1982 NBA playoffs
postseason tournament

The 1982 NBA playoffs were the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association's 1981–82 season. The tournament concluded with the Western Conference champion Los Angeles Lakers defeating the Eastern Conference champion Philadelphia 76ers 4 games to 2 in the NBA Finals. Magic Johnson was named NBA Finals MVP for the second time.
It was the second NBA Finals meeting in three years between the Lakers and Sixers, and ended with the same result—a 4–2 Lakers victory—as the previous confrontation. They met again in 1983, with Philadelphia getting revenge in a sweep. The Sixers beat the Celtics again in the Eastern Conference Finals, the second of their three series wins in a four-year stretch.
The Bullets' 2–0 sweep of the Nets was their last playoff series victory until 2005.
This was the third straight year the Bucks failed to advance to the third round with the #2 seed despite a first-round bye, although they did not have the better record in each of those matchups, and thus not having home-court advantage.
Bracket
First round
Eastern Conference first round
(3) Philadelphia 76ers vs. (6) Atlanta Hawks
This is the most recent playoff series between the 76ers & Hawks until 2021.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1982 NBA playoffs” is postseason tournament. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through playoffs, postseason and tournament, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “1982 NBA playoffs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.