Memphis Grizzlies

The Memphis Grizzlies are an American professional basketball team based in Memphis, Tennessee. The Grizzlies compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member team of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The Grizzlies play their home games at FedExForum. The team is owned by Robert Pera. The Grizzlies are the only team in the major professional North American sports leagues based in the city of Memphis.

The team was originally established as the Vancouver Grizzlies, an expansion team that joined the NBA for the 1995–96 season. After the 2000–01 NBA season concluded, the Grizzlies moved to Memphis.

Franchise history

1995–2001: Vancouver Grizzles

The Vancouver Grizzlies were a Canadian professional basketball team based in Vancouver, British Columbia. They were part of the Midwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team was established in 1995, along with the Toronto Raptors, as part of the NBA's expansion into Canada. Following the 2000–01 season, the team relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, United States, and were renamed as the Memphis Grizzlies. The Grizzlies played their home games at General Motors (GM) Place for the entirety of their six (6) seasons in Vancouver.

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.

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.

NBA Summer League

The NBA Summer League is a series of off-season competitions during which National Basketball Association teams come together to try out different summer rosters instead of their regular season line-ups. Typically consisting of a mix of rookies, second year players, and unsigned free agents, the current summer league consists of three separate leagues: the Las Vegas Summer League, the Utah Jazz Summer League, and the Orlando Pro Summer League.

History

Summer leagues have existed for decades. Historically, there was not an organized structure, with leagues sometimes overlapping and not officially coordinated. In 2004, the league held the Las Vegas Summer League for the first time; it is by far the largest league, with 23 NBA teams plus an NBA Development League all-star team participating as of 2015.

The Orlando Pro Summer League has been held since 2001. The Utah Jazz Summer League began play in 2015, replacing the Rocky Mountain Revue, an event held from 1984–2008 before going on a lengthy hiatus due to declining participation.

San Antonio

San Antonio (/ˌsænænˈtoʊni.oʊ/ Spanish for "Saint Anthony"), officially the City of San Antonio, is the seventh most populated city in the United States of America and the second most populated city in the state of Texas, with a population of 1,409,019. It was the fastest growing of the top 10 largest cities in the United States from 2000 to 2010, and the second from 1990 to 2000. The city is located in the American Southwest, the south–central part of Texas, and the southwestern corner of an urban region known as the Texas Triangle.

San Antonio serves as the seat of Bexar County. Recent annexations have extended the city's boundaries into Medina County and, though for only a very tiny area near the city of Garden Ridge, into Comal County. The city has characteristics of other western urban centers in which there are sparsely populated areas and a low density rate outside of the city limits. San Antonio is the center of the San Antonio–New Braunfels Metropolitan Statistical Area. Commonly referred to as Greater San Antonio, the metropolitan area has a population of over 2.3 million based on the 2014 US Census estimate, making it the 25th-largest metropolitan area in the United States and third-largest in the state of Texas. Growth along the Interstate 35 and Interstate 10 corridors to the north, west and east make it likely that the metropolitan area will continue to expand.