For me as a European, being used to the system of european sports, I can’t really see why most NBA fans are against the new In-Season tournament.

Most of the arguments that I read why people reject it is „it is pointless, because winning it has no consequence and doesnt lead to anything. For example you don’t earn a playoff spot or get some other reward for winning the tournament.“

For me as a european sports fan, it is normal to have more than one trophy, more than one competition per year. Regardless if european Soccer, european Basketball or whatever. You even have three tournaments per season: the national league, the national cup, and the Champions League (in Soccer) or the Euroleague (in Basketball).

I can‘t really see the argument of „it is pointless because it leads to nothing, you get no reward.“ Why should it lead to anything? It leads to win a trophy, to win a competition. That’s the point in itself. Thats the reward.

For example, in UK soccer, winning the FA Cup (the national cup competition) doesnt lead to an advantage in the Premier League (the national league competition), and winning the Champions League doesnt lead to any consequences in the Premier League or in the FA Cup as well. The whole point of each of these competitions/tournaments is just to win them in itself, to win that trophy. Winning the national cup for example is a great experience for the fans of the winning club. Those fans are not saying: „meh, we don’t need to win that tournament, because it doesnt give us an advantage in the Premier League!“ They just want to win the tournament and celebrate the title.

So I‘m kind of curious how that thing will develop in the NBA. Maybe Americans are just not used to compete in more than one competition per season, and are not used trying to win parallel competitions in a season. Maybe that view will change in 10-20 years, when it might be established in everyones mind that more than one title per year exists (and that doesnt mean each competition will have the same importance, of course the NBA title will always clearly be the most important title… like in english football the Premier League title clearly is more important than the FA Cup title).