Claim: The Los Angeles Lakers are a basketball team.

The Western Conference of the National Basketball Association is made up of 15  teams , and organized into three divisions of five teams each .   Since 2006 , the three division winners and the non-division winner with the best record are seeded 1 through 4 for the playoffs in order of their record , with all remaining non-division winners seeded 5 through 8 . This leaves open the possibility that a # 2 or # 3 seed could be a non-division winner . Home-court advantage in a playoff series is decided by record , not by seeding , so if a # 4 and # 5 team met in a playoff series in which the # 5 team had the better record , the # 5 team would have home-court advantage .   The reasoning behind this seeding arrangement is that a non-division winner could have a better record than the winners of the two divisions other than the one that produced the non-division winner in question . If the three division winners were seeded 1 through 3 for the playoffs in order of their record , and all non-division winners seeded 4 through 8 , it would be possible for the two leading teams of the conference to meet in the Conference Semifinals . This actually happened in the 2006 NBA Playoffs when the two best teams in the Western Conference , the San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks , both from the Southwest Division , faced one another in the Western Conference Semifinals while the 3rd seed , the Northwest Division-leading Denver Nuggets , had fewer wins than the 4th , 5th , 6th , and 7th seeds . The NBA proposed and approved of the current format to ensure that the best two teams of a conference can meet no earlier than the NBA Conference Finals .   The Western Conference playoffs is divided into two playoffs rounds , and the NBA Conference Finals with the winner of the Conference Championship facing the Eastern Conference champion in the NBA Finals to determine the champion . All playoff series are best-of-seven .   The current divisional alignment was adopted at the start of the 2004 -- 05 season , when the now Charlotte Hornets began play as the NBA 's 30th franchise . This necessitated the move of the New Orleans Pelicans from the Eastern Conference 's Central Division to the newly created Southwest Division of the Western Conference .