No one expected the NBA’s first In-Season Tournament to have it all figured out from the start. However, radical changes must be made. Friday night marks the final game of the group stage of the NBA In-Season tournament. After this week, the tournament is reduced to eight teams in December. Reducing the tournament from 30 teams to eight in the span of one night, however, seems like a shoddy plot development.
The NBA needs to adopt a Keep it Simple, Stupid strategy for its valuable showcase. Simplicity is the most important goal of a design to ensure the highest levels of interaction. Minimalism is king amid an 82-game schedule. The in-season tournament is to be streamlined into a simpler knockout format next season.
The first two weeks lacked challenge because they delayed the adrenaline rush by two weeks. The first evening of the tournament in season was marked by a multitude of arrivals. The Warriors and Thunder went down all the way, with Draymond Green nearly nullifying Steph Curry’s game-winning rabbit; Milwaukee squeaked by the Knicks and Zach Lavine’s triple on the back iron spared Brooklyn. To top it off, the Blazers beat the Grizzlies in overtime and the Pacers survived against the Cavaliers. It was the best night of early November action the league has seen in ages. It’s been a long time since then.
After that exhilarating start, fans had to do some math, look at schedules and group match standings to figure out what that meant. It takes a deep dive into analytics and schedules to even understand what each team needs to progress. I didn’t know the Lakers had the best point differential in the West, that they were undefeated in three games, or that the Pacers were in position to advance to the quarterfinals. Philly might not advance after losing to Indianapolis in its second group stage game. The Suns, Nuggets and Sixers could each be eliminated in disappointing fashion.
Why host five knockout games when the NBA could host 29 or 30? The slow pace of the NBA playoffs is what irritates even the most ardent NBA aficionado. The in-season tournament cannot afford to be a cheap imitation of the playoffs. Adam Silver’s tournament won’t really get going until it moves to a fully knockout format. What we have now is simple elimination 2 percent milk.
March Madness has already locked the market on wonky equations, fugazi quadrant analyzes and analyzes of who is on the bubble.
The NBA has two ways to achieve this. The strategy that can be implemented in the near future is that the reigning NBA champions receive a first-round bye. Instead, they can face each other the day before in a regular season game to eliminate their 82nd game. Meanwhile, 28 teams can compete in matchups that immediately take on much greater importance, and then the defending conference champions parachute back for a Sweet 16.
Once the NBA expands to 32 teams in a few seasons, this will become a simpler process. Scheduling games in a single night would be a problem, but nothing the league couldn’t overcome. The league is expected to use a flexible schedule in the second half to accommodate the unpredictable nature of a 30-team free-for-all game. For decades, the NBA has adhered to an orthodoxy that dictates how the schedule plays out. A single-elimination tournament should either exist outside of the normal schedule or the league should be more flexible in moving games into the second half of the season.
Currently, a total of 66 matches count towards the in-season tournament. A single-elimination format like the one described above would cut that number in half to 29 or 30. But sometimes less is more.
If you want to grab fans’ attention for an evening, what is most likely to do it? A match, which is one of four matches in the group stage, which takes into account head-to-head calculations and two potential wild card slots in six groups or a winner-takes-all? It’s really too complicated.
Silver is the commissioner who has truly embraced advanced analysis, but even he has to recognize how the byzantine nature of this tournament’s setup is holding him back. The majority of basketball viewers are holding on until the winner-take-all round begins or goes home with the quarterfinals on December 4.
Given the modern attention span and array of options available to most viewers, the NBA is living in a fantasy if it thinks its current format will captivate viewers on Tuesday or Friday nights. Right now, the in-season tournament is stuck at a standstill as the league needs to attract more eyes and lead the conversation. Removing the slick courts and perhaps implementing the Elam Ending they used in All-Star contests would be helpful changes to make before next season’s edition, but simple elimination is the elixir what the NBA needs.