The inaugural in-season tournament will add a new dimension to the 2023-24 season.
NBA basketball returns on October 24. We count down the days like seconds on a clock – literally, that’s what we do. Starting October 1st, our writers will list 24 stories for the 2023-24 NBA season.
A new story will drop every day. Here is Number 3:
Want to know what the In-Season Tournament is? Start with European football.
In the interest of transparency, let me put this on record. I’m agnostic about football at all levels, European or otherwise (beyond a family picnic activity).
But the new In-Season Tournament is about a league, any league, trying to drum up interest in what would otherwise be the tedium of its schedule. And the clichΓ© about the NBA season “really starting on Christmas Day” made the first two months ripe for this kind of shenanigans.
Contrary to initial skepticism, this does not require a halt to all normal NBA operations, as the NHL did when it sent players to compete in past Winter Olympics. Group play of the In-Season Tournament will unfold as part of the regular schedule, with just asterisks that these Tuesday and Friday games carry some extra weight.
The knockout round should have some real juice, at least compared to the traditional December offerings. All three final games in Las Vegas will likely have heightened interest on and off the field, with cash and bragging rights on the line and, of course, Vegas on the line.
Essential? Probably not. But that doesn’t appear to be cannibalizing interest in the NBA playoffs, about half a year away from the Finals.
And I was completely won over by Play-In Games, another traditional rocker recently added. Two other supposed playoff teams per conference? No thanks. But some extra brass rings to reduce tanking noise? Yes please. A way to goose teams that might otherwise have been content to idle into a seventh or eighth seed? Oh! Yes.
Then there’s his texture, introducing six emergency one-and-done games or two-and-done right before some β let’s face it β often predictable 1-8 and 2-7 best-of-7 series.
If the in-season tournament can have even half the impact, it’s worth a try. Already the championship is going very well: Going to Vegas in December, not July.