Lots of hype about the midseason tournament but everyone’s asking the right question:
#Why should fans care?
The players who win get some money, but just like the all-star game, there’s no real reason for fans to treat it with any real hype.
You can’t go overboard with the rewards, but a fairly simple one could be the answer: Whoever wins the tournament enters the playoffs up 1-0 over their first round opponent.
Suddenly every team is playing in the tournament like they’re playoff games because, well, in a way it’s a micro-playoff game. Fans are going nuts because they want that little taste of playoff basketball.
This is also a course correction for “this team was great early in the season but fell off in the latter half and I guess the first half of the season just doesn’t matter since they have no momentum”.
The first round of the playoffs used to only be best-of-5 anyway - best-of-7 is too long for the first round.
#FAQ
“The NBA would never go for it because they’re losing revenue on a playoff game, which is where they make most of their money”
Fair- but they’re desperately trying to get people roped into the regular season. I think if they shed a single playoff game from their bread basket in order to get everyone hyped about a few dozen mid-season games, the profit will greatly outweigh what a single playoff game brings in.
“What happens if the team that wins the tournament doesn’t make the playoffs?”
I think this would be fairly rare since more than half of the teams in the NBA make the playoffs, but to give some incentive, we can say something like the team automatically wins the tiebreaker for better draft pick in this case. So if that team ends up going 20-62 and another team goes 20-62, the team that won the tournament automatically gets the higher pick.
“What happens if it ends up being a play-in team?”
That team automatically gets to go up one seed. So if you finish in 10th place but you won the tournament, you swap with the 9th seed to get that place instead. 7th seed gets to swap with the 6th seed to get out of doing the play-in. This way you only get to go up 1-0 if you’re a 5 seed or better, as it would probably be unfair to give an 8 seed a 1-0 lead over a 1 seed. This gives teams incentive to keep trying down the stretch versus “We already made the playoffs, who cares if we lose a few in the end of the regular season?”
I like that they’re bringing in this midseason tournament as a means to change things up, but I think ultimately everyone’s going to be like “What’s the point?”
#Let’s add some real INCENTIVE to this!
I think it’s fair to award a single playoff win in the first round if you win an entire tournament, and it adds some weight to teams playing well early in the season, giving fans less to groan about with “it only matters with how you finish, so why should I care about how they play in the beginning and middle?”