Over the years, we at Minotaur Media, LLC have repeatedly tried and failed to guess how teams in the American Basketball Association (ABA) will be seeded in the ABA Playoffs.
This season, we’re getting the system straight from an ABA official who graciously walked us through the process well before the season begins. We figure that ABA fans like us are curious to understand how teams are seeded in the postseason.
All of the following information has been confirmed by the ABA official.
ABA team owners are informed about the playoffs format in advance of each season by the league. Their schedules must also be pre-approved by the ABA.
The ABA regular season consists of twenty (20) games for each team. For the 2026-27 season, this begins the weekend of October 16-18, 2026 for most teams. The regular season ends on February 28, 2027. The divisional rounds of the ABA Playoffs begin the next weekend.
Teams that fall outside of the top 16 in their region may — but aren’t guaranteed to — be able to compete in a play-in opportunity to participate in the postseason.
ABA Playoffs Format
As most ABA fans already know, the league is divided into four regions: East, Central, South, and West. Each region is divided into three or four divisions.
The ABA Playoffs begin in divisional rounds. Qualifying teams in every region in the ABA are seeded within their respective divisions after the regular season has concluded. Until the ABA Championship Weekend, the higher seed always hosts a lower seed.
On Friday, March 5, 2027, play-in games will be held to determine the #4-seed in each division as necessary. On Saturday, March 6, 2027, the #2-seed hosts the #3-seed in each division, and on Sunday, March 7, 2027, the #1-seed hosts the #4-seed.
The divisional teams that emerge from that mayhem battle it out amongst each other for the Regional Championship over the weekend of March 13-14, 2027, and each of the four region champions advance to the ABA Championship Weekend.
The 2026-27 ABA Championship Weekend will be held in Las Vegas April 16-18, 2027.
How Playoffs Seedings Are Determined
The first seeding consideration in any round of the ABA Playoffs is the number of wins each team has. For example, a 20-0 record will be seeded higher than an 18-0 team.
The second consideration is the number of losses each team has. In the event one team finishes with a 9-8 record and a second team finishes with a 9-9 record, the 9-8 team is seeded higher. Seems pretty basic, right? You’ll see soon that it isn’t always that simple.
In the event that two teams in the same division wind up with the same regular season record, the league looks at head-to-head results and then has a detailed system for tiebreakers beyond that. The ABA’s online statistical system works all of those very unlikely tiebreakers out throughout the season, and we don’t want to get that far into the weeds in this forum. In the event that two teams wind up going through that rabbit hole, the league will explain it at the time.
Where We Got it Wrong
Our mistake was thinking that winning percentage determined seeding. It does not.
Let’s look at this in practice.
Last season in the ABA Central Region Blue Division (we had a rough winter in the Midwest, so a bunch of games were cancelled for teams due to unsafe travel conditions thanks to Mother Nature), we at Minotaur Media had teams ranked by winning percentage, so our internal “seedings” looked like this:
- Steel City Yellow Jackets (clearly the #1-seed)
- Hoosier State Instigators (8-6 record, .571 winning percentage)
- Indiana Legends (8-9, .471)
- Indiana Lyons (9-11, .450)
- Indiana Shuckers (clearly the #5-seed)
That, however, is not how they were seeded by the ABA.
The Lyons were the #2-seed, the Instigators were the #3-seed, and the Legends were the #4-seed. We were confused. Why were they seeded like that?
Now we know that because the Lyons had 9 wins, while the Legends and Instigators each had 8, that ended the tiebreaker system for the Lyons. The winning percentages of each team were a non-factor, which made the Lyons a higher seed than both the Instigators and the Legends and moved them to the #2-seed.
The Instigators had 6 losses to the Legends’ 9, so that put Hoosier State above the Legends and ended that tiebreaker system, putting the HSI in the #3-seed. In this particular example, winning percentages did track, but it was not why the Instigators were seeded higher.
That makes sense now that we understand the seedings system.
We are happy to understand it moving forward, so as the season progresses, we will adjust our graphics for the ABA Central Region Blue Division and Red Division accordingly. We hope that this information helps fans across the league understand how their team will be seeded in the postseason.
Good luck to all ABA teams in the 2026-27 season!
