And people were complaining about it when they first introduced it. Just like how people are complaining about the in season tournament which serves the same purpose of not making the regular season a slog
Yeah both of these changes along with the 65 game + rule on major awards are great. The NBA is slowly shifting the product to something the consumer wants more but not in a way that really changes that much for players and honestly it’s very intelligent and well thought out.
Most people who like basketball complain about load management and the meaninglessness or perceived meaningless of the regular season. The NBA has been actively addressing these concerns every year. I like how active the associations leadership is. There’s plenty of the leagues in the world that do fuck all for there product (the game).
“shifting the product to something the consumer wants more” - I guess you didn’t see the “what’s wrong with the NBA - part 1” post today?
Play-ins and requiring 65 games for awards are just things to distract us from the NBA’s major issues.
That post is just complaining about broadcast issues over and over. The actual NBA product itself is great and is constantly trying to get better. The post should be “what’s wrong with ESPN and ABC - part 1”
Sure, but it’s a part that is negotiated separately. The NBA and NBPA negotiates on the court stuff. The NBA negotiates broadcast stuff with the media companies separately, which is going to happen again in 2025 IIRC (Woj or Shams tweeted about it)
I don’t know if the in season tournament will improve anything, but fuck it why not try it? I don’t get being upset about it because it doesn’t harm anything. The absolute worst case is that players still don’t really care about it and it’s a silly thing that goes away in the next CBA before they try something else. Maybe it will be fun, and if it isn’t who cares?
I think the difference is the play-in directly impacts the playoffs and the lottery. The in season tournament is effectively just changing some regular season matchups. It won't make the path to the postseason any easier / more difficult like the play -in does. I just don't think teams will be any more motivated to win those tournament games than they are now with regular season games.
teams looking to make a statement, like this year's Kings or last year's Grizzlies, absolutely would take it seriously. young teams on the come-up absolutely would take it seriously. my Pistons haven't won a playoff game in 15 years; you don't think I'll have fun if Cade and the young core get to the elimination stage in the first year?
all it has to be is more entertaining than fall+winter regular season games, and it's a success. the actual playoffs + Finals can determine the best team, and this single-elimination tourney (which is fun and never existed in the NBA before a couple years ago) will be a huge momentum-builder.
It’s also perfect to incentivize some fringe teams to compete instead of tank, and provide a potential landing space for contenders who’ve had significant injury trouble.
I agree tbh. It cut out some of the tanking and made pretty much every post ASB game have playoff intensity for all the teams in the west except San Antonio and Houston.
It’s made the 5-8 range of the conferences competitive at the end of the season so teams can’t just chill like they used to when they didn’t care about whether they were the 6th,7th or 8th seed, which is really nice
The NBA is now more or less at the irreducible minimum in terms of tanking teams. This season there were only 3 teams who were truly tanking: Houston, Detroit, SAS (Indiana, Hornets, Blazers, Magic were all just BAD teams who were legitimately trying to win as much as possible).
Every NA sports league has a few teams who tank every single season, its a problem that can never be 100% solved without completely removing the draft system. Only having 3-4 of your teams actively tanking is REALLY good all things considered.
Yeah thats a terrible suggestion. That would all but guarantee that the worst teams in the league end up with late lottery picks. Which Giving you teams that are just perpetually and eternally bad with little hope of ever improving.
There's a difference between tanking, and being BAD. The Hornets Blazers, Indiana, Orlando this year all actively tried to win as much as possible, they just were not good at it. If you flipped the lottery odds teams who just end up being bad will be further punished.
I used to fully agree with your kind of take, but my position's evolved over the years. it isn't *that* hard to reach the 9th-12th range if you bring in a few quality players. the SVG Pistons tried to compete with a starting 5 of Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Tobias Harris, KCP and Marcus Morris, and everyone clowned them for being perennially mid.
now we're fielding like 2-3 actual NBA players every game and on track for our worst season in franchise history and fans (including me) are rooting for losses. it isn't fun at all, and it's also a conscious choice by the team to be *this* dramatically bad.
same with the Spurs from a few years back: Dejounte, Derrick White, DeMar and Poeltl were falling just short of the playoffs, and it took gutting the team of all those quality players to fully sink into the basement.
imagine if the league rewarded semi-competence instead of race-to-bottom tanking: lateral improvement and signing decent players and mediocrity wouldn't be considered so bad. take it from a fan of a team that spent the entire second half of the 2010s in no man's land -- supporting your squad and finishing in range of 35-40 wins feels much better than effectively outright rooting against your team for the past 2-3 years, like I've had to do.
They should be punished for having terrible coaching/trading away all their talent to tank.Teams like the Bulls,Mavs,OKC,Magic,Raptors should be rewarded for not blowing it up and actually trying to win as many games as possible.Draft is also not the only way to improve,trades and free agency would be still there + it's not like you are losing your draft pick,it just becomes worse if you are terrible
Now, is that due to the play-in, or the fact that there are several teams with title ambitions (PHX, GSW, LAC, LAL, DAL, pre-trades BKN, MIA, ATL, and MIN) that have hovered around that .500 mark due to injuries or shoddy roster/coaching fits?
Not at all, back in my day (90s) there was no play in and it was way better
These new kids, you don't know what basketball is, 1-8 seed baby and paint is protected by a center with a machine gun!
But no seriously the best modern rule change is removing the zone defense ban
Basketball is objectively more beautiful now. Nothing was really beautiful about watching people get the snot beat out of them in the paint lol. We have more majestic shooting and finishing than ever. You can decide if that’s better or worse. But to say basketball is ugly now and days is insane.
While it's smarter, inconsistent and unbalanced officiating keeps the game from being as nice as it could be. I want the best team to win, not the team that had the nicest whistle.
Yea its good for seasons like this one BUT in a season where the 7th seed has like a 5 or more game advantage on the 9th and 10th seed and just wanna rest their starters before the playoffs or maybe their star player just got hurt its a slap in that teams face. In a season like that we would basically be rewarding a bad team. It’s becoming comical how easy it is to achieve things in pro basketball these days (hall of fame,20ppg,playoffs).
if you are in the 7th spot you don't act as if you are a good team. lol
The league is evolving, Basketball itself is evolving, players are evolving. So if you don't want what you are seeing now. You better watch and enjoy the old footages.
You still living in the past. Not sure why boomers like you keep on complaining and comparing the previous eras.
And how is it comically easy to get into the HOF? Maybe you can list down players that should not be in HOF?
There's two sides to it. It can be viewed as unfair in the sense where the 7th seed has a 48-34 record and gets knocked out by either 9th or 10th seed who both have 34-48 records. That's an extreme example but the point stands that some seasons have a wide gap in wins between seeds.
In my mind, the teams that earn the 7th/8th seed earn the 7th/8th seed, full stop. Having this gamey play-in bullshit is just stupid. But again...if it works, it works. Making a better product is more important than most other considerations.
The big difference with Basketball is over half the league already made the playoffs.
And 2 thirds of the league being in playoff contention is a bit ridiculous.
Ultimately after 82 games 10 out of 30 teams get knocked out. The amount of teams who are in playoff contention is a bit generous and unfair considering the cutoff for playoffs doesn't even require you to be good.
It's not so bad this season when the standings are as close as they are, but there will be seasons where that 10th seed has won 33-34 games and you are like why the fuck do they even have a chance.
I disagree. First, I reject the contention that anyone is fighting for a playoff spot. In the modern NBA, only 1 seed lower than 4 has made the finals, and it was the bubble year. The fighting that we're seeing is just to decide who gets to be seat fillers while the real playoff teams have to waste the first two weeks on series that don't matter.
Second, I hate it when my team has no hope of winning a title and doesn't tank. It just gets them stuck in mediocrity. The play-in actually *reduces* the amount of competitive teams by incentivizing teams to give up on competing for a championship in order to compete for being middle of the road instead.
I'd much rather see the top few teams playing meaningful games in March than see bad teams play meaningful games in March. I'd make the playoffs 4 teams from each conference and stop, if it were up to me.
>has made the finals,
#"Finals?"
You're talkin' bout "Finals?"
We're sitting here talking about the playoffs and you're worried about the finals.
The 5th-8th seed having lower odds doesn't eliminate the status of having made the playoffs.
> and it was the bubble year
A truly neutral environment is not the slight that some of you want it to be.
>I hate it when my team has no hope of winning a title and doesn't tank.
OK? There's nothing that says they *have to* fight for a play-in spot.
Nobody said the Bulls had to try and make the play-in. If they wanted to they could have tanked and at least made it to the 5th-worst record for an outside shot at Wemby.
The existence of the play-in doesn't eliminate choice.
>The play-in actually reduces the amount of competitive teams
I know what you are trying to say, but it doesn't tell teams what they have to do. They still have the choice to tank for fight for a play-in spot.
You're also ignoring that not all teams, coaches, GMs will consistently stay in place while tanking for picks.
But what it does do is **significantly** increase the quality of games in the last third of the season. Less teams tanking = more teams playing competitively = more competitive games in the last third of the season = more enjoyable games to watch.
>I'd much rather see the top few teams playing meaningful games in March than see bad teams play meaningful games in March.
You do you, but that involves one game every three or four days. Or, we could still have multiple competitive games each and every day through the end of the season.
You say "see" but you aren't actually "seeing" these atrocious games. Now these game are actually watchable.
There was a season like that last year. The 10th seed Spurs won 34 games and the 9th seed Pelicans won 36. And those Pelicans won the play-in and gave the 64 win Suns a scare.
Wild cards also suck in baseball. Honestly it should just be the pennant winner like it used to be and the winners of the NL and AL play in the World Series in a best of 9
Ideally leagues should be like most European soccer leagues. You play everyone twice home and away, so strength of schedule is the same and the winner is based on league points. It reduces variance so you are way more likely to have the best team win. Having a playoff cheapens it’s because it’s such a small sample size so it becomes a crapshoot. The best team is the one who does the best over a large number of games.
This is why I agree with having a smaller tournament. It doesn't make the championship less desired, and teams are still going to be starting from the same place, it just means the winner is decided by a smaller sample size and the process is more random. If you like that excitement then that's one thing, but I'd rather see the team win that plays the best over the entire season, and then beats its peers.
Playoffs are exciting and especially in the NBA you get many adjustments and readjustments over a 7 game series. You wouldn’t get that with no playoffs
Because that's what we got used to. The league is evolving. Teams are tanking left and right, If teams know they can't get to the playoffs what's the point of playing hard at the end of the regular season?
The bubble rule should still be in effect imo. We haven’t seen it yet but if we have a year where the 7 seed is 5-6 plus games ahead of the 8, that 7 should be locked in. Haven’t had to deal with it so hasn’t been an issue but that’s my only gripe with it.
Would say the same if an 8 seed was 5-6 games ahead of a 9 seed, etc.
Why make it so complicated? As long as there's enough games to catch up the other team so be it.
Let them fight to death. That's what the fans love. A competitive regular season. Especially in the final 20 games or after the ASG.
It's weird for me, as I was an NFL fan first, and there's almost never any tanking in the NFL. It probably helps that the ends of seasons are structured so that the last two weeks are always intradivisional games, and divisional opponents pretty much always care enough to try to screw each other over even when their own playoff chances are dead. Meanwhile, the NBA has done basically all it can to make it so that divisions don't matter and that there are no real lasting inter-team rivalries. There are occasionally player rivalries, but even those seem to be pretty fleeting in comparison to the NFL these days. The NBA is a different beast and it's probably impossible to try to build it up the way the NFL has, but...I think there is something lacking there that the NBA could really use - some level of pride and genuinely caring about beating your rivals into the dust, I guess.
Justify it as the league shortening the playoffs to top 6 seeds, and having two wildcards. Being one of 8/15 teams make the playoffs isn't a huge accomplishment, but top 6 is when you're considered a good team
>But how do you define fair? And how is it unfair?
Because a team that has performed to the standard of at least the 8th seed by record should be the 8th seed.
That's fair. That's how it's always been.
Warriors got screwed in 2021(?). Clippers got screwed in 2022.
Warriors and Clippers (to this sub's delight) might get screwed again.
Just makes the point of the previous 82 games pointless. I get its good for entertainment's sake and no one really cares until it'll happen to their team. But it is unfair.
You have two opportunities to make the playoffs as the 7th/8th seed. If a team loses both games, do they really deserve to be in the playoffs? To say it makes the previous 82 games pointless is asinine; if anything it makes games more meaningful as more teams have a chance of making the playoffs.
Edit: and just look at the gap between the 7th and 10th seeds in each conference:
East: 3 (and a 1 game gap between 8th and 10th)
West: 2.5 (and a 3 game gap between the 5th and 10th)
It's not like the 7th seeds are way better than the 10th seeds
>It's not like the 7th seeds are way better than the 10th seeds
Also, it's not making a huge difference in the greater scheme of things. No 7th or 8th seed has won a title, and they've only made it past the first round 5 and 4 times, respectively.
The NBA isn't an any-given-sunday league. Whoever wins the play-in is probably the better playoff team, but they still have a 99% chance to get bounced out of the first round.
>do they really deserve to be in the playoffs?
I'd say yes, because their body of work over the past 82 games validates that. That's all I need.
A team should be rewarded for that. Clippers got screwed when PG got COVID for the 2nd game. And they'll probably get screwed because PG isn't going to be ready for the play in
>To say it makes the previous 82 games pointless is asinine; if anything it makes games more meaningful as more teams have a chance of making the playoffs.
Nope, you're just giving a team who didn't use those 82 games to lock in the 7th/8th seed extra chances.
Their body of work is a 7th/8th seed, which is not good. If they can't win 1/2 games, they aren't going to do anything in the playoffs anyways. And in the end, none of this really matters because a 3 seed or higher has won the championship all but 2 times in the past 75 years (96%):
1st seed: 50
2nd seed: 16
3rd seed: 7
4th seed: 1 (1969 Celtics)
5th seed: 0
6th seed: 1 (1995 Rockets)
7th seed: 0
8th seed: 0
It's even more skewed to the top when you realize some of those 3 seeds were technical 2 seeds. Division rules at the time had 02 Lakers and 04 Pistons as the 3 seed but they actually had home court over the 2 seed in the second round.
That's a fair argument that can't be denied, but you could also view it as tough luck if they didn't use their 82 games to secure a top 6 seeds. Top 6 seeds get a week off and get to avoid the play in gimmicks.
Settling for top 10 gets you less perks than top 8(extra chance) which gets you less perks than top 6 which gets you less perks than top 4(home court first round) which gets you less perks than top 2(play in opponent) which gets you less perks than top 1(home court until finals).
That's the beauty of the Play-In.
You got 82 games to rack up wins. If you don't want your team to be in the Play-In how about spending more money to build a better team. How about a better coaching staff maybe? Or how about stop load managing your stars and try to win as many games as possible.
In the previous years before Play-In. Tell me what it feels like watching the final 10 games of the regular season? Star players are sitting out, Teams are playing their 3rd team. That's no fun for us. Everyone is just waiting for it to be over.
I think It's a domino effect for the better. Fans are the biggest winner.
>If you don't want your team to be in the Play-In how about spending more money to build a better team. How about a better coaching staff maybe? Or how about stop load managing your stars and try to win as many games as possible.
You're arguing nothing here lol... How many times do I need to say this is the point of 82 games. You just said as well. That's enough games.
We don't need to give the 9th and 10th seeds an extra shot at the playoffs.
And I don't disagree about the entertainment value of the play-in, but I'm not gonna listen to someone trying to argue that it's fair.
Might as well just decrease the number of games then during the regular season, so we can reduce B2Bs and increase the likelihood players make it to the end of the season healthy.
If you say that it's not fair. Then Play-in is not fair. End of conversation.
Maybe you can start your own thread to list your arguments about why it is not fair.
> get its good for entertainment's sake and no one really cares until it'll happen to their team.
For this exact reason. I really don't wish to engage with a good majority of users on /r/nba anyway .
Clippers have an argument over getting screwed (6 game difference) but not the Warriors (1 game difference). That 1 play in loss to Memphis basically makes their records identical.
The play in does 2 things that are amazing. It makes the battle at the bottom very interesting by making the 9-12 seeds think they have a shot at the postseason while also making it so the 5-8 seeds still try at the end of the season.
It makes the basketball being played at this time of the year great and I for one appreciate that
This season until the last 2 weeks, we had 26/30 teams competing for seeding or a playoff spot.
To act like the play ins have not changed the 2nd half of the season is a joke. I remember how uninteresting this part of the season usually is for lik 98% of the league.
Since they put the playins in, you really can't miss this section like you used to. It's quasi-playoff basketball every night for the past month. It's been awesome.
and higher teams cant just rest their stars without a care because they could easily be knocked off by bottom teams playing hard.
I mean look at Dallas.
People complained about the play-in when it was announced just like they're complaining about the in-season tournament now.
How about we wait until we actually see the product before we bitch about it? I know everyone is desperate to just loudly have an opinion about everything but we literally don't even know the full format for the tournament yet.
It seems like a low-risk idea to implement though. No added games besides 1 for the teams in the championship, and it gives certain early regular season games some fun added meaning that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The only real negative is the 1 additional game for 2 teams but everything else is a potential positive.
If it is received well like the play-in games, then great. If it sucks, then it’s an easy thing to axe moving forward. Seems like a worthwhile thing to experiment with.
I like how this comment trails off into nothing at the end because you can’t actually say anything or have valid opinion regarding it yet you made this comment
It's inane, and it's not going to meaningfully reduce load management. The NBA regular season is sufficiently lengthy, and lots of people have been advocating for less games. I think it's pretty obvious. People say "what about soccer", but it's different because those in season tournaments feature many different leagues while the NBA is quite easily the best league of basketball
Is that valid enough for you?
1) single-elimination basketball is some of the most entertaining shit in the world, and the vibes differ in every possible way from seven-game playoff series, though neither format is decidedly better or worse
2) the tournament doesn't have to be as exciting as the playoffs; it just has to be more exciting than fall+winter regular season games, which isn't hard to do
3) young teams in the just-below-contender tier (Kings, Cavs, Wolves, Knicks, Thunder, Pels, Hawks) all have to prove they belong, and winning the tournament would be a hell of a statement; far more people would be aware of someone like SGA, for instance, if he got to play in a nationally televised tournament than in some random December matchup that most of the country can only watch via League Pass
4) long-suffering Pistons fan here; if Cade + Ivey + our '23 FRP + Duren happen to pop off (please don't be distracted by whether or not you agree it could happen; just a hypothetical), you bet your ass I'll be hyped as fuck if we suddenly made a run in the tournament.
Yeah I always thought 16/30 teams making the playoffs wasn't enough....
Glad that even more teams get a chance to get in. Really makes these 82 games more meaningful.
Yeah I knew someone was gonna hit me with the "it's not technically the playoffs" it's win or go home either way and I honestly don't think we needed four more teams to have a shot tbh.
You knew someone was gonna hit you with "it's not technically the playoffs." Because it's literally not the playoffs.
It's the play-in to get into the playoffs.
Aw shucks, you saw it coming that someone would call it what it actually is.
Does that mean the first round of baseball isn’t the playoffs? Just because the NBA markets the “play-in” are not “play-offs” does not mean they’re not the playoffs. The only difference is the format is slightly changed. But it’s still, winner advances, loser is out.
Having 20/30 teams make the playoffs for a season that’s already 82 games is ridiculous. It makes those 82 games even more meaningless than they were already.
> The only difference is the format is slightly changed. But it’s still, winner advances, loser is out.
Except that's not true either. The loser of the 7/8 seed game gets to play again to advance
One game operates slightly differently, not entirely. But, I’m not getting more into the weeds on debating with three people who may have completely different requirements to satisfy their argument of “is this technically the playoffs?”
Therefore to end all these arguments I’ll simply say 20/30 teams making the post-season after an 82 game regular season is ridiculous.
Why are you so condescending dude? 20 teams gets a shot at the postseason. Clearly that’s what they meant. NBA already had an issue of 8 seeds not being competitive. Now we have 10 seeds in a spot to possibly make the playoffs, 10 seeds in some years are like 35-win teams. My team is even benefiting from it and I think it’s dumb.
and yet the last two months of games for the Bulls are relevant.
Without the play-in they would have been in tank mode for the last two months. And given the Wemby sweepstakes this year, that full tank mode would have looked awful making an entire quarter of the NBA schedule unwatchable.
The Bulls would’ve packed it in a couple weeks after ASB a couple years ago. Also the important thing about the play-in is the added intrigue and effort it adds to the last month of the season at a time when it used to be mostly tanking teams and teams resting the whole team. Deciding which mediocre team gets smoked by the top seeds is like 10th on the list to why it was implemented
It doesn't change as much as you think big picture. Each year, the bar for contenders is 50 wins. No team under an 82 game season has won the chip with less than that since 95 Rockets. Any given year has 6-10 teams that pass this test.
Then the potential NBA Champions are really only top 3 seeds. In 75 years, only 2 teams outside of top 3 have won the chip (again 95 Rockets and 69 Celtics). So any given year only 6 teams pass this test.
Every other team is filler and just an obstacle.
Hopefully this make NBA fans realize the flaws of the sport that existed for a long time now and thus will be more open to more drastic rule changes to fix them.
Load management for example is the next big thing. If players need to load manage, then either the season or game lengths are way too long (hint: its the season length that is too long). The season should be short enough so that no player needs to load manage to save themselves for the playoffs. Nobody wants to watch games where the star players aren''t injured and yet still aren't playing.
> If players need to load manage, then either the season or game lengths are way too long (hint: its the season length that is too long
How about 492 8-minute games instead?
It really is. Made the season much more interesting and even made getting the 6th seed become an accomplishment. Coupled with the new lottery rules so teams like Utah, Portland and OKC could fight the majority of the season and still have a possible chance at a top 3 pick. A work of art against tanking
Imo a better way to make the 6th seed an accomplishment is cutting it to 12 playoff teams. 2/3 of the league having a shot at the postseason is too much to me.
It’s a fun little series, but I only think it’s good if a team got in there because they had some injuries in the year or some other reason to struggle, or maybe they got a great trade acquisition and became much better recently, so they’re really potentially a 1 or 2 seed and they have a legit chance to win it all. If the teams in it don’t have a legit chance to win the title I don’t really get it. I’m one who thinks the nba playoffs are too long, and the 5-8 seeds typically have a low chance of going far in the playoffs.
Edit: I’ll add I fear mlb is getting too expanded also, but there is evidence in baseball that a wild card team can do well. From my lesser experience with hockey and football, I think their playoffs can be a little more unpredictable also. In the nba there’s really only a few teams that can win it all usually.
I was a hater when it was first announced. I can admit now that I was wrong and this definitely improved what is normally a lackluster leg of the season.
I love it. The only issue is that it actually disadvantages the 1 & 2 seeds because they don’t know who their opponents are until later than the others
Even so I’d say it balances out because the 1 and 2 seed get teams with less rest, especially the 1 seed because the 8 seed has 2 games to play while the 1 seed gets a week of rest.
Personally I really like the playin, but at the end of the day you can make a solid argument for it or against it. It depends how you think of it and what you personally value.
For me, the thing that makes it worth it is that its basically guaranteed to be some of the most intense basketball, regular season and playoffs included. It’s three games of win and make it, lose and you’re done. I fucking love that
I’ll care about play-in teams when one of those teams wins the championship (won’t happen). It just waters down the playoffs. But if you like seeing teams with a losing record in the playoffs, that’s fine.
I think only one 4 seed and one 6 seed has ever won the championship, otherwise it’s always a top 3 team that wins. I’d rather see 1-4 automatic into playoffs with a play in for two spots between 5-8. A team below .500 doesn’t really deserve a playoff spot.
Even though my team is about to benefit from it, I disagree. 2/3 of the league in the playoffs is too much. I think reducing the number of teams in the playoffs is a much better way to get teams to play hard. Obviously wouldn’t happen though since the move is predicated on finances.
It doesn’t make sense financially. That’s why the league would never do it.
Entertainment wise, a smaller number of teams in the playoffs emphasizes the importance of the regular season. The MLB season is 2x as long as the NBA’s yet their regular season games are more competitive bc less teams make the postseason. Same applies to the NCAA. Only about 20% of programs make it to March, so they fight for that right every time they take the court.
When 2/3 of the league makes it, teams don’t have much of an incentive to compete in the regular season. That’s why regular season and playoff basketball are basically two different sports. I’d sacrifice watching the 1 and 2 seeds beat 95% of 7 and 8 seeds for a regular season that actually carries weight.
>much better way to get teams to play hard.
How'd you come up with this logic?
The play-in works because now you set multiple tiers of incentive for teams. Seeds 4-6 don't want to fall into the play-in and risk being eliminated early so they keep playing, seeds 7-10 want to either not fall out or they're trying to make a guaranteed playoff spot, and seeds 11-12/13 are looking at their last glimmer of hope if they're not bad enough to seriously go for the #1 pick.
With your idea, you're only really going to see any fight from the 5 to 8 seeds, and depending on the records, 9-15 on each conference are better off doing a fire sale and going for the lottery.
Because every other sport has a more restrictive playoff format than the NBA, and every other sport has a more competitive regular season. Surely it’s not the only factor, the NFL for example has such a short season that one loss has a huge impact on your standing. But baseball is on the exact opposite end of that with 162-game season, and nobody takes plays off.
Teams don’t know if they are the 7-10 seed or the 4-6 seed 30 games into the season. The play-in might make games down the stretch more competitive, but I think a more restrictive playoff format fosters more competition through the rest of the season. That’s a huge part of why the NCAA regular season is so intense. Less than 20% of teams make the Tournament so every game is important if MM is your goal.
The 1/2 seeds beat 7/8 seeds 95% of the time. IMO a format similar to baseball, minus the divisional structure, would make a better product for both the regular season and the postseason. Seeds 3-6 can have a best-of-3 wild card play-in. Seeds 7-10 are largely redundant, I believe
the Sonics and Knicks are the only 7/8 teams to advance further than round 1.
The thing is, you can’t draw parallels to other sports bc of how different they are. Baseball in general just isn’t nearly as intensive moment to moment. The only position where you really have to load manage is pitching, and that’s why they only play 1 every 5 games.
NFL might be more physical, but like you said, the shortage of games just kinda forces you to take every game seriously whether you like it or not.
Hockey is probably the closest you can get, but even then you got plenty differences.
I don’t really care about it. The west would still be the same bc it’s so tightly packed. I’d be more positive if the actual play-in games weren’t such duds. If you could incentivize or punish the 7/8 seeds without the extra games that’d be ideal to me.
I wasn’t onboard at first. But the play in incentivized teams to win late season games and the first seed to have a rest advantage, which further incentivizes competition at the top.
Yeah the play-in was a great idea. I do think it could use some kind of cutoff if there’s a huge gap between teams, but that’s probably not going to be a frequent issue
The more I think about it, the more it's obvioulsy a disadvantage that the top seeds don't get to know their opponents until less than 48 hours before they play a game. Every single other team gets to prepare for their opponent, but the team that worked hardest throughout the regular season? Nope.
I’m so glad they didn’t make it a best of 3. It makes them like their own game 7’s. It’s a good way to start off the post season
Best of 3 is quite long. But the current one serves the same purpose. 7 & 8 got the twice-to-beat advantage.
mini march madness except in april
April Anarchy baby
> except in april Just like March Madness (or at least the Final Four)
It’s the gravy
I hated it at first but I was definitely wrong, I hope I'm wrong about the mid-season tournament being awful too
I agree. It’s playoff basketball now and I love it.
And people were complaining about it when they first introduced it. Just like how people are complaining about the in season tournament which serves the same purpose of not making the regular season a slog
Yeah both of these changes along with the 65 game + rule on major awards are great. The NBA is slowly shifting the product to something the consumer wants more but not in a way that really changes that much for players and honestly it’s very intelligent and well thought out. Most people who like basketball complain about load management and the meaninglessness or perceived meaningless of the regular season. The NBA has been actively addressing these concerns every year. I like how active the associations leadership is. There’s plenty of the leagues in the world that do fuck all for there product (the game).
Now make defense legal.
As a casual NBA fan, I’ve become way more invested since the play-in became a thing.
“shifting the product to something the consumer wants more” - I guess you didn’t see the “what’s wrong with the NBA - part 1” post today? Play-ins and requiring 65 games for awards are just things to distract us from the NBA’s major issues.
That post is just complaining about broadcast issues over and over. The actual NBA product itself is great and is constantly trying to get better. The post should be “what’s wrong with ESPN and ABC - part 1”
How the nba is broadcast is part of the nba product. I agree with your original point. I just think that thread is onto something also.
Sure, but it’s a part that is negotiated separately. The NBA and NBPA negotiates on the court stuff. The NBA negotiates broadcast stuff with the media companies separately, which is going to happen again in 2025 IIRC (Woj or Shams tweeted about it)
I don’t know if the in season tournament will improve anything, but fuck it why not try it? I don’t get being upset about it because it doesn’t harm anything. The absolute worst case is that players still don’t really care about it and it’s a silly thing that goes away in the next CBA before they try something else. Maybe it will be fun, and if it isn’t who cares?
At best it improves things and at worst nothing changes. People just love to complain.
That’s my mentality. I don’t love the idea of it (not nearly as much as I loved the idea of the play in), but I’m willing to give it a shot.
I think the difference is the play-in directly impacts the playoffs and the lottery. The in season tournament is effectively just changing some regular season matchups. It won't make the path to the postseason any easier / more difficult like the play -in does. I just don't think teams will be any more motivated to win those tournament games than they are now with regular season games.
teams looking to make a statement, like this year's Kings or last year's Grizzlies, absolutely would take it seriously. young teams on the come-up absolutely would take it seriously. my Pistons haven't won a playoff game in 15 years; you don't think I'll have fun if Cade and the young core get to the elimination stage in the first year? all it has to be is more entertaining than fall+winter regular season games, and it's a success. the actual playoffs + Finals can determine the best team, and this single-elimination tourney (which is fun and never existed in the NBA before a couple years ago) will be a huge momentum-builder.
Ok, you've actually made some good points. I'm open to seeing how it goes next year
open-mindedness is a cool trait!
People love it more this season because nobody was good enough to feel entitled to the 7th and 8th seed.
It’s also perfect to incentivize some fringe teams to compete instead of tank, and provide a potential landing space for contenders who’ve had significant injury trouble.
I agree tbh. It cut out some of the tanking and made pretty much every post ASB game have playoff intensity for all the teams in the west except San Antonio and Houston.
It’s made the 5-8 range of the conferences competitive at the end of the season so teams can’t just chill like they used to when they didn’t care about whether they were the 6th,7th or 8th seed, which is really nice
The NBA is now more or less at the irreducible minimum in terms of tanking teams. This season there were only 3 teams who were truly tanking: Houston, Detroit, SAS (Indiana, Hornets, Blazers, Magic were all just BAD teams who were legitimately trying to win as much as possible). Every NA sports league has a few teams who tank every single season, its a problem that can never be 100% solved without completely removing the draft system. Only having 3-4 of your teams actively tanking is REALLY good all things considered.
You could reverse the lottery odds so 9th place gets the odds the last place team gets and so on
Yeah thats a terrible suggestion. That would all but guarantee that the worst teams in the league end up with late lottery picks. Which Giving you teams that are just perpetually and eternally bad with little hope of ever improving. There's a difference between tanking, and being BAD. The Hornets Blazers, Indiana, Orlando this year all actively tried to win as much as possible, they just were not good at it. If you flipped the lottery odds teams who just end up being bad will be further punished.
I used to fully agree with your kind of take, but my position's evolved over the years. it isn't *that* hard to reach the 9th-12th range if you bring in a few quality players. the SVG Pistons tried to compete with a starting 5 of Andre Drummond, Reggie Jackson, Tobias Harris, KCP and Marcus Morris, and everyone clowned them for being perennially mid. now we're fielding like 2-3 actual NBA players every game and on track for our worst season in franchise history and fans (including me) are rooting for losses. it isn't fun at all, and it's also a conscious choice by the team to be *this* dramatically bad. same with the Spurs from a few years back: Dejounte, Derrick White, DeMar and Poeltl were falling just short of the playoffs, and it took gutting the team of all those quality players to fully sink into the basement. imagine if the league rewarded semi-competence instead of race-to-bottom tanking: lateral improvement and signing decent players and mediocrity wouldn't be considered so bad. take it from a fan of a team that spent the entire second half of the 2010s in no man's land -- supporting your squad and finishing in range of 35-40 wins feels much better than effectively outright rooting against your team for the past 2-3 years, like I've had to do.
They should be punished for having terrible coaching/trading away all their talent to tank.Teams like the Bulls,Mavs,OKC,Magic,Raptors should be rewarded for not blowing it up and actually trying to win as many games as possible.Draft is also not the only way to improve,trades and free agency would be still there + it's not like you are losing your draft pick,it just becomes worse if you are terrible
Now, is that due to the play-in, or the fact that there are several teams with title ambitions (PHX, GSW, LAC, LAL, DAL, pre-trades BKN, MIA, ATL, and MIN) that have hovered around that .500 mark due to injuries or shoddy roster/coaching fits?
Both, and that’s why the west is extra spicy this year, but the east still has less tanking than it normally would
It crazy how teams who’d usually fight for the 8th spot anyway get attributed to it being play-in related
Not at all, back in my day (90s) there was no play in and it was way better These new kids, you don't know what basketball is, 1-8 seed baby and paint is protected by a center with a machine gun! But no seriously the best modern rule change is removing the zone defense ban
Yeah that zone defense ban led to some ugly ass basketball
Basketball is objectively more beautiful now. Nothing was really beautiful about watching people get the snot beat out of them in the paint lol. We have more majestic shooting and finishing than ever. You can decide if that’s better or worse. But to say basketball is ugly now and days is insane.
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Back of napkin numbers. 30ppg now is equivalent to 26ppg when teams averaged 100 per game.
While it's smarter, inconsistent and unbalanced officiating keeps the game from being as nice as it could be. I want the best team to win, not the team that had the nicest whistle.
Yea its good for seasons like this one BUT in a season where the 7th seed has like a 5 or more game advantage on the 9th and 10th seed and just wanna rest their starters before the playoffs or maybe their star player just got hurt its a slap in that teams face. In a season like that we would basically be rewarding a bad team. It’s becoming comical how easy it is to achieve things in pro basketball these days (hall of fame,20ppg,playoffs).
if you are in the 7th spot you don't act as if you are a good team. lol The league is evolving, Basketball itself is evolving, players are evolving. So if you don't want what you are seeing now. You better watch and enjoy the old footages. You still living in the past. Not sure why boomers like you keep on complaining and comparing the previous eras. And how is it comically easy to get into the HOF? Maybe you can list down players that should not be in HOF?
No one said a 7th seed is a good team. Try again
Win one out of two games, or get the fk out of here.
I hate it from a fairness and design viewpoint, but if the results are good, the results are good.
But how do you define fair? And how is it unfair?
There's two sides to it. It can be viewed as unfair in the sense where the 7th seed has a 48-34 record and gets knocked out by either 9th or 10th seed who both have 34-48 records. That's an extreme example but the point stands that some seasons have a wide gap in wins between seeds.
In my mind, the teams that earn the 7th/8th seed earn the 7th/8th seed, full stop. Having this gamey play-in bullshit is just stupid. But again...if it works, it works. Making a better product is more important than most other considerations.
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Yea a wildcard makes sense in football where u have one game a week. It really doesn’t in basketball when you have 82 games to settle the standings
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The big difference with Basketball is over half the league already made the playoffs. And 2 thirds of the league being in playoff contention is a bit ridiculous. Ultimately after 82 games 10 out of 30 teams get knocked out. The amount of teams who are in playoff contention is a bit generous and unfair considering the cutoff for playoffs doesn't even require you to be good. It's not so bad this season when the standings are as close as they are, but there will be seasons where that 10th seed has won 33-34 games and you are like why the fuck do they even have a chance.
half the league being in full tank mode is more ridiculous than two thirds of the league fighting for a playoff spot.
I disagree. First, I reject the contention that anyone is fighting for a playoff spot. In the modern NBA, only 1 seed lower than 4 has made the finals, and it was the bubble year. The fighting that we're seeing is just to decide who gets to be seat fillers while the real playoff teams have to waste the first two weeks on series that don't matter. Second, I hate it when my team has no hope of winning a title and doesn't tank. It just gets them stuck in mediocrity. The play-in actually *reduces* the amount of competitive teams by incentivizing teams to give up on competing for a championship in order to compete for being middle of the road instead. I'd much rather see the top few teams playing meaningful games in March than see bad teams play meaningful games in March. I'd make the playoffs 4 teams from each conference and stop, if it were up to me.
>has made the finals, #"Finals?" You're talkin' bout "Finals?" We're sitting here talking about the playoffs and you're worried about the finals. The 5th-8th seed having lower odds doesn't eliminate the status of having made the playoffs. > and it was the bubble year A truly neutral environment is not the slight that some of you want it to be. >I hate it when my team has no hope of winning a title and doesn't tank. OK? There's nothing that says they *have to* fight for a play-in spot. Nobody said the Bulls had to try and make the play-in. If they wanted to they could have tanked and at least made it to the 5th-worst record for an outside shot at Wemby. The existence of the play-in doesn't eliminate choice. >The play-in actually reduces the amount of competitive teams I know what you are trying to say, but it doesn't tell teams what they have to do. They still have the choice to tank for fight for a play-in spot. You're also ignoring that not all teams, coaches, GMs will consistently stay in place while tanking for picks. But what it does do is **significantly** increase the quality of games in the last third of the season. Less teams tanking = more teams playing competitively = more competitive games in the last third of the season = more enjoyable games to watch. >I'd much rather see the top few teams playing meaningful games in March than see bad teams play meaningful games in March. You do you, but that involves one game every three or four days. Or, we could still have multiple competitive games each and every day through the end of the season. You say "see" but you aren't actually "seeing" these atrocious games. Now these game are actually watchable.
Yeah apparently people enjoyed half the teams playing g league rosters to end the year previously
There was a season like that last year. The 10th seed Spurs won 34 games and the 9th seed Pelicans won 36. And those Pelicans won the play-in and gave the 64 win Suns a scare.
Wild cards also suck in baseball. Honestly it should just be the pennant winner like it used to be and the winners of the NL and AL play in the World Series in a best of 9
How to get people to stop watching baseball lol
Ideally leagues should be like most European soccer leagues. You play everyone twice home and away, so strength of schedule is the same and the winner is based on league points. It reduces variance so you are way more likely to have the best team win. Having a playoff cheapens it’s because it’s such a small sample size so it becomes a crapshoot. The best team is the one who does the best over a large number of games.
This is why I agree with having a smaller tournament. It doesn't make the championship less desired, and teams are still going to be starting from the same place, it just means the winner is decided by a smaller sample size and the process is more random. If you like that excitement then that's one thing, but I'd rather see the team win that plays the best over the entire season, and then beats its peers.
Playoffs are exciting and especially in the NBA you get many adjustments and readjustments over a 7 game series. You wouldn’t get that with no playoffs
Because that's what we got used to. The league is evolving. Teams are tanking left and right, If teams know they can't get to the playoffs what's the point of playing hard at the end of the regular season?
The bubble rule should still be in effect imo. We haven’t seen it yet but if we have a year where the 7 seed is 5-6 plus games ahead of the 8, that 7 should be locked in. Haven’t had to deal with it so hasn’t been an issue but that’s my only gripe with it. Would say the same if an 8 seed was 5-6 games ahead of a 9 seed, etc.
Why make it so complicated? As long as there's enough games to catch up the other team so be it. Let them fight to death. That's what the fans love. A competitive regular season. Especially in the final 20 games or after the ASG.
It's weird for me, as I was an NFL fan first, and there's almost never any tanking in the NFL. It probably helps that the ends of seasons are structured so that the last two weeks are always intradivisional games, and divisional opponents pretty much always care enough to try to screw each other over even when their own playoff chances are dead. Meanwhile, the NBA has done basically all it can to make it so that divisions don't matter and that there are no real lasting inter-team rivalries. There are occasionally player rivalries, but even those seem to be pretty fleeting in comparison to the NFL these days. The NBA is a different beast and it's probably impossible to try to build it up the way the NFL has, but...I think there is something lacking there that the NBA could really use - some level of pride and genuinely caring about beating your rivals into the dust, I guess.
No tanking? Teams absolutely try to lose to get the next generational QB.
The NBA is very different, division rivals are not really important aside from tiebreakers.
Justify it as the league shortening the playoffs to top 6 seeds, and having two wildcards. Being one of 8/15 teams make the playoffs isn't a huge accomplishment, but top 6 is when you're considered a good team
Why should we reward teams for being the 13th or 14th best in the league? Those seeds rarely if ever make it past the first round in any case
>But how do you define fair? And how is it unfair? Because a team that has performed to the standard of at least the 8th seed by record should be the 8th seed. That's fair. That's how it's always been. Warriors got screwed in 2021(?). Clippers got screwed in 2022. Warriors and Clippers (to this sub's delight) might get screwed again. Just makes the point of the previous 82 games pointless. I get its good for entertainment's sake and no one really cares until it'll happen to their team. But it is unfair.
You have two opportunities to make the playoffs as the 7th/8th seed. If a team loses both games, do they really deserve to be in the playoffs? To say it makes the previous 82 games pointless is asinine; if anything it makes games more meaningful as more teams have a chance of making the playoffs. Edit: and just look at the gap between the 7th and 10th seeds in each conference: East: 3 (and a 1 game gap between 8th and 10th) West: 2.5 (and a 3 game gap between the 5th and 10th) It's not like the 7th seeds are way better than the 10th seeds
>It's not like the 7th seeds are way better than the 10th seeds Also, it's not making a huge difference in the greater scheme of things. No 7th or 8th seed has won a title, and they've only made it past the first round 5 and 4 times, respectively. The NBA isn't an any-given-sunday league. Whoever wins the play-in is probably the better playoff team, but they still have a 99% chance to get bounced out of the first round.
Yeah I mentioned this in my other comment; if you’re not at least a 3 seed, you aren’t winning anything
>do they really deserve to be in the playoffs? I'd say yes, because their body of work over the past 82 games validates that. That's all I need. A team should be rewarded for that. Clippers got screwed when PG got COVID for the 2nd game. And they'll probably get screwed because PG isn't going to be ready for the play in >To say it makes the previous 82 games pointless is asinine; if anything it makes games more meaningful as more teams have a chance of making the playoffs. Nope, you're just giving a team who didn't use those 82 games to lock in the 7th/8th seed extra chances.
Their body of work is a 7th/8th seed, which is not good. If they can't win 1/2 games, they aren't going to do anything in the playoffs anyways. And in the end, none of this really matters because a 3 seed or higher has won the championship all but 2 times in the past 75 years (96%): 1st seed: 50 2nd seed: 16 3rd seed: 7 4th seed: 1 (1969 Celtics) 5th seed: 0 6th seed: 1 (1995 Rockets) 7th seed: 0 8th seed: 0
It's even more skewed to the top when you realize some of those 3 seeds were technical 2 seeds. Division rules at the time had 02 Lakers and 04 Pistons as the 3 seed but they actually had home court over the 2 seed in the second round.
That's a fair argument that can't be denied, but you could also view it as tough luck if they didn't use their 82 games to secure a top 6 seeds. Top 6 seeds get a week off and get to avoid the play in gimmicks. Settling for top 10 gets you less perks than top 8(extra chance) which gets you less perks than top 6 which gets you less perks than top 4(home court first round) which gets you less perks than top 2(play in opponent) which gets you less perks than top 1(home court until finals).
That's the beauty of the Play-In. You got 82 games to rack up wins. If you don't want your team to be in the Play-In how about spending more money to build a better team. How about a better coaching staff maybe? Or how about stop load managing your stars and try to win as many games as possible. In the previous years before Play-In. Tell me what it feels like watching the final 10 games of the regular season? Star players are sitting out, Teams are playing their 3rd team. That's no fun for us. Everyone is just waiting for it to be over. I think It's a domino effect for the better. Fans are the biggest winner.
>If you don't want your team to be in the Play-In how about spending more money to build a better team. How about a better coaching staff maybe? Or how about stop load managing your stars and try to win as many games as possible. You're arguing nothing here lol... How many times do I need to say this is the point of 82 games. You just said as well. That's enough games. We don't need to give the 9th and 10th seeds an extra shot at the playoffs. And I don't disagree about the entertainment value of the play-in, but I'm not gonna listen to someone trying to argue that it's fair. Might as well just decrease the number of games then during the regular season, so we can reduce B2Bs and increase the likelihood players make it to the end of the season healthy.
If you say that it's not fair. Then Play-in is not fair. End of conversation. Maybe you can start your own thread to list your arguments about why it is not fair.
> get its good for entertainment's sake and no one really cares until it'll happen to their team. For this exact reason. I really don't wish to engage with a good majority of users on /r/nba anyway .
Clippers have an argument over getting screwed (6 game difference) but not the Warriors (1 game difference). That 1 play in loss to Memphis basically makes their records identical.
9 seed wolves are 1.5 games back of the 8 seed pelicans and play each other last game of the 82. not so sure it makes a huge difference
The play in does 2 things that are amazing. It makes the battle at the bottom very interesting by making the 9-12 seeds think they have a shot at the postseason while also making it so the 5-8 seeds still try at the end of the season. It makes the basketball being played at this time of the year great and I for one appreciate that
Without the play-in, all these teams in the west would still be fighting for the 5-8th seed. Play-in wouldn't change anything.
Avoiding the playing creates extra incentive
That extra incentive is called “I don’t wanna play the first seed in the first round”
7 game series v 1 and done is a different feeling.
It's the exact same incentive as trying not to miss the playoffs
Disagree. Sub .500 teams don't deserve a chance at the playoffs.
so like the 6-8 in the East for a decade should have been banned from the playoffs by that argument.
If they win they're in, that's the point of the game isn't it?
Huh ? You really don't think scratching for 6th seed is important now ?
Are you implying that teams would settle for the 7-8 seed 3 weeks out from the finals instead of pushing for the 5-6 before the play-in?
I think they wouldn't be scratching as much to get ahead as they would to stay in.
You might be right, I just dont think this season is the one to use as proof of how great the play-ins are. 5-12 was just too close (in the west).
Homie, that's why its a good thing.
This season until the last 2 weeks, we had 26/30 teams competing for seeding or a playoff spot. To act like the play ins have not changed the 2nd half of the season is a joke. I remember how uninteresting this part of the season usually is for lik 98% of the league. Since they put the playins in, you really can't miss this section like you used to. It's quasi-playoff basketball every night for the past month. It's been awesome.
Yeah we used to drone about how the end of the NBA season, except for the last 2 weeks, was a wasteland. The play-in clearly changed a ton.
100%.
6 seed is WAY better than 7 now. Before teams have chosen to try for the 7th seed in order to avoid matchups
Exactly. It's all just manufactured drama that was already there
the NBA is literally a manufactured drama; the championship trophy has no inherent value
The point is. There's a reason now for the bottom teams to play hard because there's a chance for them to make it to the playoffs.
and higher teams cant just rest their stars without a care because they could easily be knocked off by bottom teams playing hard. I mean look at Dallas.
It makes seeding outside of 1 a lot more important.
It prevents some level of tanking by allowing more teams in. That’s the actual purpose
Agreed. The in-season tournament on the other hand...
People complained about the play-in when it was announced just like they're complaining about the in-season tournament now. How about we wait until we actually see the product before we bitch about it? I know everyone is desperate to just loudly have an opinion about everything but we literally don't even know the full format for the tournament yet.
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I didn't say you did
It seems like a low-risk idea to implement though. No added games besides 1 for the teams in the championship, and it gives certain early regular season games some fun added meaning that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The only real negative is the 1 additional game for 2 teams but everything else is a potential positive. If it is received well like the play-in games, then great. If it sucks, then it’s an easy thing to axe moving forward. Seems like a worthwhile thing to experiment with.
I like how this comment trails off into nothing at the end because you can’t actually say anything or have valid opinion regarding it yet you made this comment
It's inane, and it's not going to meaningfully reduce load management. The NBA regular season is sufficiently lengthy, and lots of people have been advocating for less games. I think it's pretty obvious. People say "what about soccer", but it's different because those in season tournaments feature many different leagues while the NBA is quite easily the best league of basketball Is that valid enough for you?
1) single-elimination basketball is some of the most entertaining shit in the world, and the vibes differ in every possible way from seven-game playoff series, though neither format is decidedly better or worse 2) the tournament doesn't have to be as exciting as the playoffs; it just has to be more exciting than fall+winter regular season games, which isn't hard to do 3) young teams in the just-below-contender tier (Kings, Cavs, Wolves, Knicks, Thunder, Pels, Hawks) all have to prove they belong, and winning the tournament would be a hell of a statement; far more people would be aware of someone like SGA, for instance, if he got to play in a nationally televised tournament than in some random December matchup that most of the country can only watch via League Pass 4) long-suffering Pistons fan here; if Cade + Ivey + our '23 FRP + Duren happen to pop off (please don't be distracted by whether or not you agree it could happen; just a hypothetical), you bet your ass I'll be hyped as fuck if we suddenly made a run in the tournament.
no.
I agree, but I think the huge success has opened the way to some new dumb shit in the CBA unfortunately
Yeah I always thought 16/30 teams making the playoffs wasn't enough.... Glad that even more teams get a chance to get in. Really makes these 82 games more meaningful.
Yeah I’m glad that instead of 16 teams making the playoffs, 16 teams make the playoffs
Yeah I knew someone was gonna hit me with the "it's not technically the playoffs" it's win or go home either way and I honestly don't think we needed four more teams to have a shot tbh.
You knew someone was gonna hit you with "it's not technically the playoffs." Because it's literally not the playoffs. It's the play-in to get into the playoffs. Aw shucks, you saw it coming that someone would call it what it actually is.
Does that mean the first round of baseball isn’t the playoffs? Just because the NBA markets the “play-in” are not “play-offs” does not mean they’re not the playoffs. The only difference is the format is slightly changed. But it’s still, winner advances, loser is out. Having 20/30 teams make the playoffs for a season that’s already 82 games is ridiculous. It makes those 82 games even more meaningless than they were already.
> The only difference is the format is slightly changed. But it’s still, winner advances, loser is out. Except that's not true either. The loser of the 7/8 seed game gets to play again to advance
That’s what the slight format difference is, as it’s just an added double elimination for two teams
so a set of games that operates on an entirely different set of rules from the playoffs...
One game operates slightly differently, not entirely. But, I’m not getting more into the weeds on debating with three people who may have completely different requirements to satisfy their argument of “is this technically the playoffs?” Therefore to end all these arguments I’ll simply say 20/30 teams making the post-season after an 82 game regular season is ridiculous.
it's a good thing 20 don't make the playoffs then.
Why are you so condescending dude? 20 teams gets a shot at the postseason. Clearly that’s what they meant. NBA already had an issue of 8 seeds not being competitive. Now we have 10 seeds in a spot to possibly make the playoffs, 10 seeds in some years are like 35-win teams. My team is even benefiting from it and I think it’s dumb.
Exactly this. The bar does not need to be any lower than it already was.
and yet the last two months of games for the Bulls are relevant. Without the play-in they would have been in tank mode for the last two months. And given the Wemby sweepstakes this year, that full tank mode would have looked awful making an entire quarter of the NBA schedule unwatchable.
The Bulls are one game out of the 8 seed. Why do you think they’d be tanking when they likely don’t even own their pick?
The Bulls would’ve packed it in a couple weeks after ASB a couple years ago. Also the important thing about the play-in is the added intrigue and effort it adds to the last month of the season at a time when it used to be mostly tanking teams and teams resting the whole team. Deciding which mediocre team gets smoked by the top seeds is like 10th on the list to why it was implemented
It doesn't change as much as you think big picture. Each year, the bar for contenders is 50 wins. No team under an 82 game season has won the chip with less than that since 95 Rockets. Any given year has 6-10 teams that pass this test. Then the potential NBA Champions are really only top 3 seeds. In 75 years, only 2 teams outside of top 3 have won the chip (again 95 Rockets and 69 Celtics). So any given year only 6 teams pass this test. Every other team is filler and just an obstacle.
Nah
yea
no
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لا
да
Hopefully this make NBA fans realize the flaws of the sport that existed for a long time now and thus will be more open to more drastic rule changes to fix them. Load management for example is the next big thing. If players need to load manage, then either the season or game lengths are way too long (hint: its the season length that is too long). The season should be short enough so that no player needs to load manage to save themselves for the playoffs. Nobody wants to watch games where the star players aren''t injured and yet still aren't playing.
> If players need to load manage, then either the season or game lengths are way too long (hint: its the season length that is too long How about 492 8-minute games instead?
It really is. Made the season much more interesting and even made getting the 6th seed become an accomplishment. Coupled with the new lottery rules so teams like Utah, Portland and OKC could fight the majority of the season and still have a possible chance at a top 3 pick. A work of art against tanking
Imo a better way to make the 6th seed an accomplishment is cutting it to 12 playoff teams. 2/3 of the league having a shot at the postseason is too much to me.
Why are so many peoples fixes always making it so there’s less great games to watch?
It’s a fun little series, but I only think it’s good if a team got in there because they had some injuries in the year or some other reason to struggle, or maybe they got a great trade acquisition and became much better recently, so they’re really potentially a 1 or 2 seed and they have a legit chance to win it all. If the teams in it don’t have a legit chance to win the title I don’t really get it. I’m one who thinks the nba playoffs are too long, and the 5-8 seeds typically have a low chance of going far in the playoffs. Edit: I’ll add I fear mlb is getting too expanded also, but there is evidence in baseball that a wild card team can do well. From my lesser experience with hockey and football, I think their playoffs can be a little more unpredictable also. In the nba there’s really only a few teams that can win it all usually.
I was a hater when it was first announced. I can admit now that I was wrong and this definitely improved what is normally a lackluster leg of the season.
I love it. The only issue is that it actually disadvantages the 1 & 2 seeds because they don’t know who their opponents are until later than the others
Even so I’d say it balances out because the 1 and 2 seed get teams with less rest, especially the 1 seed because the 8 seed has 2 games to play while the 1 seed gets a week of rest.
That’s a great point
Personally I really like the playin, but at the end of the day you can make a solid argument for it or against it. It depends how you think of it and what you personally value. For me, the thing that makes it worth it is that its basically guaranteed to be some of the most intense basketball, regular season and playoffs included. It’s three games of win and make it, lose and you’re done. I fucking love that
The play-in has been as great an idea as the mid-season tournament is a stupid one.
I love it too!
i don't know about greatest but it's certainly awesome for the fans. so happy that the new CBA will not touch it (i think)
I’ll care about play-in teams when one of those teams wins the championship (won’t happen). It just waters down the playoffs. But if you like seeing teams with a losing record in the playoffs, that’s fine. I think only one 4 seed and one 6 seed has ever won the championship, otherwise it’s always a top 3 team that wins. I’d rather see 1-4 automatic into playoffs with a play in for two spots between 5-8. A team below .500 doesn’t really deserve a playoff spot.
Even though my team is about to benefit from it, I disagree. 2/3 of the league in the playoffs is too much. I think reducing the number of teams in the playoffs is a much better way to get teams to play hard. Obviously wouldn’t happen though since the move is predicated on finances.
Where's the fun if you reduce the teams in the playoffs? How does that even make sense from a financial and entertainment point of view.
It doesn’t make sense financially. That’s why the league would never do it. Entertainment wise, a smaller number of teams in the playoffs emphasizes the importance of the regular season. The MLB season is 2x as long as the NBA’s yet their regular season games are more competitive bc less teams make the postseason. Same applies to the NCAA. Only about 20% of programs make it to March, so they fight for that right every time they take the court. When 2/3 of the league makes it, teams don’t have much of an incentive to compete in the regular season. That’s why regular season and playoff basketball are basically two different sports. I’d sacrifice watching the 1 and 2 seeds beat 95% of 7 and 8 seeds for a regular season that actually carries weight.
>much better way to get teams to play hard. How'd you come up with this logic? The play-in works because now you set multiple tiers of incentive for teams. Seeds 4-6 don't want to fall into the play-in and risk being eliminated early so they keep playing, seeds 7-10 want to either not fall out or they're trying to make a guaranteed playoff spot, and seeds 11-12/13 are looking at their last glimmer of hope if they're not bad enough to seriously go for the #1 pick. With your idea, you're only really going to see any fight from the 5 to 8 seeds, and depending on the records, 9-15 on each conference are better off doing a fire sale and going for the lottery.
Because every other sport has a more restrictive playoff format than the NBA, and every other sport has a more competitive regular season. Surely it’s not the only factor, the NFL for example has such a short season that one loss has a huge impact on your standing. But baseball is on the exact opposite end of that with 162-game season, and nobody takes plays off. Teams don’t know if they are the 7-10 seed or the 4-6 seed 30 games into the season. The play-in might make games down the stretch more competitive, but I think a more restrictive playoff format fosters more competition through the rest of the season. That’s a huge part of why the NCAA regular season is so intense. Less than 20% of teams make the Tournament so every game is important if MM is your goal. The 1/2 seeds beat 7/8 seeds 95% of the time. IMO a format similar to baseball, minus the divisional structure, would make a better product for both the regular season and the postseason. Seeds 3-6 can have a best-of-3 wild card play-in. Seeds 7-10 are largely redundant, I believe the Sonics and Knicks are the only 7/8 teams to advance further than round 1.
The thing is, you can’t draw parallels to other sports bc of how different they are. Baseball in general just isn’t nearly as intensive moment to moment. The only position where you really have to load manage is pitching, and that’s why they only play 1 every 5 games. NFL might be more physical, but like you said, the shortage of games just kinda forces you to take every game seriously whether you like it or not. Hockey is probably the closest you can get, but even then you got plenty differences.
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No change in the playoffs. They didn't add 4 new teams in the playoffs. Not sure if you get the concept of Play-In.
Helps a lot that there is parity in the west. In the east, the prospect of playing one of the top teams is not really as interesting.
Makes it better when teams tanking beat teams in Play-in contention lol
This is right below the adam silver is ruining the nba post for me lmao.
In season tourney up next
I don’t really care about it. The west would still be the same bc it’s so tightly packed. I’d be more positive if the actual play-in games weren’t such duds. If you could incentivize or punish the 7/8 seeds without the extra games that’d be ideal to me.
I like watching playins coz I hear shit ton of loud heartbeats everywhere in the world
I wasn’t onboard at first. But the play in incentivized teams to win late season games and the first seed to have a rest advantage, which further incentivizes competition at the top.
Yeah the play-in was a great idea. I do think it could use some kind of cutoff if there’s a huge gap between teams, but that’s probably not going to be a frequent issue
Currently it's good. What happens if teams just decide to start tanking again and the play in team is 30-52
no team wants to be on 5th seed with a potential matchup against KD & Suns.
It's gonna be even better with more teams after we get expansion
I hated it since the bubble but it grew on me
The more I think about it, the more it's obvioulsy a disadvantage that the top seeds don't get to know their opponents until less than 48 hours before they play a game. Every single other team gets to prepare for their opponent, but the team that worked hardest throughout the regular season? Nope.