Quinn’s Quickies: “Success” of NBA In-Season Tournament Raises Questions

Apparently, I’m wrong. The NBA In-Season Tournament was a success. All the reports that I can find say that TV ratings for the NBA were up during the tournament compared to the same time last year. Players were enthused by it, including Trae Young, who I’m a big fan of.

In the end, it’s not hard to understand why this worked – money. The league incentivized the tournament – players made more money for advancing. Ok. I’d be incentivized, too. There were also gambling odds on which team would win the tournament and who would win the Most Valuable Player Award, so that explains fan interest.

But there’s still something artificial about it. Competition seemed to take a back seat to marketing.

The “tournament” consisted of seemingly random games that counted as tournament games mixed with non-tournament games. At one point, the Sixers played Indiana in consecutive games in Philadelphia. The first was not part of the tournament, while the second game was a tournament game. The Sixers won the first, lost the second. I’m 50+, so maybe it’s just my age, but that’s not a tournament. Were players really more hyped up for a tournament game than a regular game? Were fans? If so, doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong with the regular season?

Commissioner Adam Silver’s love affair with the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments was the catalyst for creating the NBA version. We kept hearing about a “single elimination tournament,” words he used and has continued to use referencing the tournament.

Yet, it wasn’t single elimination until the quarter finals. According to the league site, “All 30 teams [were] randomly drawn into groups of five within their conference based on won-loss records from the 2022-23 regular season. . . . Eight teams [advanced] to the Knockout Rounds: the team with the best standing in Group Play games in each of the six groups and two ‘wild cards’ (the team from each conference with the best record in Group Play games that finished second in its group).”

So, they re-did last year? And the Lakers, who Trae Young correctly said is a “brand,” won? Hmmm.

The Sixers won 8 games in a row before the loss to Indiana, their second game in the tournament. How hard is it to think, what’s the difference between those games and the games the Lakers won? And if your answer is that it’s more difficult to win when there’s more on the line, I’ll agree with you.

But to randomly insert the “line” is stupid.

Again, the NBA In-Season Tournament worked. The league got the added attention it sought, and players went after the money. So did fans.

Is that what’s left of competition?

The Lakers are reportedly hanging a banner for their victory. I saw this video on Twitter/X of Kobe Bryant, a guy the league still reveres, talking about how the Lakers don’t hang banners for division or conference championships. I was never a big fan of Bryant, but, again, the league still attaches him to much of what they do. I’ll leave readers with his words, and they can decide for themselves what he might say about hoisting a banner based on a random set of games.

(The original video that I posted was no longer available, so I replaced it with a video from YouTube with the same speech.)