Los Angeles Clippers

The Los Angeles Clippers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Clippers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Pacific Division. The Clippers play their home games at the Staples Center, an arena shared with the Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA, the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA), and the Los Angeles Kings of the National Hockey League (NHL).

The franchise was founded in 1970 as the Buffalo Braves, one of three expansion teams to join the NBA that year. The Braves moved from Buffalo, New York to San Diego, California in 1978 and became known as the San Diego Clippers. In 1984, the Clippers moved to Los Angeles. Through much of its history, the franchise failed to see significant regular season or playoff success. The Clippers were frequently seen as an example of a perennial loser in American professional sports, drawing unfavorable comparisons to the historically successful Lakers, with whom they have shared a market since 1984 and an arena since 1999.

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.

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.

NBA League Pass

The NBA League Pass is sports television service that features all National Basketball Association games. It was made available prior to the start of the 1995-1996 NBA season. It is available to viewers in the United States and as an international package for all other countries. The pricing structure and services on offer are different, depending on where the viewer is located. The 2013-14 season was the 20th year of League Pass. Full League Pass access for the 2014-15 season was priced at $199 for US customers, for comparison the premium service was £169.99 for UK viewers (these prices are for access to the full season prior to the first game and before any discounts, in previous seasons prices have dropped as the season moves closer towards the play-offs).

United States League Pass

NBA League Pass is an out-of-market sports package that allows its subscribers to watch up to 40 out-of-market National Basketball Association games a week. The service is operated by Turner Broadcasting System on behalf of the NBA. Videos of the games come from local stations and regional sports networks.