basketball league in the world. It has 30 franchised member clubs (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada), and is an active member of USA Basketball (USAB), which is recognized by FIBA (also known as the International Basketball Federation) as the national governing body for basketball in the United States. The NBA is one of the four major North American professional sports leagues. NBA players are the world's best paid sportsmen, by average annual salary per player.

The league was founded in New York City on June 6, 1946, as the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The league adopted the name National Basketball Association on August 3, 1949, after merging with its rival National Basketball League (NBL). The league's several international as well as individual team offices are directed out of its head offices located in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue in New York City. NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are directed out of offices located in Secaucus, New Jersey.