Why the NBA's new in-season tournament should be great

Back in July, the NBA announcedthat this upcoming season would include the inaugural in-seasontournament. The rules and dates for the NBA Cup were announced, andthe overall response was… bleh.

Some fans feel that thetournament is just a way to generate more TV time and money for theleague. While the tournament will certainly bring in those things,let’s look at the optics. The NBA Cup should lead to morebasketball being watched, higher-stakes games, and potentially moreplayers and fans caring about the regular season. All of thatsounds good for everyone involved, especially thefans.

Fans have voiced theirfrustrations about the NBA’s regular season for years, claimingthat between the lack of effort from players and load-managementconcerns, the regular season’s sense of importance has beendwindling. This tournament could be a major step in reshaping thatperception.

Players who would usually take agame off for rest or as a precautionary measure may now feelencouraged to play in order to help their team advance in thetournament. Players are also being rewarded financially throughoutthe tournament, with players on the winning team of the NBA Cupchampionship even earning $500,000 each. If nothing else will get aplayer to play harder, money will.

This tournament will also leadto top teams and stars facing off more often, which is in theleague's best interest. For example, look at Phoenix Suns starKevin Durant and Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James. Through badinjury luck and scheduling quirks since they were in differentconferences in recent years, the pair have not faced off since the2018 NBA Finals. This tournament will allow the league to put itsbest teams and athletes on display and have them face off far moreoften.

The tournament deserves a chanceto remedy the complaints that fans have had over the last fewyears. Major League Baseball recently took a chance with theirimplementation of the pitch clock, and it has proven to be amassive success, as numbers for baseball are up across theboard.

This wouldn't be the first timein recent years that the NBA has won over their once-skeptical fanswith a unique idea. Fans were losing interest in the All-Star game,so the NBA changed the format of the game entirely in 2020, makingeach quarter its own mini-game for charity and then implementingthe target score. Fans were encouraged by the effort, but felt itwould not pan out well.

Boy, were they wrong.

The 2021 All-Star game isregarded by many as the best ever. The target score made the fourthquarter incredibly competitive, with the world’s best going at ithead-to-head. It was everything any sport could want from theirAll-Star game, creating timeless moments that will be rewatched foryears to come.

The Play-In Tournament isanother example of an idea that was initially hated by fans beforethey eventually came around after seeing it in action.

Evan Wasch, the NBA's executivevice president of basketball strategy and analytics, toldBasketball News last year that these recent successes gave theleague confidence to continue trying new things.

“[It gives us] confidence and,hopefully, credibility in the marketplace," Wasch said. "Theseideas are not hatched overnight and then implemented. I’ve beenwith the NBA for almost 11 years and the concept of the Play-InTournament even predates my time with the NBA, so it was a longtime in the making in terms of crafting the right proposal, theright timing, the right format. Same with the All-Star changes;that was a partnership with our Players Association. Chris Paul,the union president, is on our competition committee and had abunch of suggestions for how we could improve competitionthere.

"These things build up over timeas we discuss them, which ultimately makes the product better whenwe do implement them because they’re thought through soeffectively. We hope with our stakeholders and fans, that thecredibility that comes with successful innovation sticks around aswe [implement the] in-season tournament.”

The in-season tournament beginson November 3 and will conclude with the championship game held inLas Vegas on December 9.