The 2026 NBA playoffs began with a play-in tournament on April 14. The Miami Heat and Los Angeles Clippers have been eliminated so far, while the Philadelphia 76ers and the Portland Trail Blazers have secured spots in the playoffs. The final elimination games, between the Golden State Warriors and the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference, and the Orlando Magic vs. Charlotte Hornets in the Eastern Conference, are set for Friday, April 17. The regular playoffs are set to begin April 18.

Every play-in game will stream exclusively on Prime Video. Here’s what you need to know so you won’t miss a single game of the 2026 NBA play-in tournament, including the complete schedule and where to stream, plus key dates for the rest of the playoffs.

How to watch the 2026 NBA Play-In Tournament:

Dates: April 14 – 17, 2026

TV channel: n/a

Streaming: Prime Video

When is the 2026 NBA Play-In Tournament?

The NBA playoffs unofficially begin with the play-in tournament from April 14-17. The playoffs then officially get under way on April 18. 

How to watch the Play-In Tournament:

All games of this year’s play-in tournament will be broadcast live on Prime Video from April 14-17, with winners advancing to the first round of the NBA Playoffs starting Saturday, April 18.

What teams are in the 2026 NBA Play-In Tournament?

The play-in tournament features the teams ranked 7th through 10th in each conference. In the Eastern Conference, the Miami Heat played Charlotte Hornets and the Orlando Magic faced the Philadelphia 76ers. In the Western Conference, The Portland Trail Blazers played the Phoenix Suns while the Golden State Warriors played the L.A. Clippers. 

2026 NBA Play-In Tournament Schedule

All times Eastern.

• April 17, 7:30 p.m.: East Final Eliminator Game, Orlando Magic vs. Charlotte Hornets (Prime Video)

• April 17, 10 p.m.: West Final Eliminator Game, Phoenix Suns vs. Golden State Warriors (Prime Video)

NBA Playoff schedule:

All times Eastern.

• April 14-17: NBA Play-In Tournament

• April 18: NBA Playoffs begin

• May 4: Conference Semifinals begin (can move up to May 2 or 3)

• May 19: Eastern Conference Finals begin on ESPN/ABC (can move up to May 17)

• May 20: Western Conference Finals begin on NBC/Peacock (can move up to May 18)

• June 3: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 1 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET

• June 5: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 2 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET

• June 8: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 3 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET

• June 10: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 4 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET

• June 13: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 5 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET (if necessary)

• June 16: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 6 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET (if necessary)

• June 19: NBA Finals 2026 – Game 7 on ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET (if necessary)

The San Diego Padres’ sale process is close to being finalized, with private-equity billionaire José E. Feliciano and his wife, Kwanza Jones, purchasing the team for $3.9 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The valuation would be about $1.5 billion more than what Steve Cohen paid for the New York Mets in 2020 and the highest ever for an MLB franchise. Any sale agreement would require approval from 75% of MLB owners.

Ownership groups led by Golden State Warriors and Valkyries principal owner Joe Lacob, Detroit Pistons and Platinum Equities owner Tom Gores, and AS Roma, AS Cannes and Everton FC owner Dan Friedkin, along with Feliciano and Jones, were reportedly among the bidders under consideration.

The Seidler family, which currently owns the Padres, has been exploring a potential sale since November. Former chairman and majority stakeholder Peter Seidler died in November 2023 at the age of 63 after a long illness. John Seidler, Peter’s brother, currently controls the family trust, and thus the Padres, after being approved by MLB owners a year ago.

Interest in the Padres comes amid a strong run for the franchise. The team has made the playoffs in four of the past six seasons, including reaching the National League Championship Series in 2022, when they lost to the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Padres are 13-6 this season, entering play Friday.

For quite a long time (or maybe it’s just felt incredibly long to me), it’s felt like Roma’s season was collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Como, an opportunistic and annoyingly resilient side backed by the richest owners in Italy, seemed poised to turn Roma’s recent stumbles into something more permanent. And yet, the door to salvation has cracked back open just a smidge. Como has faltered, capped by a loss to Sassuolo, and we now return to our regularly scheduled programming: table-watching.

The thing about the final gasps of a season is that momentum doesn’t build in this setting. Instead, it feels like there’s just a limited amount of hope allotted, and when one side loses that hope, another side inevitably gains it. With that in mind, Roma gaining a touch of a reprieve doesn’t feel earned, but inherited; still, the opportunity is real. With Roma sitting just ahead of Atalanta and still within reach of the top four, as Juventus occupy that tenuous final Champions League place, the math has simplified. Win, and the conversation changes. Lose, and the death spiral becomes just a bit more permanent. The margins are that thin and the stakes are that blunt.

If Roma is, in any meaningful sense, the team it once hinted at being earlier this season, then this is where that Real Roma needs to stand up (to paraphrase one Marshall Mathers). They will only be able to do this through execution. Whatever belief once surrounded this side has eroded, and it’s been replaced by a more familiar uncertainty and doom about the club’s long-term potential. The table offers them one last invitation to change the script: step into the fight with Juventus, or drift out of it. Will they lose themselves in the music the moment they want it? Will they never let it go?

What to Watch For

Can We Get Wesley and Pisilli Back?

If Roma wants to get a win out of this one, they’re going to need two of the only players in the squad who consistently make things happen without needing the entire system to click first. Wesley is still dealing with a hamstring issue and looks unlikely to be risked, while Niccolò Pisilli is stuck in that late-test limbo with an ankle problem. Even if one of them makes the bench, it’s hard to see either being close to 100 percent. That’s a problem, because Roma don’t exactly have redundancy in those roles. Wesley gives you directness that no one else in this side really offers right now, while Pisilli’s value is different but just as important. He speeds things up. He plays forward. He turns stagnant possession into something that at least resembles intent, which has been in short supply since the long-term injuries to Matias Soulé and Paulo Dybala neutered Roma’s creative power.

Against an Atalanta side that will be out for blood and a chance to get into Europe themselves, those skills are not optional. You’re not going to slowly work your way through them over 90 minutes. You need players who can break structure, who can create something out of nothing when the game starts to tilt. Without Wesley and Pisilli, Roma can still compete. But they start to look a lot more like a team hoping the match comes to them, instead of one capable of taking it.

Can Gasperini End the Drama with A Win Against His Prior Employer?

The most annoying part of the past few weeks of Roman drama is that this didn’t have to be a storyline. Not like this.

Instead, Roma head into one of the biggest matches of their season with the focus split between the pitch and a very public fracture between Gian Piero Gasperini and Claudio Ranieri. What started as a disagreement over squad decisions and messaging has spilled out into the open, culminating in Gasperini visibly emotional in his pre-match press conference after allegedly being caught off guard by Ranieri’s comments. That’s where things stand now: there’s tension, there’s noise, and we now have a match that suddenly feels like it’s carrying more than just three points.

Ignore the drama, because reality is simpler than that. This spat between Ranieri and Gasperini, two icons of Italian football, shouldn’t be resolved in press conferences or clarified through intermediaries. Roma didn’t bring Gasperini in to navigate internal power struggles. They brought him in because of what he did at Atalanta: nine years of turning a club without traditional resources into one of the most consistent sides in Italy and a regular presence in the Champions League. He built something there out of parts most managers wouldn’t have known how to use. That’s the résumé with Atalanta, and that’s the project with Roma.

This is the moment where that résumé has to translate. Not eventually, not over the course of a long rebuild—now. Because whatever tension exists, whatever frustration is bubbling underneath the surface, it all looks very different if Roma walk off the pitch tomorrow with three points. Win, and the noise quiets for the moment. Win, and the idea behind the hire starts to feel real again. Lose, and everything just gets louder. Nobody wants that. Nobody needs that. Certainly not me, because I want to get back to podcasting happy.

The Brooklyn Nets have 52 jersey numbers worn by over 600 different players over the course of their history since the franchise was founded in 1967 as a charter member of the American Basketball Association (ABA), when the team was known as the “New Jersey Americans”.

Since then, that league has been absorbed by the NBA, with the team that would later become the New York Nets and New Jersey Nets before settling on the name by which they are known today, bringing their rich player and jersey history with them to the league of today.

To commemorate the players who played for the Nets over the decades wearing those 52 different jersey numbers, Nets Wire is covering the entire history of the franchise’s jersey numbers and the players who sported them since the founding of the team.

And for today’s article, we will continue with the second of eight people to wear the No. 55 jersey, big man alum Jayson Williams. After ending his college career at St. John’s, Williams was picked up with the 21st overall selection of the 1990 NBA Draft by the Phoenix Suns.

The Ritter, South Carolina native played the first two seasons of his pro career with the Philadelphia 76ers instead after being dealt there before the start of his rookie campaign. That ended when he was dealt to the (then) New Jersey (now, Brooklyn) Nets in 1992 for the final seven seasons of his NBA career.

During his time suiting up for the Nets, Williams wore only jersey No. 55 and put up 8.3 points and 8.9 rebounds per game.

All stats and data courtesy of Basketball Reference.

This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: Nets jersey history No. 55 – Jayson Williams (1992-99)

ANAHEIM — It’s a day of mourning in the Los Angeles Angels organization.

On Friday morning, the Angels announced that Garret Anderson had passed away.

Anderson was the embodiment of what it meant to not only be a professional athlete, but a great person, spending 15 of his 17-year career with the Angels and being a role model on and off the field.

Anderson was a three-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger winner, a key member of the Angels winning their first World Series in 2002, and is a member of the club’s Hall of Fame.

There is a good reason as to why Anderson is in the Angels Hall of Fame, leading the club in multiple categories as an all-time hitting leader for RBIs (1,292), doubles (489), hits (2,368), and total bases (3,743).

When he finished his career, he transitioned into a broadcasting role back with the club he grew up with as a player.

Anderson was quick to find himself partnered with someone he spent most of his playing career with, playing on the opposite side of the outfield, in Tim Salmon.

Salmon was choked up this afternoon when speaking about Anderson and said the two had so many similar life experiences throughout their playing careers.

“We had very similar upbringings,” Salmon said. “Single moms, stoic grandmothers that helped raise us. We both married our college and high school sweethearts. Our wives were pregnant at the same time, our kids grew up together.”

Both Salmon and Anderson were born in the Los Angeles metropolitan area as Salmon was born in Long Beach and later moved to Phoenix Arizona. Anderson stayed in Los Angeles during his youth and played baseball at John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills.

The two became members of the Angels organization together in 1990 when Anderson was selected by the Angels in the fourth round.

Salmon recalled the first time he met Anderson was in spring training, in a brand-new Mustang.

“I was at Gene Autry Park, and I remember being in the outfield, … I just remember seeing this kid drive in, in this really nice Mustang. He must’ve spent his entire signing bonus on it,” Salmon said jokingly about his former teammate. “Beautiful Mustang, and here comes this tall, lanky kid. Looks like he was more of a basketball player at the time. He was super skinny, and I was like, ‘Oh, what kind of attitude are we gonna have here?’ And it was the complete opposite.”

Anderson did, in fact, turn out to be the complete opposite of what Salmon initially thought. He was one of the quieter players; he did not say much, and always went about his business the right way.

Salmon recalled Anderson being mild-mannered, quiet, and infectious. 

“When he talked, you were like ‘Oh well, he’s talking,” Salmon said. “He became a favorite of his teammates.”

While Anderson was important to the Angels organization during his playing career, he was just as important during his post-playing career.

Three-time American League MVP Mike Trout said he found out the news of Anderson’s passing this morning and called it devastating.

Trout recalled always seeing Anderson with a smile on his face.

“Seeing highlights, and watching him. He holds every record here for such a long time. He meant a lot to this Angels organization,” Trout said.

Trout said this morning he spoke with Torii Hunter and Jered Weaver, who were both former teammates of Anderson’s during the latter part of his career.

Weaver and Hunter were both in the primes of their career when Trout came up to the Angels as a rookie in 2011.

Whenever Anderson was brought up in conversation with Trout, he always recalled the moment, hearing nothing but great things about who he was as a player and a person outside of baseball.

Despite being known as a quiet individual, Trout said he would approach Anderson at the ballpark and strike up a conversation with him.

“It was one of the things going up to him, starting a conversation,” Trout said. “He would let us use his boat down by his house in the dock. He was an awesome dude.”

Angels outfielder Jo Adell said the team was left speechless when they found out about Anderson’s death.

When Adell did come across Anderson and had the chance to speak with him, he made the most of it as he considered him special.

“When you’ve won a World Series, it’s something everybody’s taking notes of,” Adell said. “What you did, and how you were able to do it. You know, for him and the longevity of his career, how he was able to continue to come out every day and play a brand of baseball that was at the highest level and to be that consistent.”

“I remember seeing him for the first time. You’re definitely picking that brain of somebody who could do that.”

During the Angels’ 2002 World Series run, manager Kurt Suzuki was a freshman baseball player, attending Cal-State Fullerton.

One of Anderson’s most iconic moments in his career happened in Game 7 of that World Series.

With a tie score at 1 and the bases loaded with nobody out in the bottom of the third, the Angels were looking to get the lead.

Anderson was known during his career for making good contact on the ball, hitting doubles, and getting RBIs.

He did just that, by clearing the bases on a ball hit towards right field to give the Angels a 4-1 lead over the San Francisco Giants.

Suzuki remembered watching Anderson being a key part of bringing the first World Series trophy to Anaheim.

“I remember those thundersticks they had and remember watching those games on TV,” Suzuki said. “(Anderson) was a big part of this organization; he was a big part of that World Series team.”

The Houston Rockets have had players donning a total of 52 different jersey numbers (and have one not part of any numerical series for Houston assistant coach and general manager Carroll Dawson) since their founding at the start of the 1967-68 season, worn by just under 500 players in the course of Rockets history.

To honor all of the players who wore those numbers over the decades, Rockets Wire is covering the entire history of jersey numbers and the players who wore them since the founding of the team all those years ago right up to the present day.

With seven of those jerseys now retired to honor some of the greatest Rockets of all time to wear those jerseys, there is a lot of history to cover.

And for today’s article, we will continue with the fifth of 16 who wore the No. 12, guard alum Matt Maloney. After ending his college career at Penn, Maloney went unselected in the 1995 NBA Draft, playing in other leagues until he signed with the Houston Rockets in 1996.

The Silver Spring, Maryland native played the first three seasons of his pro career with Houston, coming to an end when he was cut in 1999.

During his time suiting up for the Rockets, Maloney wore only jersey No. 12 and put up 8.3 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 3.1 assists per game.

All stats and data courtesy of Basketball Reference.

This article originally appeared on Rockets Wire: Rockets jersey history No. 12 – Matt Maloney (1996-99)

The D-backs come home after a road-trip which likely surpassed all expectations. I know I would not have minded too much if they had gone 4-5 over those nine games. 5-4 would have been a good result. But for the D-backs to go 6-3, winning all three series, was beyond anything I would have predicted. Now, it is worth noting that the three teams they faced have all been struggling. The Mets, Phillies and Orioles, were all initially expected to be contenders this year. ZIPS preseason projection had the trio each winning between 88-91 games. Instead, they are all below .500, with a combined record of 24-32. Even discounting our games, they’re 21-26: not as good as expected.

The Mets, in particular, are startling. Their cash payroll is over $360 million, most in the majors by thirty million dollars. But it’s as if the D-backs broke them. Beginning with our two victories over them, New York have now lost nine games in a row, and have slumped to a mark of 7-13. After today’s loss in Chicago, that currently gives them sole possession of the worst record in the National League. Hard fact: no Mets team in history that lost nine games in a row, has won more than 77 games that year. I think maybe it’s a scheme to get out of a salary cap, because Manfred can point at the Mets and say, “See? Money isn’t everything!” [Adjusts tin-foil hat]

Anyway, back in D-backs land, the scuttlebutt has Lourdes Gurriel Jr. joining the team at some point this series. It’ll be interesting to see what the move it. Luken Baker has only have five PA since being called up on April 7, so would seem a credible option – especially with Gurriel being expected to play mostly at DH initially. He doesn’t have any options left, so sending him down would involve a DFA. That would open a 40-man roster spot, although worth noting they do NOT have to do so for Gurriel. He has been on the 10-day IL this season, so still requires his own 40-man slot. So they could alternatively option Tim Tawa down to Reno.

The D-backs come home after a road-trip which likely surpassed all expectations. I know I would not have minded too much if they had gone 4-5 over those nine games. 5-4 would have been a good result. But for the D-backs to go 6-3, winning all three series, was beyond anything I would have predicted. Now, it is worth noting that the three teams they faced have all been struggling. The Mets, Phillies and Orioles, were all initially expected to be contenders this year. ZIPS preseason projection had the trio each winning between 88-91 games. Instead, they are all below .500, with a combined record of 24-32. Even discounting our games, they’re 21-26: not as good as expected.

The Mets, in particular, are startling. Their cash payroll is over $360 million, most in the majors by thirty million dollars. But it’s as if the D-backs broke them. Beginning with our two victories over them, New York have now lost nine games in a row, and have slumped to a mark of 7-13. After today’s loss in Chicago, that currently gives them sole possession of the worst record in the National League. Hard fact: no Mets team in history that lost nine games in a row, has won more than 77 games that year. I think maybe it’s a scheme to get out of a salary cap, because Manfred can point at the Mets and say, “See? Money isn’t everything!” [Adjusts tin-foil hat]

Anyway, back in D-backs land, the scuttlebutt has Lourdes Gurriel Jr. joining the team at some point this series. It’ll be interesting to see what the move it. Luken Baker has only have five PA since being called up on April 7, so would seem a credible option – especially with Gurriel being expected to play mostly at DH initially. He doesn’t have any options left, so sending him down would involve a DFA. That would open a 40-man roster spot, although worth noting they do NOT have to do so for Gurriel. He has been on the 10-day IL this season, so still requires his own 40-man slot. So they could alternatively option Tim Tawa down to Reno.

Many were underwhelmed when Bayern Munich’s coaching search in 2024, the first major decision of Max Eberl’s reign as Bayern’s board member for sport, ended with Vincent Kompany as head coach. After a turbulent search, paying a seven-figure fee for a coach that had just been relegated to the Championship with Burnley was a big risk. To many it seemed clear that Eberl was tying his future at Bayern to Kompany’s. In other words, if Kompany were to be sacked, Eberl would soon follow.

Instead, Vincent Kompany has been a resounding success at Bayern, bringing the league title back to Bayern and leading the team to the verge of winning multiple trophies in the 2025/26 season. This success has seen many clubs target the 40-year-old Belgian in the hopes of seeing the charismatic manager at their club in the near future. But, lest we forget, Kompany signed a contract extension in October 2025 and it helps Eberl remain confident about retaining him. Asked by German news site Tz whether Kompany being watched by so many big teams makes him nervous, Eberl simply laughed.

“Let them watch. He has a contract until 2029,” he confidently stated, as captured by @iMiaSanMia. “Even though he’s only turning 40, he already belongs to the very elite group of coaches. Because he’s a very clever, intelligent person. And I mean really clever. He’s always been respected. But he makes that respect grow every day. Simply by being himself.”

Of course, when a head coach does not want to continue at a club things can go quite quickly. Bayern fans will remember just how quickly sextuple winner Hansi Flick despite having a year left on his contract. But Kompany shows no signs of being unsettled at the job for now, which should give Bayern fans confidence in a lengthy stay for the Belgian coach.