By Brandon Simmons
This week, the NBA will hold its 2nd annual Play-In Tournament and we can all thank the Philadelphia 76ers’ process for implementing this change. According to Bleacher Report, Adrian Wojnarowski was on his podcast, The Woj Pod, and made claims by the Sixers’ tanking from 2014 to 2017 “spooked the league”, which saw them rack up a lot of losses in order to gain high draft picks to rebuild with. The fear of other teams doing this led to reasoning for the creation of the play-in tournament.
From 2014 to 2017, the Philadelphia 76ers infamously, and openly, tanked their seasons as part of their rebuilding process. It was dubbed “The Process” after the General Manager at the time, Sam Hinkie, stated to the media in a press conference, “Trust the process.” Soon, this 3 year “process” resulted in landing center Joel Embiid and guard Ben Simmons as the foundation of their team today, the number one seed in the Eastern Conference.
The purpose of the play-in tournament was to encourage teams from tanking and make the year-end regular season games more meaningful. The 9th and 10th seeded teams in each conference, who were within 4 games of the 8th spots, would play in a tournament at the end of the year against the 7th and 8th seeded teams to clinch those final 2 playoff spots. Last year, the tournament made its debut, due to COVID-19 interrupting the season and most of the eligible teams resumed their season in the NBA Bubble in Florida. The deciding game for the 8th and final spot was between the Portland Trail Blazers and Memphis Grizzlies. The result was 9th seeded Portland becoming victorious over 8th seeded Memphis and securing the 8th spot in the Western Conference playoffs for the Blazers.
Many opinions have swayed over this play-in for the last year and a half. There are those who are for this tournament, claiming that it makes for more exciting games at the end of the season, which can be true. Teams that are solidified in their playoff seeding may opt to put in perennial bench warmers to give them a little bit of shine or rest their starters for the upcoming playoff series; similar things can be said about teams that missed the playoffs in which they are protecting franchise players from serious injury or seeing what they have in the cupboard with lesser-known players. However, there are those who are against this tournament altogether. They believe that this more of a tactic based on money as opposed to the value of the sport, which can be true. Some of these lesser-known players might not be recognizable, or interested, by the casual fan, but rather by someone who truly follows the team night in and night out.
Tanking is not something that should be encouraged, but it’s how a lot of these teams probably get their squads back to winning, in all the sports. Realistically, if a team is sitting at that 10 spot toward the end of the year, they probably would want to mail it in at the end of the season to increase their chances in the draft lottery, and hopefully land a pick to boost their winning for next season. Winning makes money more than AAU week in the NBA, because if sustained, it can grow fanbases from local to national. The play-in tournament is a noble idea, but unfortunately as of right now, there’s a couple of reasons it can’t beat the idea of tanking. A perfect example of this is comparing the Philadelphia 76ers to the Sacramento Kings. The “Process” of the Sixers only took from those 3 years before they were competitive; the Kings have not been open about tanking or anything similar, but they have not been to the playoffs since the 2005 season. In other words, as much they’ve “earned” their non-playoff seeding – an ideal the league appears to push – it has not resulted in any success. Another glaring fault of the tournament is the inclusion of the 9th and 10th seeds. Right now, as a 10th place team, the San Antonio Spurs are 6 games behind the 8th place Golden State Warriors, but if they win 2 games then they would be in the playoffs? If the 10th or 9th place seeds in the conference can’t get in the mix of the 8 qualified teams, what makes them think they can compete for a title in the real playoffs. The theory of matchups between higher and lower seeds can dictate the series might be legit in the first rounds, but as the postseason gets deeper, that fades away and the lower seeds could face the end of their playoff hopes.
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