Houston Rockets

The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston, Texas, that competes in the National Basketball Association (NBA). They are members of the Southwest Division of the league's Western Conference. The Rockets play their home games at Toyota Center, located in downtown Houston. The Rockets have won two NBA championships and four Western Conference titles. The team was established in 1967 and played in San Diego, California, as the San Diego Rockets, before moving to Houston in 1971.

The Rockets won only 15 games in their debut season as a franchise in 1967. In the 1969 NBA Draft, the Rockets selected power forward Elvin Hayes first overall, who would lead the team to its first playoff appearance in his rookie season. The Rockets did not finish a season with a winning record until the 1976–77 season, when they traded for center Moses Malone. Malone went on to win the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award twice, and lead Houston to the conference finals in his first year with the team. He also led the Rockets to the NBA Finals in 1981 where they were defeated in six games by the Boston Celtics, led by Larry Bird and future Rockets coach Kevin McHale.

Houston

Houston (ⁱ/ˈhjuːstən/ HYOO-stən) is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth most populous city in the United States. With a census-estimated 2014 population of 2.239 million people, within a land area of 599.6 square miles (1,553 km²), it also is the largest city in the Southern United States, as well as the seat of Harris County. It is the principal city of Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, which is the fifth most populated metropolitan area in the United States.

Houston was founded in 1836 on land near the banks of Buffalo Bayou (now known as Allen's Landing) and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837. The city was named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had commanded and won at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles (40 km) east of where the city was established. The burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the city's population. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston became the home of the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located.

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.

San Antonio Spurs

The San Antonio Spurs are an American professional basketball team based in San Antonio, Texas. They are part of the Southwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The Spurs are one of four former American Basketball Association teams to remain intact in the NBA after the 1976 ABA–NBA merger and the only former ABA team to have won an NBA championship. The Spurs' five NBA championships are the fourth most in history behind only the Boston Celtics (17), Los Angeles Lakers (16), and Chicago Bulls (6). The Spurs currently rank first among active franchises for the highest winning percentage in NBA history, and are the only team in the NBA with a tied or better head-to-head regular season record against every active NBA franchise.

In their 38 NBA seasons since 1976–1977, the Spurs have won 20 division titles. They have made the playoffs in 24 of the last 25 seasons (since 1989–1990) and have missed the playoffs four times since entering the NBA; they have not missed the playoffs in the 18 seasons since Tim Duncan was drafted by the Spurs in 1997. With their 50th win in the 2014–2015 season, the Spurs extended their record for most consecutive 50+ win seasons to 16 (the 1998–99 season was shortened to 50 games because of a lockout and based on their win percentage of .740, would have easily surpassed 50 wins in an 82-game season, and thus extend the record by 2 more seasons). Thus, since the 1997–98 season, the Spurs have had 18 consecutive seasons with a winning percentage of .610 or greater during the regular season which is also an NBA record. Only the team's current head coach, Gregg Popovich, who had been the team's general manager before replacing Bob Hill in 1996, has had a longer tenure with the Spurs.