The Play-In Tournament Is Good
Hot take incoming……….
The play-in tournament was a great thing for the league, and the league should keep it going for the years to come.
Some people may hate it, and it seems as if the players definitely did not like the idea of playing extra games if they didn’t have to. But, it was good for them as well as the fans. I’ll break it down real quick, first for the players, then for the fans.
For the players:
Firstly, the NBA players needed a reason to play for the regular season, even if they didn’t like it. I am a fan of the NBA in general and try to watch as many games as I can, especially the teams I root for. I got tired of players resting for whatever reason, such as sitting out the second night of back-to-backs for no reason. It sounds like a fan reason, right? Well, no, because you have had teams in the seven and eight spots in the playoffs that were resting players toward the end of the season because the ninth seed couldn’t catch them. With this, teams have an incentive to play more games and forego that rest that they haven’t necessarily earned. Being a lower seed means that you have not won enough to warrant rest or a break, and if a team and its players really want to rest, they had better start winning games to get themselves out of the play-in scenario. There is no time to be complacent when the goal is winning a championship, and the tournament makes teams care about how much they can win or lose. You hear 32 teams say that the goal is a championship, and yet, only 8 teams really feel like they’re going for it. While the play-in may not directly make teams try harder, they had better work hard enough to avoid the play-in scenario if they don't want to play those extra games.
For the Fan:
This is simple. We get to see the players playing harder than normal at points of the season when they would be sitting out. There’s a reason college basketball is more beloved, especially during March Madness, and it’s because of the potential for upsets. Certain teams feel like juggernauts throughout conference play, but once the conference tournaments arrive, we teams ratchet up their play to get a win. That intensity gets elevated to a more significant level during the actual 64-team tournament. While the play-in will not get that intense, we as fans want an elevated level of intensity during the NBA season, which should help that. Fans often feel as though NBA players coast through the regular season and turn it on when the playoffs hit, but that lends itself to an anti-climatic regular season which isn’t intriguing.
Now, the season is mad long, and I get that. I’m not gonna say that they should be tryna bring EVERY single game, but they are getting paid MILLIONS of dollars to do just that. People get paid a LOT less to do a lot more and perform every time they're needed. We, as fans, do not expect perfection, but we do expect effort. The NBA had to institute fines for resting players during nationally televised games. It was getting outta control.
Rest too many games if you want to, find yourself in the play-in, having to go hard to save your season.