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So the NBA has announced the new play-in tournament for all teams, starting in early November and concluding in early December. Ultimately, this will count as two regular season games in the standings, with various incentives to teams and players. Very confusing initially. Commish is enamored with soccer cup play in Europe and wanted to do something like that to kick off the NBA season.

Hornets initially have NO nationally televised games, while Spurs have three. Of course, success in the tournament will get teams on the network eventually.

What does everyone think about this? It’s better than dull exhibitions, although those do serve some important purpose toward evaluating marginal talent. Given the Hornets lack of continuity I don’t see much tourney success.

To be honest it seems kind of dumb. Silver definitely appears to be inspired by European soccer, but I don't think it will work as well. They're going to have to create interest for this from fans out of thin air, which is quite a challenge.

My prediction is the NBA will hype this tournament to high heaven but the interest just won't be there. The championship game won't have better ratings than any of the Christmas day games.

Maybe I'm wrong and more people will take to this though. It just seems so superfluous to me.

I don't care about it. I doubt teams take it very seriously.

I would've loved if they had made it like a young players' exhibition or something.

Once every team has a D-League roster (I think next year?), all your players ~25 and under are eligible, and you fill out the team with your best D-League players. That's how you get your fringe players some exposure they wouldn't normally get against mostly NBA competition.

No 32-year-old stars are going to give a damn about this yet until there's some actual history. Just give those guys a few free rest days that they're already gonna take anyway through load management or "sore feet" or something.

Not disliking it. It gives more interests to games during the season so why not.

I did not like the pod we got put in. It's basically just more division games (miami, hornets, washington) but they added Milwaukee and the Knicks so that Miami gets a couple marquee opponents. The Wizards and Hornets are the Washington Generals in this thing and will get screwed by the refs I am sure. Plus what does winning get you? Should be the higher seed in a series or the 7th spot guaranteed or some meaningful thing.

KEMBAtheMETEOR wrote:I would've loved if they had made it like a young players' exhibition or something.

Once every team has a D-League roster (I think next year?), all your players ~25 and under are eligible, and you fill out the team with your best D-League players. That's how you get your fringe players some exposure they wouldn't normally get against mostly NBA competition.

No 32-year-old stars are going to give a damn about this yet until there's some actual history. Just give those guys a few free rest days that they're already gonna take anyway through load management or "sore feet" or something.

Considering our ability to put summer league teams together, I would not want to see this

I think the tournament will work and is a good idea. I do think they've over-complicated it though. I don't know why you wouldn't just take the conference rankings and bracket it NCAA style though. The groups seem kind of random. Another thing they could've just done was finally use the divisions for something. I don't even know why divisions exist anymore, they're meaningless now.

Rich4114 wrote:I think the tournament will work and is a good idea. I do think they've over-complicated it though. I don't know why you wouldn't just take the conference rankings and bracket it NCAA style though. The groups seem kind of random. Another thing they could've just done was finally use the divisions for something. I don't even know why divisions exist anymore, they're meaningless now.

I agree, a bracket would have been way more digestible to the American audience. It would be an easy comparison to March Madness that fans could wrap their heads around. The NBA could even try to pump up the idea of fans filling in brackets with prizes for those who accurately predict the results. That betting angle would have drawn in a bit of interest, I reckon.

We only got a soccer-style group setup because Silver is enamored with how soccer leagues have done their cups. The groups are lame anyway, or at least ours is, just a bunch of teams we already play a ton in Southeast Division with Knicks/Bucks tossed in.

Teams will half-ass this until real incentives are given for doing well in it. Fans and teams don't care about players getting minor financial bonuses.

Teams will be treating it no different in any way to a regular season game until they get some incentive to care (draft picks or guaranteed playoff seeding etc)

I think it's a great idea

yosemiteben wrote:I think it's a great idea

I'm curious, what makes the idea seem great to you?

Its better than meaningless regular season games.

Hornet Mania wrote:

yosemiteben wrote:I think it's a great idea

I'm curious, what makes the idea seem great to you?

I think the NBA regular season gets extremely monotonous, my biggest complaint is the season lasting too long and individual games losing significance. This seems like a cool way to try to introduce some unique dynamics to the season.

I also just like the concept.