celticfan42487 wrote:Yeah it's dumb and make the regular season even more meaningless. And extends the playoffs for 0 reason.
Make the playoffs 6 teams from each division, 1rst round 5 game series.
I dunno.
Yeah, it's true that it makes it easier to squeak into the playoffs despite a terrible regular season record. But on the other hand, it makes a top 6 seed much more valuable than the 7/8 seed, so the regular season is even more important from that perspective. Teams are really motivated to with 47-50 games, rather than just coast in with 43 wins. I think, at worst, the two factors cancel each other out. But I honestly think it has inspired even harder regular season play on the whole because the price you pay for falling from the #6 to #7 seed is potentially massive.
One other good thing about the Play-In is it allows a pretty good team that suffered a significant injury early in the year to still have a chance to put together a late run and get back into it. Consider the Wizards. They started 6-17 because Westbrook was playing hurt and then they got decimated with Covid. Thanks to the Play-In, they never punted on the season and instead regrouped to go 26-20 over the rest of the season. Another scenario that almost came to pass: what if the Lakers had lost 2 more games while Lebron and AD were out? They'd be out of the playoff race without the Play-In Tournament, and nobody would want that. Early injuries would have deprived the world an opportunity to watch two of the top 10 players in the sport compete for a title.