The NBA’s play-in tournament was a huge success in terms of ratings this season, so it wasn’t surprising to see that the league will keep him around for at least another year.
Then again, it should be put into context that the tournament featured Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors and LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers. Maybe, if we were talking about two small-market teams, the history would’ve been different.
Most players don’t seem to be fond of this idea. In fact, former NBA Champion Richard Jefferson recently explained why the league shouldn’t even consider this tournament anymore:
“Seventh seed, you work for 82 games. Seventh could be a 51-win team and if a player gets hurt or something like that happens… Hey, we can rest our players for the final two games to get ready for a seven-game series to really legitimately make a run at it,” Jefferson said on ESPN’s The Jump.
“You’re the seventh seed, you have six more wins than everybody else and you go to a play-in tournament. What if one of your players gets hurt? And I understand, that is to benefit 8, 9, 10, not the seven. Eventually, we’re gonna have a seventh seed that had a bad string of luck and that’s going to be rude,” he concluded.
That’s very likely to happen any time soon. The end of the regular season always features banged-up teams and players trying to get ready for the playoffs. It’s not fair that a 45+ win team is out of the playoffs after two bad games.
But hey, the league will continue to test new ways to bring more excitement to the game and get fans hooked, even if that’s to the detriment of all the effort some teams and players put throughout the regular season.
