How does the Inter High bracket work in Slam Dunk?

The story's competitive structure is Japan's real school system. Shohoku first enters the Kanagawa prefectural tournament, where only the top two teams advance to the Inter High, the national championship. The prefecture is stacked: Kainan, the reigning power with a long unbroken run of national appearances, Shoyo, Ryonan and the rest make Kanagawa one of the strongest draws in the country.

Shohoku's path runs through that gauntlet in sequence, and the manga's first two thirds are the qualifying rounds documented game by game: the bracket is the plot. At the Inter High itself, a single-elimination draw of prefectural champions, Shohoku meets Toyotama of Osaka in the first round and is then drawn against Sannoh of Akita, the defending national champions and the strongest school team in Japan, far earlier than any fair seeding would place them.

That early collision is the series' engine: the final is not the final. Inoue built a bracket where the championship game happens in the second round, and everything this site documents about the ending follows from that draw.