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.

Cleveland

Cleveland (/ˈkliːvlənd/ KLEEV-lənd) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the Pennsylvania border. It was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, and became a manufacturing center owing to its location on the lake shore, as well as being connected to numerous canals and railroad lines. Cleveland's economy has diversified sectors that include manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and biomedical. Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Clinic.

As of the 2013 Census Estimate, the city proper had a total population of 390,113, making Cleveland the 48th largest city in the United States, and the second largest city in Ohio after Columbus.Greater Cleveland, the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area, ranked 29th largest in the United States, and second largest in Ohio after Cincinnati with 2,064,725 people in 2013. Cleveland is part of the larger Cleveland-Akron-Canton, OH Combined Statistical Area, which in 2013 had a population of 3,501,538, and ranked as the country's 15th largest CSA.

Game

A game is structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role.

Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known games.