The NBA got it right with the Play-In Tournament. The goal was to make games mean more down the stretch and it has done just that with teams trying to avoid the Play-In and trying to sneak into the Play-In. It makes the season matter for a 12th seed in February that they can sneak into the Play-In and maybe steal 2 games to get into the playoffs. The Play-In has been a major success, now the NBA is trying to duplicate that success with the In Season Tournament and I am not a fan of it at all.
My first question is what is the point? What is the goal of this In Season Tournament? Let’s start with the fact that this would take place in November and December, just in the thick of football season, and just a month after the season begins. If your goal is to increase ratings early in the season, you got blown out during the Finals when you went up against the NFL, so why would this work? Spoiler alert: it will not. Is the goal to bring more competitive basketball to November and December? If that is the case, do you want your stars to run out of gas for the playoffs? People watch your product in the months April, May, and June, THAT is when you should want your players to be ready. If a team is going to win a championship they are going to play over 100 games in the process so why tax players more than you already are? Have we not been discussing shortening the season for a while now for this very reason? I know people hate it but load management already exists and it exists to make sure your biggest stars are ready to play in your biggest games. So why are they trying to put more pressure on players to play with a playoff intensity when most of the country is watching a different sport?
The prize of this tournament is important. Well that is at least what the league is going to want you to believe. However, the prize of the tournament is not going to be important. Let’s say the NBA decides to give the winner of the In Season Tournament a guaranteed playoff spot. Now let’s say this In Season Tournament existed last season and the Lakers won it because both LeBron and Anthony Davis were healthy and played well. That all the sudden takes away your biggest story from the end of the regular season last year which was the utter collapse of the Los Angeles Lakers, a team some picked to win the championship. Let’s say that there is an advantage for a team in the playoffs that wins this tournament and the Bulls, who were probably the best team in the league in November and December, win it. The Bulls stunk last season and they got pounded in the first round but since they were hot early in the season they got to have an advantage in the playoffs. However, let’s be real on what the prize is going to be; cash to the players and the teams and some trophy that no one cares about.
I want to dive into the soccer argument and why comparing soccer’s tournaments to what the NBA is trying to create is silly. Let’s start with the fact that most of the soccer tournaments are played amongst teams in all different leagues from all around the world. Teams that likely would not get to play against one another otherwise go head to head in these different tournaments, that is not something the NBA has an option of doing because all the best players in the world play in their league. We can also talk about how there are a bunch of soccer tournaments that no one cares about and the ones that people do have been around for so long they are an integral part of the sport. What makes you think that this In Season Tournament the NBA is trying to create would be anything but the former?
In case it was not clear, I am not a fan of the In Season Tournament but I think it was. It looks like a money grab from the NBA, which is a $9 billion company and just announced that the salary cap is expected to come in above previous projections for the 2023-24 season. Thus, the question is why does the NBA feel the need to do this? Frankly, I have no idea and think that the league should not do it but an In Season Tournament seems inevitable at this point. The NBA got it right with the Play-In Tournament and maybe that is why they feel the need to force this In Season Tournament on us.
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