Pistons Top East as NBA Regular Season Ends

The NBA regular season ended Sunday, April 12, 2026, with all 30 teams playing simultaneously — 15 games in a single day designed to prevent strategic tanking and reward urgency — and the Detroit Pistons, once the league's most publicly struggling franchise, closed it holding the Eastern Conference's top seed.

Ten seedings were unresolved heading into the day, six in the Eastern Conference alone. By final whistles, the East's bracket had clarified: the Pistons locked up No. 1, with seeds two through four already set, and a three-team race between the Toronto Raptors, Orlando Magic, and Philadelphia 76ers for the last guaranteed playoff spot at No. 6. In the West, the Los Angeles Lakers secured a top-four position, while the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers resolved into the eighth and ninth Play-In spots with final seeds depending on Sunday's outcomes.

The Pistons' No. 1 seed is the franchise's most significant regular-season achievement since the 2007–08 season — a direct payoff from a rebuild that required enduring five consecutive 50-loss seasons and two separate lottery cycles. Detroit had the NBA's worst record in 2021–22 and 2022–23. The front office rebuilt through the draft, and the 2025–26 roster reflects that patience: three of the top four rotational contributors were selected in the top 12 of their respective draft classes. Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, in his second year with Detroit, told reporters on April 11 that earning the No. 1 seed "means we did the work right — but the postseason is where franchises are actually judged."

“Detroit had the NBA's worst record in 2021–22 and 2022–23.”

Not every contender played Sunday with full commitment to the outcome. At least four teams facing no meaningful seeding stakes were resting key contributors — a decision that introduced noise into the day's results and created at least two situations where a team fighting for its playoff life was playing against a rotation squad. The NBA's same-day scheduling format was designed to eliminate strategic tanking at the standings bottom; it does not fully address load management at the top, a tension the league acknowledged in a statement released Friday noting it would "continue to monitor" rest practices during the regular season's final week.

In the West, the Lakers secured their top-four position and avoided the Play-In for the second consecutive year. LeBron James, 41, played key minutes across the season's final stretch and told ESPN on April 11 that "this team is built to be a problem for anyone in the bracket." The Lakers' final seed between third and fourth depended on their Sunday result against the Denver Nuggets, who needed a win to leapfrog them. Denver had been managing Nikola Jokić's minutes since late March with the postseason in mind, a factor that complicated the afternoon's most-watched Western matchup.

The Play-In Tournament — which runs April 14–17 — sends the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds into single-elimination games with a first-round berth at stake, while the No. 9 and No. 10 seeds must win twice to qualify. In the East, one of three viable teams — Toronto, Orlando, or Philadelphia — will miss the postseason entirely. The Sixers, after a season in which Joel Embiid appeared in only 41 games due to injury, entered Sunday needing a win and external help. The 76ers' front office faces an offseason of consequential decisions regardless of how the playoff picture resolves.

The league's broader business context reinforces why the playoff stakes matter commercially. NBA national TV viewership averaged 1.72 million per game during the 2025–26 regular season, up 8 percent year-over-year, according to Nielsen data released April 10 — driven partly by the 11-game Netflix package that launched in October and attracted a younger demographic that had drifted from linear television. Netflix reported its NBA broadcasts averaged 9.4 million viewers per game through March 2026, a figure the league has cited in ongoing streaming rights negotiations.

The first round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs begins April 18 — with the bracket featuring a No. 1 East seed that no analyst had projected in October.