Why is this even a thing being seriously discussed? With the recent news that the NBA in-season tournament will be introduced into the NBA next season, it just further proves that the NBA executives have way too much time on their hands.
Who thought that this tournament was a good idea? The NBA is currently undergoing a player health crisis as an unprecedented number of superstars were forced to miss game time with injuries last season, such as LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, James Harden, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Luka Doncic.
In fact, out of the 450 players (or thereabouts) in the NBA, only 5 (Keveon Looney, Mikal Bridges, Dwight Powell, Saddiq Bey, and Deni Avdija) played in all 82 games last season. In other words, a grand total of 1% of NBA players completed the full schedule of 82 games.
Yeah, not a great look for the NBA.
So, how has commissioner Adam Silver and the league executives addressed this problem? Have they reduced the number of games?
No, Silver and his executives have instead decided to keep the 82-game schedule but transform it through this nonsensical in-season tournament.
Just…why? Why is this tournament a thing?
The NBA already is a tournament given that regular season acts as a qualifier for the playoffs, which is itself a four-round, knockout tournament for the NBA championship.
Actually, technically speaking, every professional sport in the US and Canada is a tournament as the MLB, NFL, and NHL all have the exact same format (with different end trophies, of course) as the NBA. Adding another tournament doesn’t make sense.
To me, this seems like the NBA is just trying to copy the success of the FA Cup and Carabao Cup from England.
In those two tournaments, every team across the many leagues of English football, in addition to their, respective, league campaigns, compete against one another in a single-game, knockout tournament to win the FA Cup and Carabao Cup, respectively.
“Okay, so why can’t the NBA do that? The English Football Federation has added these two tournaments for the many clubs, even though they also compete in their own, separate leagues,” a proponent of this in-season tournament might say.
And, to be honest, that reasoning might be just as dumb as this in-season tournament idea.
There are at least a thousand English clubs across every single division of English football.
Obviously, they don’t all compete against one another as that would not only be ridiculous to the players having to play 1,000 games/season, but there is also a huge player and infrastructure superiority gap between the Premier League clubs (1st Division) versus the non-league clubs (Division 5-21 or so).
Simply, the lower division clubs just can’t compete in stadium quality, filed quality, or player quality with the higher division clubs that have access to an infinite amount of more revenue sources to pay for great stadiums, fields, and players.
Yet, there is still a great desire for the fans of these “smaller clubs” in the lower divisions to play against the “bigger clubs” in the Premier League and the other higher divisions.
Thus, the English Football Federation devised these tournaments so that the lower league clubs could systematically eliminate one another in the early stages of the competitions (Qualifying Rounds) before being able to play the top-level clubs in the First Round and beyond of the FA Cup and Carabao Cup.
That way not only are the fans of the smaller clubs able to watch their team compete against the bigger clubs, but also are able to see some of the best players in England play in their hometown.
Contrarily, the NBA only has 30 teams that play one another at least two times a season. If a fan of the Boston Celtics wants to watch Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors compete against their team, all they have to do is wait until the Warriors travel to Boston in that particular season.
If a fan of Leyton Orient (National League/Division 5) wants to see their team play against Manchester United (Premier League/Division 1), they might have to wait 10 years before United is drawn against Orient in an FA Cup or Carabao Cup match.
See why an NBA in-season tournament is dumb?
There’s no need for an FA Cup-style in-season tournament, and I hope the NBA executives figure this out before next season, or else we might be subjected to meaningless, glorified regular season games that are branded as “in-season tournament games”.
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